Posted on 11/25/2014 1:41:37 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Via Mediaite, a lot of left-leaning lawyers on Twitter made this point last night during McCulloch’s press conference. Grand jury hearings typically don’t involve testimony from the defendant; the D.A. runs the whole show in deciding who’ll testify, which evidence to let the grand jury see, and which charges to seek. That’s where the old saying that you can get a GJ to indict a ham sandwich comes from — because only the prosecution speaks, it’s exceedingly easy for the state to convince the grand jurors that a crime was committed. Instead McCulloch conducted the hearing seemingly impartially, as a true fact-finding mission replete with calling Wilson himself to the stand. How come the state is normally biased against the defendant at this point of an investigation but suddenly, when it’s a cop accused of unjustifiable homicide against a black male, they turn into neutral brokers?
The answer to that question is another question: What should McCulloch have done instead? If he thought, as seems likely, based on the evidence that there was no chance a trial jury would convict Wilson even if he ended up being indicted, it would have been dubious of him to try to obtain the indictment in the first place. See David French’s point on prosecutorial abuse for more on that. A system where the D.A. is encouraged to charge someone in the full expectation that that charge will lead to acquittal is a bad system. Doing so also would have been irresponsible given the red-hot politics of the case. If he had gotten Wilson indicted for, say, manslaughter and then Wilson had been acquitted at trial a year from now, the criticism would be just the same — the system is biased, it doesn’t work, it doesn’t care about black lives — except that the city would have endured 12 more months of anxiety and paralysis while it waited for the verdict. If Wilson’s not going to prison, why not break that news sooner rather than later?
Meanwhile, imagine the reaction if McCulloch had decided based on his own view of the evidence that there was plainly no probable cause here and therefore he shouldn’t bother calling a grand jury to begin with. Prosecutors do that all the time, another point astutely made by French. The reason it’s unusual for a GJ to investigate a possible crime and not return an indictment, he notes, is that the D.A. typically doesn’t bring weak cases to them in the first place. It’s a waste of resources. If McCulloch had gone that route, though, the outrage among the “Justice for Mike” base would have been incandescent. “Why did this white prosecutor, who’s known for being soft on cops, refuse to even give a grand jury the chance to consider the evidence?” they would have said. “Why not at least give them a chance?” So McCulloch gave them a chance. But rather than put a finger on the scale to obtain an indictment, which would have produced a fait-accompli acquittal, he decided to wash his hands of the matter as much as he could by presenting the evidence neutrally and abiding by the GJ’s decision. If they thought probable cause existed against Wilson, fine; McCulloch could bring the case to trial in good conscience, trusting that the GJ’s judgment was better than his while strongly suspecting that there was no way to get to “beyond a reasonable doubt.” If they thought probable cause didn’t exist against Wilson, that’s fine too; having 12 average citizens, three of them black, arrive at that decision instead of the white, cop-friendly D.A. would cover him politically. And so that’s what he did.
If anything, the argument that McCulloch changed the rules for Wilson is less a criticism of the approach he took here than a criticism of him (and other prosecutors) for not taking this approach in close cases involving less prominent defendants. Prosecutors should be more neutral in their grand jury investigations when they think the odds of conviction are long. Why put someone who’s likely to be found not guilty in court through the ordeal of the trial process if a more balanced GJ investigation can spare them that on probable-cause grounds in the first place?
Well duh. It’s just part of white privilege. Sheesh!
I imagine DAs don’t like going after loosing cases and this was a looser for them, thus it was pushed onto the grand jury.
The fact the Officer testified means that his lawyer thought there was zero chance he would say anything incriminating or for which he could be credibly impeached.
This assclown is wrong that it is the prosecutor who controls that decision.
Did anyone ax him why St Michael attacked the cop?
Pray America is waking
Follow the money: no indictment, no wrongful death suit against the city of Ferguson.
Brown family lawyer worried he’s not going to get paid ,D’oh
I heard some liberal commentator on the local channel last night say that prosecutors are supposed to go for the win. I guess going for the truth just wouldn't be right.
You need to understand how libtards think. We no longer have a Department of Justice. We have a Department of Social Justice (as they define it) and rules are to be made up as you go along.
This same legal rocket scientist told Hannity today that the prosecutor was at fault for returning a verdict of not guilty.
Huh?
I think there was 12 people that found no probable cause, but I guess that must be a rumor, because the black ambulance chaser says so and he is a legal scholar don’t you know.
Hannity tried to explain that the prosecutor had explained that believe it or not there is actually some sort of, (I know it’s unbelievable), but I heard something once about a person being presumed innocent. Sarc..
I have heard many calls from certain segments that the prosecutor should have come up with something to indict Wilson for.
