People are more interested in scoring political points and getting free electronics. A review of the evidence in order to form a reasoned opinion sounds too much like work.
Thanks for posting the link though.
There are over 6,000 pages of evidence released to the public now. All I'm asking is that unless you have reviewed it all (not you personally, but anyone), at least be open to the idea that perhaps your opinion of what transpired is based on incomplete and media-manipulated information. And you're right, both sides just want to use this to prove their political points, without regard for the truth.
Interesting. The grand jury is not there to decide whether or not someone is innocent or guilty. They are judging whether or not there is enough evidence or a case to be made such that it should go to trial.
When I was on a grand jury there were 21 of us, a yes vote by 18 people was required to send it on to trial. Of all of the cases presented to us only one did not reach the 18 vote (I voted against many drug related crimes). The only case that did not get the 18 votes was when the attorney general actually said "I don't feel confident about this one, I think I should probably go back and rework this case before bringing it forward again", basically telling us to vote against it.
The thing is, the attorney general can come back and present the case later to another grand jury. This is not a double jeopardy thing. And when it comes to the grand jury, the attorney general basically decides whether it should go to trial or not.
With 6000 pages of evidence, I would have ruled that there was enough evidence to have a trial. It is not up to the grand jury to decide guilt, just if it is worth the taxpayer money necessary to find out.
Yes, the grand jury is not a trial to determine guilt, just a procedure to determine if a trial should be had. The thing is, the bar is incredibly low to indict because the important question of guilt or innocence is determined by a trial. Fivethirtyeight.com published a statistic that shows just how low the bar is:
in 2010, US attorneys prosecuted 162,000 cases, and only 11 times did a grand jury NOT return an indictment. These things are a slam dunk, so much so that if a grand jury does not return an indictment, you really have to wonder if the prosecutor didn't want them to.
Fivethirtyeight's article is really worth reading, but take it in context:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-michael-brown-indictment-darren-wilson/Also, I'm loathe to quote MSNBC or Fox News because of how blatantly partisan they are, but MSNBC's legal expert has a valid point about how the St. Louis County prosecutor did not Officer Wilson on cross examination, and his testimony was rife with inconsistencies that should have been explored if the prosecutor was interested at all in taking this case seriously. (read the tweets here:
http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/25/7285265/darren-wilson-grand-jury)
These two things together are starting to make me think that the prosecutor wasn't interested in getting an indictment, he was prosecuting this case out of political necessity. Perhaps that's why he did such a poor job. Indictments are easy. Either he's completely incompetent or he didn't want an indictment. Not sure that one is better than the other.
