North Carolina policeman won't face retrial in fatal shooting of black man
Source: Reuters
North Carolina prosecutors said on Friday they have decided against seeking a retrial for Randall Kerrick, a white police officer whose manslaughter trial in the killing of an unarmed black man ended in a hung jury last week.
The North Carolina Attorney Generals office said it would move to dismiss the case after a jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict, with eight of the 12 panelists favored acquittal.
In consideration of the jurors' comments, the evidence available to the state, and our background in criminal trials, it is our prosecutors' unanimous belief a retrial will not yield a different result, Senior Deputy Attorney General Robert Montgomery wrote to District Attorney Andrew Murray.
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Kerrick, 29, shot and killed 24-year-old Jonathan Ferrell in the early morning hours of Sept. 14, 2013. Ferrell, a former college football player, had wrecked his car and sought help from a nearby home, but the woman who lived there feared a home invasion and called 911.
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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/28/us-usa-police-north-carolina-idUSKCN0QX25020150828
US | Fri Aug 28, 2015 1:36pm EDT
CHARLOTTE, N.C. | BY GREG LACOUR
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)What a crappy town!
B2G
(9,766 posts)AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)One less troubled by TV evangelists and dueling bankers....
but certainly has its problems.... Greensboro.
I live on the coast now, on Topsail Is.
Come on down for a weekend at the beach!
B2G
(9,766 posts)It's beautiful.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Criticism of A does not imply praise of B.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)and a black man was accused of shooting a cop, he would re-tried until they got a guilty verdict.
surrealAmerican
(11,340 posts)We have two different standards of justice here. Wasn't our constitution supposed to keep that from happening?
Supersedeas
(20,630 posts)GitRDun
(1,846 posts)These kinds of verdicts are exactly what creates a climate where some police feel very comfortable shooting first and asking questions later.
We have lost our right to be upset when a BLM group blocks a road we're driving on, takes a mic at a political rally...there is no moral high ground for us.
I see these articles and I'm enraged...yet my anger is just a drop of water behind the Hoover dam full of racist acts committed against POC in this country in the name of "the law".
christx30
(6,241 posts)the police. It furthers the divide between the cops and the people they protect. The DAs need to stop protecting the police. They need to do their jobs and get the bad cops out of there.
And the good cops need to stop protecting the bad ones.
Igel
(35,197 posts)Or maybe the DA should stack the jury to try to get the verdict that the public wants?
8-4 deadlock in favor of acquittal. If the DA thinks he did the best he (or his proxy) could, if there's no additional evidence, then it's unethical to continue to prosecute. It punishes a person who's presumed innocent with state resources, which usually are greater than the individual's; it wastes state executive resources (which are still limited) with a prosecution conducted to placate those who don't or won't presume innocence when there are others to prosecute and convict or exculpate. And it helps to clog an already clogged judiciary with what would be a pre-failed case, with the effect of denying somebody else a right to a "speedy trial." (Which is already a joke in the US system in most places.)
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Rose Siding
(32,623 posts)damn