Posted on 11/26/2014 7:45:54 PM PST by SeekAndFind
A St. Louis County grand jury on Monday decided not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in the August killing of teenager Michael Brown. The decision wasn’t a surprise — leaks from the grand jury had led most observers to conclude an indictment was unlikely — but it was unusual. Grand juries nearly always decide to indict.
Or at least, they nearly always do so in cases that don’t involve police officers.
Former New York state Chief Judge Sol Wachtler famously remarked that a prosecutor could persuade a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” The data suggests he was barely exaggerating: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.
Wilson’s case was heard in state court, not federal, so the numbers aren’t directly comparable. Unlike in federal court, most states, including Missouri, allow prosecutors to bring charges via a preliminary hearing in front of a judge instead of through a grand jury indictment. That means many routine cases never go before a grand jury. Still, legal experts agree that, at any level, it is extremely rare for prosecutors to fail to win an indictment.
“If the prosecutor wants an indictment and doesn’t get one, something has gone horribly wrong,” said Andrew D. Leipold, a University of Illinois law professor who has written critically about grand juries. “It just doesn’t happen.”
(Excerpt) Read more at fivethirtyeight.com ...
There were 12 in the jury including 3 blacks.
How many of them voted to acquit and how did the blacks in the jury vote?
The article is Bull Shite.
There was no there, there
As the cliché goes, you can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich. That means the evidence in this case didn't even amount to a ham sandwich.
The grand jury was composed of 12 people “selected at random from a fair cross-section of the citizens,” according to Missouri law. The jury was 75 percent white: six white men, three white women, two black women and one black man. St. Louis County overall is 70 percent white, but about two-thirds of Ferguson’s residents are black. Brown was black. The officer is white.
Does anybody know how the decision went? And how the blacks in the jury voted?
Perhaps the jury was smart enough to see how the race pimps were stoking the fire and based on the evidence and facts of the case said ‘not gonna happen!’
Justified police shootings don’t even get to grand juries. Prosecutor has discretion not to take the case further. That’s the real travesty here. The authorities gave into rioters and the false narrative (lies) that started immediately after the shooting have blacks upset. They never bothered to look at the actual facts of the case because the slogans are so much easier.
It was a political witch hunt from the get-go McCullough had to bring the evidence to the GJ or get crucified. As it progressed he knew it didn’t have a chance in hell, but his butt was covered The bigots got their day in court and they still bitch about it
Cases this weak usually aren’t referred to the grand jury.
Ben Casselman is wrong:
Cops have been indicted and convicted for going beyond the scope of their duties.
The DA’s office here had weak evidence, unreliable witnesses and the belief they didn’t have a case.
It preferred not bring a case to trial that would have ended in an acquittal.
And Officer Darren Wilson was a very creditable, believable witness.
As usual, liberals second guess every thing and not one of them knows what the Grand Jury heard and saw.
1. Ben Casselman receives article from white house secure server.
2. Ben fraudulently claims authorship and publishes.
3. Ben waits for Pulitzer to arrive in mail.
What FiveThirtyEight completely overlooks is the forensic evidence in this case, which clearly shows that it never should have gone to a grand jury.
The only reason it did was to provide some political cover for the various entities involved, and to cool off the initial riots.
As such it really can’t be compared to a “normal” grand jury.
It is also very rare for the defendant to go before the grand jury and take questions. This could be a first.
The only reason that this even got as far as a grand jury is because of politics. If it had not been for the grand jury presentation, the prosecutor would be accused of protecting Officer Wilson from now until 2024.
Silver is using numbers for Federal grand juries, not state grand juries. If my state is any indication, it is very rare to use that system for state charges.
Even when they do, it is usually to give some formality to a case no one wanted to charge in the first place.
The Federal court system is fundamentally different.
It is illegal to make that information known, and the question was specifically asked at the press conference.
The prosecutor is a Dem. However, his father was in law enforcement, and was killed responding to a call involving a black suspect. That lead to some fears by him that if he doesn’t indict, it will be seen as bias, hence the decision to rather go the a grand jury to remove any doubts as to his motives.
Grand jury members are selected before the cases are assigned to them, so it was a random assignment. There is no jury selection process like there would be for a trial.
It all adds up to the fact that this process was as legal, transparent, and thorough as could be, with no opportunities to point fingers at the process or the prosecutor.
In the end it boils down to the same difference as always, for liberals, emotion trumps fact.
Most cases with evidence this flimsy never make it to grand jury UNLESS it is a highly public/controversial/racially-loaded case such as this one.
538 is Nate Silver’s site. Used his name instead of the actual author.
the whole show was a charade.
the attorney for the state, did not want to prosecute,
but had to do something, so he tossed the whole thing
to a Grand Jury, with the
intention of getting a no-bill.
mission accomplished
This went to the GJ because simple dismissal would have garnered understandable outrage.
The GJ is there to decide if a viable case exists. This GJ, spending an extraordinary effort to review evidence, concluded there simply was no case.
Yes, a decent prosecutor can persuade a GJ to indict a ham sandwich - but then that same prosecutor would have to prosecute that ham sandwich, which is a stupid career-destroying move.
Prosecutors don’t bring cases they think are so un-viable that a GJ wouldn’t indict, hence the near-100% indictment rate. The few they do bring are either surprises or, like this one, an attempt to get practical certification that it’s not worth pursuing.
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