Vol. 79/No. 32      September 14, 2015

The bill is one result of the pressure from ongoing protests in New York and elsewhere by fighters against cop brutality. In many cases local grand juries, which meet in secret, have refused to indict cops who killed unarmed people, disproportionately young African-American men, as happened in the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, last year.

The New York bill is being sponsored by Democratic Assemblyman Charles Barron. It’s modeled after similar legislation signed Aug. 11 by California Gov. Jerry Brown.

Millions saw the video on YouTube of Daniel Pantaleo putting a fatal chokehold on Garner. “The whole world saw it except this grand jury,” Barron said at an Aug. 17 news conference at City Hall.

“I think the whole country needs to follow suit,” Gwen Carr, Garner’s mother, said at the press conference.

At least 179 people were killed by on-duty New York Police Department officers over the past 15 years. But under the whitewash grand jury system, widely hated by working people, only three of these deaths led to an indictment, a Dec. 2014 study by the New York Daily News reported. Only one officer who killed someone while on duty has been convicted, and he wasn’t sentenced to jail time.

The Daily News also reported that more than 27 percent of those killed by cops over these years were unarmed and 86 percent were Black or Latino.

Federal investigations of killings by cops for possible civil rights violations haven’t fared much better. It’s been two decades since the federal government last prosecuted such a case against a cop in New York, Norman Siegel, former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told the Daily News.

Public protests against killings by cops have increased pressure on prosecutors to bring charges. Manslaughter charges were filed against Vincent Liang, the cop who killed Akai Gurley in an apartment stairwell in Brooklyn, New York, Nov. 20. Officer Michael Slager, who shot Walter Scott in the back in North Charleston, South Carolina, April 4, was indicted for murder. Six Baltimore cops who were involved in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in April face serious charges, including manslaughter and assault. And University of Cincinnati cop Ray Tensing was charged with murder and manslaughter for the July 19 shooting of Samuel DuBose.

The grand jury setup is by far not the only part of the so-called criminal justice system stacked against workers. While more than 90 percent of felony cases are settled through plea bargaining, in those that do go to a jury trial, prosecutors have significantly reduced the number of African-Americans available from the jury pool through use of the “peremptory challenge,” some studies show. Peremptory challenges give lawyers the ability to dismiss a prospective juror without cause.

A study from the group Reprieve Australia took a look at the number of Black jurors in 332 trials that occurred in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, from 2003 to 2012. “State prosecutors struck Black jurors from jury service at three times the rate they struck jurors who were not Black, reducing the percentage of Black jurors from 35 to 25 percent,” their study found. The adult population of Caddo Parrish is 44.2 percent Black.
 
 
Related articles:
Commemoration of Emmett Till boosts fight against cop brutality
L.A. rally: ‘Jail the cops who killed Ezell Ford’
 
 
 
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