Morning Roar: The Reason Why Cops Are Rarely Indicted, Pot Smuggled From U.S. To Mexico, SF Violent Crime Drops
Who’s hungry for some liberty? Sink your teeth into today’s edition of The Morning Roar and satisfy your appetite!The Reason Why Cops Are Rarely IndictedDid you listen to last week's episode of the Lions of Liberty Podcast, Libertarians In Living Rooms Drinking Liquor Take On Ferguson? If you did have a chance to listen, then you know that Marc Clair, J.B. Lubin, and I discussed, among many other things, why it is it is so rare for a police officer to be indicted by a grand jury.On the show I referenced a Five Thirty Eight article by Ben Casselman that provided a little bit of data to back-up the claim that police officers are almost never indicted by a grand jury. The article also presents some of the possible reasons why grand juries are less likely to indict police officers. The first two reasons are predictable. First, juror bias: jurors have been conditioned to trust cops. Second, prosecutor bias: prosecutors rely on cops to make their cases so they consciously or unconsciously do not present the most compelling case.The third reason the article provided casts a favorable view on cops and prosecutors: prosecutors normally only bring cases where they can get an indictment, but are pressured to bring high-profile police shootings to grand jury even if they don’t have a strong case.This reasoning from Casselman is logical, but it doesn’t factor in past legal opinions that serve as a barometer in these cases. Josh Vorhees at Slate uncovers an important Supreme Court opinion that recognizes a shift in perspective used to judge an officer’s action. According to the Supreme Court ruling in Graham v. Connor, the focus on an officer’s use of force provided by the objectivity of hindsight is not reasonable to be used as an impetus to indict. Instead, the subjective circumstances that could have led the police officer to use force, in the heat of the moment, are the measuring stick the jurors are expected to use to determine if the officer’s actions are reasonable.From Slate:
The lack of serious second-guessing is baked into the system. Our laws give officers broad leeway to use lethal force when they believe their or someone else’s life is in danger. The Supreme Court cemented the scope of that authority in 1989’s Graham v. Connor, a case involving police officers who apparently mistook a diabetic who was behaving erratically due to his low blood sugar for a belligerent drunk. “The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight,” Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the opinion. In short, it’s not whether the officer is objectively correct when he uses force; it’s whether he subjectively believed that he was right in the moment he did. Wilson told the grand jury that he feared his life was in danger during his encounter with Brown. The jurors weren’t tasked with assessing whether Wilson was actually in danger. Rather, they had to surmise whether it was reasonable for him to assume he was in peril. There’s that benefit of the doubt.
I’m certainly not a legal expert, nor have I studied the grand jury documents from the case against Darren Wilson. But based on the evidence I have seen and the fact that police officers are rarely indicted (for all the reasons stated above), it is not surprising in the least that Darren Wilson was not indicted by a grand jury for killing Michael Brown.The ambiguous evidence in this case makes it difficult for a rational person to hold an opinion that favors either the side of Michael Brown or Darren Wilson in this case. There are many clear-cut cases that lend credence to the argument that police officers are given special treatment by the courts (i.e. NYPD Daniel Pantaleo not being indicted for choking Eric Garner to death.)Hopefully this case, emotional and divisive as it has been, can be used to begin to reform the legal system that protects police officers from facing justice when they break the law.It’s not magic that has led to a society where police officers are held up above the rest of society. If you’re looking for someone to blame, start by taking a long look into the mirror. The system of justice is a reflection of the values held by those it is meant to protect.DEA Claims Pot Is Being Smuggled From US To MexicoBlack markets are gonna do, what black markets gonna do…The DEA spent loads of money trying to prevent the flow of marijuana from Mexico into the U.S., now according to sources within the DEA the ganja is now flowing in the opposite directions.Ben Swann’s website has the scoop:
Lawrence Payne, a spokesman for the DEA, told U.S. News that the majority of the trafficked marijuana is “being grown and obtained in states that have relaxed their marijuana laws, such as Colorado.”Payne said that although they believed the trafficked marijuana is “much higher quality and more expensive for the purpose of smuggling back into Mexico for sale and distribution,” they have not been able to gauge the level of the trafficking.“Unfortunately, I don’t have any specific information or numbers to quantify other than to say we know that it’s happening,” said Payne. “It’s too early to really know the level or scale of the trafficking southward.“
There’s a simple solution to this problem. Decriminalize the growing and distribution of marijuana plants in the United States (Editor's note: And Mexico too!) The technology and funding allocated to the medical and recreational use of cannabis in the U.S. would soon make the plant a profitable export. Not that it isn’t already a profitable export on the black market, but it is a heck of a lot safer for all parties involved if transactions are allowed to happen in the open and are not forced into the back alleys of society.For more on the economics of the Drug War check out an oldie but a goodie episode of the Lions of Liberty Podcast with Dr. Mark Thornton.San Fran Violent Crime Drops As Prosecution Of Drug Dealers StopsSpeaking of the War on Drugs, what do you think has happened in the city of San Francisco since prosecution of drug dealers has come to a halt?If you guessed a drop in crime, then you win! Violent crime rates have gone down significantly. Check out the video below from Reason TV to learn the reasons why San Francisco police chief Greg Suhr has chosen this path.The Morning Roar every weekday Monday-Friday right here at Lions of Liberty!The Lions of Liberty are on Twitter, Facebook & Google+Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!
