Eric Garner death: UN fears over no-charge jury decisions

[Lite Beer]

Eric Garner death: UN fears over no-charge jury decisions

UN human rights experts have expressed "legitimate concerns" about US juries failing to charge policemen involved in the deaths of two black civilians.

It is part of a broader "pattern of impunity" concerning minority victims, the UN said in a statement.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets in protest over the deaths of two black men at the hands of white officers in recent months.

Grand juries in Missouri and New York failed to charge either officer.

Read More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30350702

-- BBC 2014-12-05

[Ulysses G.]

Neither of these incidents happened because of race. They happened because criminals attacked a police officer or were resisting arrest.

The Grand Jury decision in Ferguson was the correct one. In fact, it should have never been brought to a Grand Jury as the preponderance of evidence supported the police officer's version of events.

What happened in NYC is a different story. There were grounds for charging the police with something like criminally negligent homicide, although there is a good chance that they would have been acquitted at trial. IMO, they should have been charged, although I do not think that they meant for this guy to die.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Ulysses G.

[fresnoboy]

The U.N. is a do nothing organisation and should pay attention to some of the things for which it has responsibility, and has failed.

[Ulysses G.]

Good point!

[Credo]

This is a little bit vague. Some "UN Human Rights experts"; I wonder who these particular experts are? What exactly are their 'legitimate concerns'?

It does appear that the police could use a little more training on how to deal with offenders, especially those who are not suspected of violent crimes.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Credo

[NeverSure]

What is a "UN" and why don't they come to my house and try to tell me what to do? Do they own the world now, this "UN?"

[connda]

When jury decisions are determined by mobs, then you can kiss the freedom and democracy goodbye, and welcome anarchy and totalitarianism.

[connda]

This is being spun into a race issue. What is not being addressed is the general heavy-handedness of Western police that has evolved over the last few decades. "Protect and serve" has been replaced with "Intimidate then throttle". When militarized cops have to empty their semi-automatic handguns containing 17 rounds at a suspect (black, white, or brown) that may or may not have a weapon, my opinion is that they have a major deficit in their training. I've seen too many instances here in Thailand where the police will "talk a subject down" during an armed confrontation to the point where the subject surrenders their weapon and are lead away by police without a violence confrontation. In the US the same situation would be handled by the cops by shooting a hail of bullets first, dog-piling the bullet ridden prep, then allow them to bleed out while they ascertain what happened. And this does happen to individuals regardless of their skin color. However, if it was a black officer shooting a black, white, or brown suspect, it would never make the news. I'm not saying that there are not good, well-trained cops out there. There are. But there are also some real brutes too. Every time you draw your gun, shoot, and miss your target, you're putting an innocent by-stander at risk of being shot. Anyone with sufficient, well-rounded gun training understands this.

Edited December 6, 2014 by connda

[rickirs]

Regardless of race it does seem a perversion for a prosecutor to use the grand jury to determine whether to indicte a police officer. Some call it "highjacking" a grand jury.

Grand juries are used to support prosecutions. Grand juries do not pick cases to decide. A case is presented solely by the prosecutor along with evidence the prosecutor believes is relevant to his argument for prosecution. A defendent has no right to present evidence before a GJ - its is not a trial jury. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in only 11 of them. And those eleven may have had something unique, ie., police as the defendent.

A prosecutor's job is not to argue for innocence. Yet in both recent GJ's that's what the prosecution essentially did, allowing the "defendents" to testify, and the GJ ruled no indictment. There is a suble conflict of interest between the prosecution and police - they work with the police week in and week out as a prosecutorial team because it's the arrest of the defendent by police that gets the case to the prosecutor. If there are problems with a successful conviction, the prosecutor assists the police in refining evidence needs.

But the GJ concurrence for indictment is not required by the prosecutor to indict a defendent. In both cases the prosecutor could have indicted the police officers immediately. So cfailure of the US GJ system to indict police officers does seem to deserve UN criticism, albeit the US President, USCongress, and State governments are already looking at possible changes to the system.

[Suradit69]

Neither of these incidents happened because of race. They happened because criminals attacked a police officer or were resisting arrest.

The Grand Jury decision in Ferguson was the correct one. In fact, it should have never been brought to a Grand Jury as the preponderance of evidence supported the police officer's version of events.

What happened in NYC is a different story. There were grounds for charging the police with something like criminally negligent homicide, although there is a good chance that they would have been acquitted at trial. IMO, they should have been charged, although I do not think that they meant for this guy to die.

You seem to have missed the point and race is certainly a factor. If some black policeman shot some white kid in Potomac Manors, Maryland or Kenilworth, Illinois, do you really think that legal proceedings would follow the same course and have the same result?

