Staten Island DA Didn't Ask Garner Grand Jury To Consider Reckless Endangerment Charge: Source

NBC New York ^ | 12/5/2014 | Andrew Siff

[Laissez-faire capitalist]

Staten Island's top prosecutor did not ask grand jurors to consider a reckless endangerment charge in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, a source familiar with the case told NBC 4 New York.

District Attorney Daniel Donovan only asked grand jurors to consider criminally negligent homicide charges against NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo...

[lacrew]

A black man with a long criminal record is in a white minority neighborhood committing a crime...a white police officer from a police department that reeks of union patronage...under the supervision of a black female police SGT...puts the guy in a headlock...paramedics from some other government service employee union arrive and do very little.

The man dies of cardiac arrest.

Not unsurprisingly in a city with such a strong police union, the grand jury fails to indict (seriously how many New Yorkers aren’t somehow related to a police or fireman?).

Middle aged white male republicans are blamed.

[TBP]

Interesting.

[Flick Lives]

It’s funny but I live on Staten Island and I don’t remember Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer or Andrew Napolitano showing up at the grand jury hearing or having heard a single word of testimony but they KNOW the cop should have been indicted.

Grand juries are not open to the public.

[eyeamok]

Very few people understand their Rights as a Juror, The Grand Jury could have thrown the Prosecutor OUT altogether and ran their Own Investigation and issued their own subpoena’s.

[wardaddy]

You made me doubt myself so rather relying on instinct or memory I looked it up

- The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not attach in a grand jury proceeding, or bar a grand jury from returning an indictment when a prior grand jury has refused to do so.

[9YearLurker]

Thanks—and thanks to the other Freepers who have posted on it.

[Meet the New Boss]

Recklessness requires an even higher state of mental culpability than criminal negligence.

If the grand jury found no probable cause to support even criminal negligence, then there certainly would not have been probable cause in the view of the grand jury to support an offense requiring an even higher level of culpability.

So, this is a red herring.