Why the Tamir Rice killers walk, along with so many others:
Even with indictments, juries will remain reluctant to convict police officers absent evidence of malice, said Eugene O’Donnell, a former officer and prosecutor who now teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “Tremendous incompetence, the worst kind of training, disregard for people is really not enough,” he said. “You’re going to have to go beyond that because the police are different.”
I get some sympathy out of that for prosecutor McGinty in Cleveland, looking at this Times article about the legal barriers that exist in our states to the prosecution of homicidal police. Yes, it's kind of disgusting the way the charade of the grand jury was staged to make it seem as if he was looking toward the possibility of justice, but there wouldn't have been any in the end in any event. If a killer is a cop, "depraved indifference to human life" isn't an adequate reason to put him in jail. "Give this unfortunate young officer a break," says the law, "he's a piece of shit, but is that a reason to punish him? He's suffering from effluenza."
No comments:
Post a Comment