Police violence against racial minorities and those at the bottom of the economic chain is far more likely than against whites and wealthy people more generally because the police know they can ultimately get away with it if the victim is a marginal person.

Chapter 563 of the Missouri Revised Statutes grants a lot of discretion to officers of the law to wield deadly force, to the horror of many observers swooping in to the Ferguson story. The statute authorizes deadly force “in effecting an arrest or in preventing an escape from custody” if the officer “reasonably believes” it is necessary in order to “to effect the arrest and also reasonably believes that the person to be arrested has committed or attempted to commit a felony…or may otherwise endanger life or inflict serious physical injury unless arrested without delay.”

"if the officer “reasonably believes” it is necessary"

That's not much of a hurdle, but it could easily be interpreted as "if the officer is scared sh__less, is poorly trained and thinks he can get away with it," then it's OK if the deceased is not someone that matters.

In such cases arguing about following the letter of the law is ridiculous. It's not the law that matters. It's who the law is used for or against that makes a difference. "Justice" is rarely blind in the US

Edited December 6, 2014 by Suradit69

[Ulysses G.]

"If some black policeman shot some white kid in Potomac Manors, Maryland or Kenilworth, Illinois, do you really think that legal proceedings would follow the same course and have the same result?"

If a white kid attacked a police officer and there was evidence that he had been involved in a violent robbery moments earlier, I don't think it would have gone before a Grand Jury OR been prosecuted at all. IMO, race worked against the policeman in Ferguson.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Ulysses G.

[connda]

Regardless of race it does seem a perversion for a prosecutor to use the grand jury to determine whether to indicte a police officer. Some call it "highjacking" a grand jury.

Grand juries are used to support prosecutions. Grand juries do not pick cases to decide. A case is presented solely by the prosecutor along with evidence the prosecutor believes is relevant to his argument for prosecution. A defendent has no right to present evidence before a GJ - its is not a trial jury. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in only 11 of them. And those eleven may have had something unique, ie., police as the defendent.

A prosecutor's job is not to argue for innocence. Yet in both recent GJ's that's what the prosecution essentially did, allowing the "defendents" to testify, and the GJ ruled no indictment. There is a suble conflict of interest between the prosecution and police - they work with the police week in and week out as a prosecutorial team because it's the arrest of the defendent by police that gets the case to the prosecutor. If there are problems with a successful conviction, the prosecutor assists the police in refining evidence needs.

But the GJ concurrence for indictment is not required by the prosecutor to indict a defendent. In both cases the prosecutor could have indicted the police officers immediately. So cfailure of the US GJ system to indict police officers does seem to deserve UN criticism, albeit the US President, USCongress, and State governments are already looking at possible changes to the system.

Well stated. I agree too.

[sletraveler]

Regardless of race it does seem a perversion for a prosecutor to use the grand jury to determine whether to indicte a police officer. Some call it "highjacking" a grand jury.

Grand juries are used to support prosecutions. Grand juries do not pick cases to decide. A case is presented solely by the prosecutor along with evidence the prosecutor believes is relevant to his argument for prosecution. A defendent has no right to present evidence before a GJ - its is not a trial jury. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in only 11 of them. And those eleven may have had something unique, ie., police as the defendent.

A prosecutor's job is not to argue for innocence. Yet in both recent GJ's that's what the prosecution essentially did, allowing the "defendents" to testify, and the GJ ruled no indictment. There is a suble conflict of interest between the prosecution and police - they work with the police week in and week out as a prosecutorial team because it's the arrest of the defendent by police that gets the case to the prosecutor. If there are problems with a successful conviction, the prosecutor assists the police in refining evidence needs.

But the GJ concurrence for indictment is not required by the prosecutor to indict a defendent. In both cases the prosecutor could have indicted the police officers immediately. So cfailure of the US GJ system to indict police officers does seem to deserve UN criticism, albeit the US President, USCongress, and State governments are already looking at possible changes to the system.

I think it is NOT a subtle conflict of interest but an egregious one. 99% of Federal GJ's return indictments. These two , hmmm no such luck. Apart from these two high profile cases, there is a steady flow of news reports where cops have gunned down numerous individuals without sufficient grounds. Being 12 and handling a new air rifle in a department store should not warrant being shot dead. Yet similar incidents happen over and over again.

Read the statistics, police work is not a particularity dangerous job contrary to popular belief. There are just too many thugs with badges.

[arjunadawn]

Regardless of race it does seem a perversion for a prosecutor to use the grand jury to determine whether to indicte a police officer. Some call it "highjacking" a grand jury.

Grand juries are used to support prosecutions. Grand juries do not pick cases to decide. A case is presented solely by the prosecutor along with evidence the prosecutor believes is relevant to his argument for prosecution. A defendent has no right to present evidence before a GJ - its is not a trial jury. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in only 11 of them. And those eleven may have had something unique, ie., police as the defendent.

