Do you think the justice department will pursue charges?
I certainly hope so
The Obama Justice Dept pursued charges in the Trayvon Martin case and Mike Brown...
Federal civil rights
Because of the Constitution’s protection against
double jeopardy, which prevents anyone from being charged twice for the same crime, people aren’t usually prosecuted more than once for a single incident. But because U.S. law considers the states and the federal government to be
legally independent jurisdictions, the Justice Department can indict an officer who has previously been charged under state law, even if he was acquitted.
When excessive force prosecutions against police officers don’t result in a conviction at the state level, the local U.S. attorney’s office may indict the officers for violating a person’s civil rights. This happened most notably in 1991 in the case of Rodney King, the black motorist who was beaten by Los Angeles police officers, and recently after the South Carolina mistrial of police officer Michael Slager, for shooting Walter Scott, another unarmed black man, in the back.
But the type of proof needed to bring a federal civil rights case is much more demanding than for a state criminal case. While there are numerous state charges that might be brought against an officer who causes the death of a civilian, from murder to manslaughter to reckless endangerment to assault, there is only one route for a civil rights case.
In those cases, prosecutors must prove that officers used excessive force against a person, generally defined as force that was clearly unreasonable in the circumstances. In addition, they have to prove that the officer’s actions were “willful.”
And willfulness is “
the highest standard of intent imposed by law,” as the U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, Richard P. Donoghue, said in his public statement about Pantaleo. “An officer’s mistake, fear, misperception or even poor judgment does not constitute willful conduct under federal criminal civil rights law.”
A narrow path
Many news outlets reported that the decision to close the Garner case happened once U.S. Attorney General William Barr
ordered the case dropped, overruling the Civil Rights Division
in his own department.
Activists have questioned Barr’s
civil rights record, noting that while serving as President George H.W. Bush’s attorney general, Barr released a report titled “
The Case for More Incarceration.” Barr’s predecessor, Jeff Sessions,
quashed the Justice Department’s attempts to reform policing.
Still, I’m not sure the outcome would have been different with someone else in the White House.
In fact, disagreements on whether the case could be successfully prosecuted in federal court also snarled proceedings
during the Obama administration. And there was only ever a narrow path to prosecution.
The US legal system often gives the police the benefit of the doubt.
theconversation.com
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