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Officer Not Charged In Michael Brown Shooting
An anonymous reader writes: A grand jury in Missouri has decided there is no probable cause to charge police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown. "A grand jury of nine whites and three blacks had been meeting weekly since Aug. 20 to consider evidence. At least nine votes would have been required to indict Wilson. The Justice Department is conducting an investigation into possible civil rights violations that could result in federal charges." Government officials and Brown's family are urging calm in Ferguson after the contentious protests that followed Brown's death.
That's all well-established by the evidence as well. The coroners' reports (there were multiple) all indicate that he was shot in the front, backing the officer's (and multiple eye-witness's) testimony that Brown turned and began charging at the officer.
Keep in mind that, for good legal and practical reasons, police officers have a +1 on application-of-force laws. If this statement doesn't make sense to you, you lack the basic understanding of the law to even participate in this argument, or arguably function in society, but I'll break it down for you anyways:
This varies a little by state, but basically the law breaks down actions into the 3 basic categories: not-force, force, and dead force. Not-force is the normal state affairs. Most actions, including simple things like swearing at someone or disagreeing with them in very heated language, are still not-force. Certain actions such as punching another person in the gut, screaming threatening statements at another person's face, or even swinging a blunt weapon at the body of an able-bodied, equal adversary qualify as "Force" on this scale. More extreme actions such as firing a firearm at someone (even firing to miss as a "warning"), swinging a blunt weapon at someone's head, swinging a blunt weapon at the body in some cases (e.g. a frail old person or child who's likely to be critically injured), or any other more-obvious form of attempted murder are labeled as "Deadly Force".
In affairs between two private citizens, whoever first escalates to a higher level on the continuum of force is the one responsible for the outcome. If I'm in a confrontation with someone that's clearly not-force on both sides, and the other guys uses Force, he's in the wrong and responsible for the damage that may ensue to either of us at that point (so long as I only retaliate, at most, with Force as well). Regardless of who escalates the situation to Force, if either of us escalates to Deadly Force, that person is legally the cause of and responsible for the even more-serious fallout that may ensue from that point forward.
Police officer are, in almost all jurisdictions, granted an automatic legal +1 on the continuum of force in order to do their job of enforcing the law and keeping the peace. If you think it through, it's not reasonable for them to do their jobs and maintain order and control in situations without this provision. As a consequence of this +1 legal grant, an officer always has the discretion to use Force immediately without having to provide any legal justification regarding tit-for-tat (although if abused, that can certainly lead to professional consequences). A police officer can, for example, punch you in the gut at will (assuming that's not a deadly action towards you due to physical condition), and suffer no direct legal consequence, whereas for a private citizen this is the unjustified application of Force and results in potential charges of Assault.
Similarly, if a private citizen applies Force to a police officer, the police officer is immediately legally free to respond with Deadly Force. If I punch you and you shoot me in response, you're at fault for shooting me. If I punch a cop and the cop shoots me in response, the cop is justified. That's his +1 right on the continuum of force. It's the only way he can do his job. We may disagree on whether it's a good job to be doing, but those are the facts of the matter. Unless your stance is the abolishment of law enforcement, you have to accept that they need these +1 powers to do their job effectively. That also means that, as a citizen, you need to be aware of this and *not fucking assault police officers, because that can and often will legally lead to the loss of your life*. Michael Brown clearly assaulted an officer, and that's pretty much the end of the legal story here.