A prosecutor's job is not to argue for innocence. Yet in both recent GJ's that's what the prosecution essentially did, allowing the "defendents" to testify, and the GJ ruled no indictment. There is a suble conflict of interest between the prosecution and police - they work with the police week in and week out as a prosecutorial team because it's the arrest of the defendent by police that gets the case to the prosecutor. If there are problems with a successful conviction, the prosecutor assists the police in refining evidence needs.

But the GJ concurrence for indictment is not required by the prosecutor to indict a defendent. In both cases the prosecutor could have indicted the police officers immediately. So cfailure of the US GJ system to indict police officers does seem to deserve UN criticism, albeit the US President, USCongress, and State governments are already looking at possible changes to the system.

Great post, bad conclusion. The Grand Jury system has been a cornerstone of common law for ages. It is not perfect but in any imaginable scenario where any apparatchik from the UN could design a legal system, it would invariably suck! There are some bedrock principles underlying the common law setup and the US has for the most part tried to create a system where the greatest good is served for the greatest amount of people, and also allowing nullification and participation of the community involved, by the GJ system. Your points are valid; however, I have never seen even one instance where a fool from elsewhere in the world, believing the Rights devolve from the State, has a better arrangement- the UN. I, for one, abhor the UN.

[chuckd]

I think it is NOT a subtle conflict of interest but an egregious one. 99% of Federal GJ's return indictments. These two , hmmm no such luck. Apart from these two high profile cases, there is a steady flow of news reports where cops have gunned down numerous individuals without sufficient grounds. Being 12 and handling a new air rifle in a department store should not warrant being shot dead. Yet similar incidents happen over and over again.

Read the statistics, police work is not a particularity dangerous job contrary to popular belief. There are just too many thugs with badges.

"I think it is NOT a subtle conflict of interest but an egregious one. 99% of Federal GJ's return indictments. These two , hmmm no such luck"

Just a minor point, both the Ferguson and NY grand juries were local grand juries, not federal.

[cup-O-coffee]

I am quite certain that this is not even worth losing sleep over. The UN? Oh brother.

[arjunadawn]

Post #14 is a post by rickirs. I inadvertently quoted and posted a response but only his post posted. Those were not my words, they were his. I made an error.

I wholly object to any type of UN oversight, or if it acts on its own, any type of legitimacy in even noting their comments or concerns. With regard to the UN and their charter all rights derive from the State and in this regard, it is regressive. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights were framed with a very clear understanding that they could have just stated this right, or that right. What is different is the irrevocable nature of the US Bill of Rights as declared as the natural inheritance of man, with or without there existing government. Even a cursory nod to the cesspool that is the (antagonistic-to-America) UN gives credence to a supranational organization that is inherently antithetical to US interests.

The US common law and related jurisprudence based on the Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta and other watershed events, note the relationship of Man to Natural Rights, irrespective of the State, law, license, or revoking. While it can be argued, and even done so well, that the Grand Jury system seems to have failed here, the GJ system is by and large the greatest tool for common people to participate in the judicial aspects of their society. When sitting, GJs have great power and can both recommend indictment, or not. Grand Juries and Juries in America will not always please the larger population but they are the best device for common... law- they are "the people."

Note: I strongly disagree with a decision not to indict this cop. I have rarely seen such a clear and evident case of police brutality. Not only is the cop guilty but the others are guilty of withholding medical intervention, negligence, and complicity to murder. An idiot could see the obese man did not have diaphragm effort with his hands behind his back. Without question this placed an oxygen demand on the heart that led to his death.

[cookee68]

Lets be honest, if it read 2 white men shot by 2 black police officers in America, people would say ow what did they do and that would be it, its a reason to go on the streets and protest as a racist thing, no matter how you look at it, and in the process loot a few shops on the way like they did in England, when the black drug dealer was shot, protest and loot many shops, and shops that were owned by black people, mainly Pakistani people, so go ahead put your spin on it now, as I have put mine

[cookee68]

"If some black policeman shot some white kid in Potomac Manors, Maryland or Kenilworth, Illinois, do you really think that legal proceedings would follow the same course and have the same result?"

If a white kid attacked a police officer and there was evidence that he had been involved in a violent robbery moments earlier, I don't think it would have gone before a Grand Jury OR been prosecuted at all. IMO, race worked against the policeman in Ferguson.

My thoughts too

[Scott]

An off-topic post has been removed.

[JemJem]

Whether or not the race factor was involved, once again, it is the 'criminals in uniforms' who are at the center of attraction. Surprise surprise.

Nothing to do with the US only; it is frickin' same almost everywhere. Sadly, the system protects these criminals.