re: All these "libertarians"

I'm for less government.

If the store clerk had shot Mike Brown then there wouldn't be a need for the government employee to do it.

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I'm for less government.

If the store clerk had shot Mike Brown then there wouldn't be a need for the government employee to do it.

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You are aware that video from the store shows Brown paying for his goods, right? And the store clerk said the thief was not Brown, right?

Does Fox News really not report this stuff?

I'm just saddened by the whole sordid mess in ways that are admittedly contradictory and too numerous to list.

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frick that noise. Why is there "no doubt" that's the "only reason"?

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Grand juries nearly always decide to indict.

Or at least, they nearly always do so in cases that don’t involve police officers.

Former New York state Chief Judge Sol Wachtler famously remarked that a prosecutor could persuade a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” The data suggests he was barely exaggerating: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.

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Cases involving police shootings, however, appear to be an exception. As my colleague Reuben Fischer-Baum has written, we don’t have good data on officer-involved killings. But newspaper accounts suggest, grand juries frequently decline to indict law-enforcement officials. A recent Houston Chronicle investigation found that “police have been nearly immune from criminal charges in shootings” in Houston and other large cities in recent years. In Harris County, Texas, for example, grand juries haven’t indicted a Houston police officer since 2004; in Dallas, grand juries reviewed 81 shootings between 2008 and 2012 and returned just one indictment. Separate research by Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip Stinson has found that officers are rarely charged in on-duty killings, although it didn’t look at grand jury indictments specifically.

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LINK /

I'm libertarian as they come and I think this was a complete injustice. Officer certainly should have been indicted.

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And how do "libertarians" think that the legitimacy of these circumstances should be determined?

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By the rule of law, of course.

Libertarians believe in Courts, Prosecutors, Defense Counsel, Grand Juries, Indictments (or lack thereof).

None of these are inconsistent with being a Libertarian.


Some act occurs
Case presented to GJ
GJ returns decision on Law
Citizenry debates and modifies Law (if so moved)


ETA: Libertarians would not be for a law against selling "looseys" in the first place. So, the 'chokehold' one would have been a non-starter

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Are you actually denying that cop cases are "measurably handled differently" at grand jury??

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Are you actually that stupid?

Cops have a job. Part of which is to protect citizens against violent criminals - which requires the lawful use of force sometimes.

How could they not be "handled differently" at GJ.

BTW - not all violent criminals are armed.

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In the NYC case, you only needed 12 out of 25 on the GJ

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12 out of 23.

I do appreciate the attempt at providing some evidence, and I typically like Ben Casselman. I saw this article when it came it and it is definitely one of his poorer jobs.

The fact that police cases have lower rates of indictments is not REMOTELY convincing for what you've said about the case of Michael Brown. In fact, this isn't even very good evidence supporting your other, more general, claim about cop cases being handled differently.

The constraints on justified, legal force for a police officer are far less restrictive than they are for non-cops.

The null has to be that this fact, alongside the considerations of situational ambiguity and judgment required, accounts for the difference in indictment rates. Not some sort of corruption.

Better evidence- far better- is required to conclude that laws and standards of evidence are being applied differently (after taking into account these varying constraints), as you allege. The laws are in fact different. Merely comparing indictment rates with no other controls doesn't tell you shite.

Your evidence isn't strong enough to support your claims as stated. Then again, the OP post just looks like a pure troll to begin with.

And btw, the headline of that 538 article is contradicted by the very data and reports they cite!