Comment on No criminal charges over British woman shot in US
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 3 weeks agoOpening paragraph:
Within weeks of each other in 2014, a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, and another in Staten Island, New York, both declined to indict police officers in the deaths of unarmed black men: Ferguson’s eighteen-year-old Michael Brown and New York’s forty-three-year-old Eric Garner.Nationwide protests involving thousands erupted in the wake of the grand juries’ decisions. The protests fostered widespread criticism of the institution of the grand jury, prompting calls for its abolition as part of broader criminal justice reform. But federal and state grand juries have long been the subject of immense criticism from scholars, defense attorneys, and activists.The recent controversies merely drew public attention to flaws in the grand jury system that had been there all along.
curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I’d personally say cops, prosecutors going for the easy win, the structure around plea bargains, judges made by selection, judges elected with no knowledge or experience required, etc, play far bigger roles in the problems with the system of justice, but sure.
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
This is wrong and it’s what I responded to.
A grand jury refusing to indict might mean the evidence wasn’t sufficient or it might mean the prosecutor didn’t really want an indictment.
Personally I’d say the issue with the US justice system is that it’s a system full of problems and Americans seem to think ranking them is more important than addressing all of them.
None of these problems has a “bigger role” than the others because if you fix one the system is still broken. This is just one representation of the endemic issues within the US system of government.
curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
“Don’t fix anything because so much is broken” and “All problems are of the same importance” are not, and will never be, philosophies I subscribe to.
You do you bud.
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
I didn’t say “don’t fix anything because so much is broken” so it seems like you do subscribe to it since you brought it up.
I’m just trying to keep up with you moving the goalposts. First it was “grand juries aren’t remotely the problematic part” to “they’re not the biggest problem”.
You asked why I commented originally, I explained, then refuted you with a source. Don’t get mad at me for your own spurious claim.