I think that none of those people would be satisfied unless a prosecutor deems Wilson guilty by some sort of executive order which could then allow an actual lynching of Wilson.
Very simple.
Officer Wilson should have been exonerated right from the start and this case never should have went to the Grand Jury in the first place
Officer Wilson was fully and unambiguously justified in his use of deadly force against Mike Brown and the evidence in the hands of everyone clearly showed within the first week of this affair.
The Prosecutor should have come out and said so publicly at the very start of this disaster and told the public he would not be charged on the basis that the shooting was justified.
Instead of the the right thing and making the call himself , the Prosecutor punted and referred the the case to a Grand Jury on the pretext that Grand Jury impartiality was needed to lend unbiased, third party credibility to the decision not to charge Officer Wilson.
That lawyer is a particularly scummy lawyer. If I was a judge on the case / civil case I would slap a gag order on him so tight he’d need breathing tubes. As it is I think he should be disbarred for inciting violence.
On the other hand, Yes, I agree. The things the prosecutor did and said during his odd news conference makes me think he was decidedly favoring the Police officer, like I do — But I’m not a DA seeking an indictment with neither pride nor passion.
I don’t know about Missouri but in New York, except in the case of a sealed indictment, a defendant has the right to testify before the grand jury. Most don’t exercise it because they have to waive immunity but its hardly unheard of.
FLASHBACK:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/24/142983/martin-familys-lawyers-no-strangers.html
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2012
EXCERPTS
In Trayvon’s case, (Parks & Crump) alerted the news media more quickly. They phoned the Rev. Al Sharpton almost instantly, and organized marches with local civil rights activists. They also started pressing for federal involvement and alleging a cover-up from the get-go.
(snip)
“In court, you have the jury,” Crump says. “Our job is to get the case to a jury. We need to fight first in the court of public opinion. The jury is the American people.
Someone Must Be Punished for Killing Trayvon Martin, Says Mom Sybrina Fulton
by Allison Samuels Mar 22, 2012 2:04 AM EDT
EXCERPT
The now controversial killing of Trayvon garnered virtually no mainstream media attention in the days immediately after he was fatally shot, but that all changed when the teenager’s parents decided to hire civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump and his law firm to get more answers on exactly how and why their son died.
“They called me the same day they were notified that their son was dead,’’ Crump told The Daily Beast. “When I heard their unarmed teenage son was shot to death, I just knew there’d be an arrest shortly. There wasn’t an arrest 48 hours later, and then I knew we’d have to take this outside of Sanford if we wanted justice.’’
Trayvon’s parents were told by the Sanford police that Zimmerman wasn’t arrested in their son’s death because the facts of the case did not dispute his claim of self-defense.
For Crump, taking the Trayvon Martin story outside of Sanford simply entailed dialing up a few well-placed friends such as the Rev. Al Sharpton. Crump worked closely with the civil rights leader in 2006 on another racially charged case—the controversial death of a 14-year-old, African-American inmate of a Florida boot camp.
“I had to call people like Sharpton and a few other black civil rights leaders and the black media to tell them about this story,’’ said Crump. “I had to get them to understand what happened to this young man and what hadn’t happened in his case so they could spread the word.’’
Historically, cases of murder and violence against blacks in the United States rarely have been given the same amount of attention as cases in which the victims of crime are white—and often go unnoticed and unprosecuted.
Just days after hearing the details of Trayvon’s death, Sharpton arranged to have Crump and the teenager’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, on his syndicated radio show and his popular MSNBC show, Politics Nation, to tell their story.
(snip)
In the wake of non-stop media attention from the likes of Sharpton and CNN’s Don Lemon concerning the Trayvon Martin case, black media blogs such as MediaTakeOut.com and Huffington Post Black Voices also began publishing accounts and editorials about the Florida case—daily. Almost instantly, readers of all races, ages, and backgrounds began tweeting and posting on Facebook their outrage over how the police have handled the case, and the lack of an arrest in the shooting. To date, almost 1 million people have signed a Change.Org petition to have Zimmerman arrested. In response to the widespread outrage, the Justice Department has opened an investigation into the shooting.
I took the prosecutor's intent to defend the grand jury process and let the public know in summary form the evidence that led to the no true bill verdict. He knew the reaction the verdict would cause and knew the lies the media was feeding the public. Presumably, he was trying to head some of that off.
Try hard to get him indicted even when the evidence exonerated him?
Hey, if you don’t want to end up shot don’t bully a policeman and try to steal his gun.
Anyone see the picture of the father with a t-shirt that had a picture of his thug son and above it said “Gone To Soon”
What a dumb a$$.
Yes, 100%!
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