4 ms·
I'm all for getting rid of absolute immunity, but it's a very bad idea to throw out grand jury secrecy just because of what happened in the Michael Brown and Er
by agwa 12y ago
I'm all for getting rid of absolute immunity, but it's a very bad idea to throw out grand jury secrecy just because of what happened in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. In every other grand jury proceeding, the prosecutor does not sabotage his own presentment, and when the grand jury doesn't indict it's because the prosecutor's evidence is crap, and so the secrecy prevents an innocent person from being smeared. Keep in mind that grand juries are entirely one-sided - the defendant does not have a chance to refute anything the prosecutor says. Get rid of their secrecy and you've just given prosecutors one more way to abuse grand juries.
- SnacksOnAPlane 12y agoBut grand juries almost always indict if the prosecutor wants them to. Look up the statistics.
- agwa 12y agoI'm well aware, but that doesn't change my point. It's still more common for non-cops to not be indicted than it is for prosecutors to sabotage their own presentment so that cops aren't indicted. The non-cops have more to lose, so let's not do something that will harm them just because there were recently two high-profile non-indictments of cops.