Indict a Ham sandwich but not a cop

[OldDog]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

What is the answer to this? In our criminal justice system, you are presumed innocent unless there is strong evidence that shows you are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

When a police officer kills someone and the officer says that he feared for his life, and there is no evidence disputing the officer's testimony, how can you find him guilty? How can you even find probable cause to put him on trial?

I have to agree. While the headline Indicting a Police Officer Is Uncommon Occurrence might lead one to believe that the piece is going to be a scathing indictment of the justice system, the article actually gives examples of officers who were indicted, and gives good reasons why so many aren't.

Philip Matthew Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who has been studying a database of 10,000 police arrests for various types of misconduct, said judges and juries are perfectly willing to throw the book at an officer ? if they did something that went beyond their official duties, like robbing a drug dealer or using the authority of their badge to settle a personal score.

"If the jury is sitting there thinking, 'Oh my God. A split-second decision like that? What would I have done? Would I have shot the guy?' you're not going to get an indictment," he said.

Second-guessing an officer's judgment can get even harder if there are conflicting accounts about what happened. That was the case in the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old shot to death in Ferguson, Missouri.