Quote:
Originally Posted by pbear19
I am an attorney. I live in St. Louis City and my office is in St. Louis County. I do not practice criminal law, but MANY of my very good friends do. Unanimously, everyone familiar with the St. Louis County system and McCulloch's office thinks the handling of this grand jury was bizarre. I've seen so many comments this morning from friends who practice criminal law locally that they thought McCulloch's announcement speech was in line with that of a defense attorney, and not of a prosecutor.
I try not to step outside my area of expertise, so I defer to my friends who know. And all of my friends and professors think it was weird.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KDCat
I'm local, too. My view on that was that McCulloch didn't want the cop charged, but he needed political cover for not charging him. By handing it off to a grand jury, he could wash his hands of the decision not to charge.
He should have just charged the cop by information, held a preliminary hearing, and tried the thing. The result would have probably been the same and people would less pissed off.
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I think it was weird because they knew they had to try to give enough information to the public to help them understand why the grand jury made the determination they did in hopes of preventing violent and destructive protests. Of course it was not typical. You don't typically have that kind of attention focused on most grand jury decisions. There are rarely press conferences to tell people what a grand jury determined. This was an extreme circumstance.
I don't think people would have been any less pissed off after a jury trial if the result was the same.
From the information I gleaned out of the news conference and other things they've released online, I completely understand why they didn't press charges. Brown's blood in the vehicle, gun shots in the vehicle, the pattern of Brown's blood down the street showing that he turned around and was moving back toward the police car all indicate that the officer felt justifiably threatened, IMO.
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