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

I guess I have to plead ignorance to what that stands for although I guess I have a good idea what the "F" is.

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.

I can remember my time on the grand jury

A junkie showed up at a guys house - the guy was home, minding his own business and the junkie, who didn't have the ability to drive downtown to get his heroin fix, convinced the guy to take him downtown and get him heroin from his supplier (the guy sold heroin but didn't have any)

So he gets him his heroin, the guy and junkie go back to his house, and the guy, the junkie and his wife all shoot up. The next morning the guy and his wife wake up to find the junkie dead on their floor.

And our job on the grand jury was to indict this junkie for murder.

Well we objected almost unanimously to indicting this guy because we felt the junkie was responsible for his own death, so we voted no.

We brought the D.A back into the room and told him and he talked some more to us about how the dealer supplied the heroin and took it upon himself to get heroin for the junkie , to think it over again...so we met again, talked about how were were comfortable with the guy getting indicting for selling heroin but still balked at the murder charge (maybe it was manslaughter, I really can't remember now).

So we bring the D.A. back in and tell him and he just unloads on us, tells us we don't understand the law and we can just indict on intent to sell because that would also mean he was culpable in the junkies death and we were ignoring the law as it was explained to us. I wouldn't call it angry, but clearly he was exercising his power in the room.

So eventually he wore us down and we indicted the guy for all the counts they wanted.

After that, we have maybe 5 or 6 more cases that we didn't really think the charges reflected the actions, but none of us wanted to go thru the browbeating by the D.A. again.

That's why I say unless you have a strong willed foreman or people willing to confront authority, they are a rubber stamp for what the D.A is pitching.

We had a young officer once. Worked for us for about 6 months. Responded to a domestic, started fighting with the aggressor because he failed to comply with orders. Jake took him to the ground, and a few seconds later we heard please I can't breathe, I need help. Jake got up off of him and seconds later a shot rang out. That gunshot came from a 2 inch 357 that the suspect had stuffed in the front of his jeans. That shot entered under Jake's vest and severed his spinal chord...he schits and pisses in a bag, and lives in a wheelchair now.

So, basically, you have no backbone and didn't have the guts to tell the DA that the GJ had reached a decision, therefore you committed a miscarriage of justice...several times over.

And, now the entire system is broken because you're too damned weak to uphold your civic duty?

Quite telling, actually.

I'm sure you sleep very well at night, considering how many people's lives you may have ruined because you're a coward.

That's exactly the type of "crying wolf" scenario that came to mind for me.

interesting -

I'm sure somewhere you feel a sense of pride for showing how big a dick you can be on the internet.

I did my civic duty by being on the grand jury in the first place and voted my conscience - which was following the law as it was written - probably the same approach that this grand jury followed.

You couldn't handle a lawyer "browbeating" you, but you know all about how cops should be handling this giant black convict.

Awesome.

I can remember my time on the grand jury

A junkie showed up at a guys house - the guy was home, minding his own business and the junkie, who didn't have the ability to drive downtown to get his heroin fix, convinced the guy to take him downtown and get him heroin from his supplier (the guy sold heroin but didn't have any)

So he gets him his heroin, the guy and junkie go back to his house, and the guy, the junkie and his wife all shoot up. The next morning the guy and his wife wake up to find the junkie dead on their floor.

And our job on the grand jury was to indict this junkie for murder.

Well we objected almost unanimously to indicting this guy because we felt the junkie was responsible for his own death, so we voted no.

We brought the D.A back into the room and told him and he talked some more to us about how the dealer supplied the heroin and took it upon himself to get heroin for the junkie , to think it over again...so we met again, talked about how were were comfortable with the guy getting indicting for selling heroin but still balked at the murder charge (maybe it was manslaughter, I really can't remember now).

So we bring the D.A. back in and tell him and he just unloads on us, tells us we don't understand the law and we can just indict on intent to sell because that would also mean he was culpable in the junkies death and we were ignoring the law as it was explained to us. I wouldn't call it angry, but clearly he was exercising his power in the room.

So eventually he wore us down and we indicted the guy for all the counts they wanted.

After that, we have maybe 5 or 6 more cases that we didn't really think the charges reflected the actions, but none of us wanted to go thru the browbeating by the D.A. again.

That's why I say unless you have a strong willed foreman or people willing to confront authority, they are a rubber stamp for what the D.A is pitching.

was he crying wolf?

what I know is a man died and was pleading to breath.

I'm not too concerned what the cop contingency on here thinks about what is justified beyond that.

I'm not being a dick. I'm pointing out that though you voted your conscience, you caved and became a coward. When you did that, you committed a miscarriage of justice (several times over, by your own admission). That may well have ruined the lives of many people; you don't know or care, obviously.

Because you didn't have the backbone to do what was right, you think the GJ in this case, and the system in general, lacks the intestinal fortitude to uphold the Constitution as you did.

Personally, I think more highly of the GJ system and our system of justice than you do, and think that the 24 GJ members on that GJ in NYC did as they should have done when weighing all the evidence.

You, didn't. Just because you didn't, doesn't mean the system is broken. The problem then wasn't the system; it was the GJ (yours).

By your own admissions, you're either a coward or an idiot (couldn't understand the law).

What you know, doesn't amount for a cup of warm piss at this point, because you don't know one tiny iota of the actual evidence involved. Even in instances when you did, as you freely admitted, you lacked either the intelligence to know what to do with it, or the courage and conviction to do the right things when you knew and understood.

let me clarify - voting my heart said let the guy go, voting my conscience said follow the law as it was written and took some convincing from the D.A. to do so.

so tell me - as a member on the grand jury - do I follow the law or what I think the law should be?