Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ferguson MO 2.0 - No indictment in Eric Garner case...

RichardAustin and others,

The grand jury didn't have to just sit there and listen to the Prosecutor. They were able to question the witnesses. They were able to request the production of witnesses and physical evidence; and the Prosecutor was required to produce it if it was admissible under the rules of evidence.

Maybe, just maybe, the group of people who made up the grand jury asked a lot of questions of various witnesses. Maybe they requested the testimony of real experts in law enforcement training methods and techniques. Maybe they heard from more than one pathologist. Maybe they asked for testimony from an expert in the field of cardiology. I don't know, and neither do you.

What I do know is that a reasonably large group of people were sworn as a grand jury. They reviewed all physical evidence that the Prosecutor wanted to show them, plus any other admissible evidence that they asked for. They heard from any witnesses the Prosecutor called, plus any other witnesses, requested by them, whose testimony would be relevant and admissible. After reviewing all of the evidence, that group of citizens collectively determined that there was not reasonable cause to charge anyone with a crime in this death. In other words, it would be unreasonable to charge someone.

Do you guys really want a criminal justice system, in this country, that would expose you, or a fellow citizen, to loss of life or freedom, even though a grand jury of your peers made a finding that it would be unreasonable for the government to put you on trial?

the main thing all this tells the observer, is that someone, or some entity, is coordinating, orchestrating and promoting these 'responses'. There is just way too much similarity and consistency of behavior and rhetoric, for these protests to be random.
These events are being used to galvanize blacks, and to herd them into 'useful' behavior.

fellows, just think back a short while in time, when there was a plethora of threads bemoaning 'police abuse', and excessive force. Remember all those 'cop bashing' threads? All those thousands of lines, back and forth, where we trashed cops, each other, the various miscreants used as examples? The college girls abused by arresting officers, the grannies tazed...........

I don't think we can EVER be accused of being 'soft on police abuse', but, and this is important here, these particular cases, Trayvon, Michael, and Garner, are being bandied about SOLELY becuse of the RACE of the individuals.
As others have pointed out so succinctly, that is the reason these three cases have reached the level of notoriety that they have. The sole reason, the ONLY reason.
It's not by accident.

Eric Garner and Michael Brown had much in common, not the least of which was this: On the last day of their lives, they made bad decisions. Epically bad decisions.
Each broke the law � petty offenses, to be sure, but sufficient to attract the attention of the police.
And then � tragically, stupidly, fatally, inexplicably � each fought the law.
The law won, of course, as it almost always does.
This was underscored yet again Wednesday when a Staten Island grand jury chose not to indict any of the arresting officers in the death in police custody of Garner last July.
Just as a grand jury last week declined to indict the police officer who shot a violently resisting Michael Brown to death in Ferguson, Mo., in August.
Demagoguery rises to an art form in such cases � because, again, the police generally win. (Though not always, as a moment�s reflection before the Police Memorial in lower Manhattan will underscore.) And because those who advocate for cop-fighters are so often such accomplished beguilers.
They cast these tragedies as, if not outright murder, then invincible evidence of an enduringly racist society.
No such thing, as a matter of fact. Virtually always, these cases represent sad, low-impact collisions of cops and criminals � routine in every respect except for an outlier conclusion.
The Garner case is textbook.
Eric Garner was a career petty criminal who�d experienced dozens of arrests, but had learned nothing from them. He was on the street July 17, selling untaxed cigarettes one at a time � which, as inconsequential as it seems, happens to be a crime.
Yet another arrest was under way when, suddenly, Garner balked. �This ends here,� he shouted � as it turned out, tragically prophetic words � as he began struggling with the arresting officer.
Again, this was a bad decision. Garner suffered from a range of medical ailments � advanced diabetes, plus heart disease and asthma so severe that either malady might have killed him, it was said at the time.
Still, he fought � and at one point during the struggle, a cop wrapped his arm around Garner�s neck.
That image was captured on bystander video and later presented as irrefutable evidence of an �illegal� chokehold and, therefore, grounds for a criminal indictment against the cop.
That charge fails, and here�s why.
First, while �chokeholds� are banned by NYPD regulation, they�re not illegal under state law when used by a cop during a lawful arrest. So much for criminal charges, given that nobody seriously disputes the legitimacy of the arrest.
Second, and this speaks to the ubiquitous allegation that cops are treated �differently� than ordinary citizens in deadly-force cases: Indeed they are � and it is the law itself that confers the privilege.
The law gives cops the benefit of every reasonable doubt in the good-faith performance of their duties � and who would really have it any other way?
Cops who need to worry about whether the slightest mishap � a minor misunderstanding that escalates to violence of any sort � might result in criminal charges and a prison term are not cops who are going to put the public�s interests first.
Finally, there is this: There were 228,000 misdemeanor arrests in New York City in 2013, the last year for which there are audited figures, and every one of them had at least the potential to turn into an Eric Garner-like case.
None did.
So much for the �out of control� cop trope. So much for the notion that everyday citizens � or even criminals with the presence of mind to keep their hands to themselves � have something to fear from the NYPD.
Keep this in mind as the rhetoric fogs the facts in the hours and days ahead.
For there are many New Yorkers � politicians, activists, trial lawyers, all the usual suspects � who will now seek to profit from a tragedy that wouldn�t have happened had Eric Garner made a different decision.
He was a victim of himself. It�s just that simple.

Hence, remanding over for trial, even though he would have been cleared, could have been a wiser move.

Again, very good post, but we al need to realize the great unwashed need OPTICS and as such, all the evidence presented to the Grand Jury, both here and it Fergusson, didn't count forshit. Hence, remanding over for trial, even though he would have been cleared, could have been a wiser move. Also, noted is the fact police have also "abused" (sic) whites as well, but as Ethan says, that doesn't make the news. Sad state we are in and it will NEVER get better.

It would take an enormous, sloppy, stanky vagina of a person to send somebody to trial for something they didn't do, just because it'd be more convenient.

Besides possibly impoverishing them, every step takes the person closer to a wrongful conviction.

what bothers me isn't the choke hold, its the man telling them he can't breathe - like 9 times?

at what point do, you know, actually care that the guy might be in distress and its more important that he live than it is to keep your knee on his neck?

if there was video of me - not as a cop but as a man, lets say Garner was threatening me - not life threatening but general mouthing off and I made the decision to take him down, I had him subdued - and he told me 9 times he couldn't breathe - my ass would be in jail.

and throw in on top of it, there is a police policy against a choke hold or attempting to use a choke hold.

I think this cop needs to go to trial. I didn't think that about Wilson or George Zimmerman

also, I don't claim to be an expert on grand jury's but I can tell you that if you don't have a strong willed foreman on the jury or a group of people willing to confront authority, then they are mostly a rubber stamp for whatever the D.A. is pitching - innocent or guilty.

JFC.