A Staten Island grand jury chose yesterday not to indict New York Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo for choking Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, to death as Garner repeatedly pleaded "I can't breathe." The cop's chokehold on Garner was caught on video in broad daylight. The coroner concluded that Garner's death was a homicide.
It didn't matter.
A jury of 15 whites and 8 blacks or Hispanics let the accused murderer get off scot free, without a trial. Pantaleo was trying to arrest Garner for selling a single untaxed tobacco cigarette.
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| Videotape of the chokehold that killed Eric Garner |
It takes 12 votes to indict and send a case to trial. A grand jury must determine only whether a crime probably occurred and that the defendant probably was involved in the offense. The grand jury decides whether to send the case to trial, where the accused and the prosecution get an opportunity to present evidence and argue the merits of the case. The verdict requires proof that the offender acted beyond reasonable doubt. The trial is conducted in open court, not in the secrecy of a grand jury room.
Pantaleo, 29, tried to arrest Garner, 43, for selling untaxed cigarettes. Garner resisted, saying there was no basis for an arrest. A struggle ensued. The pair fell to the sidewalk. Pantaleo put his hands on Garner's neck. Garner, a 35-year-old man with asthma, repeatedly told the officer that he could not breathe. The cop continued with the chokehold, evidence that suggested that he was deliberately indifferent to Garner's life. Several officers were present. The grand jury could have indicted Pantaleo on any of several levels of murder and manslaughter.
One man lies dead for cigarettes, and no one is indicted
Pantaleo had many opportunities to back off. After all, the offense was just a quality-of-life offense, not an armed robbery or a shooting. Would it not have been sufficient to issue Garner a warning? Instead he chose to heighten the dispute.
I suppose the grand jury's response to the killing was to be expected. Staten Island is the land of Archie Bunker and Mafia dons. Polls showed that only 41 percent of Staten Island residents supported bringing charges against Pantaleo. In New York City as a whole, 64 percent approved of sending the homicide to trial.
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| Eric Garner and his wife |
Some prosecutors don't even take the effort to do so. That's certainly is the case in the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri. The assistant district attorneys even gave jurors inaccurate legal instructions on what constituted the crime that the police officer faced. Those instructions played a crucial role in the grand jury's decision not to indict Mike Brown.
In general, local district attorneys have a vested interest in letting police off the hook. They depend on campaign contributions from police unions to get them elected and re-elected. One hand washes the other.
It's an evil system.
Government statistics show that 68 percent of the general population is convicted of a crime versus 33 percent of law enforcement officers. Forty-eight percent of people convicted from the general population actually serve jail time. With police officers, only 12 percent go to jail.
What we need, I believe, is to create a special prosecutor, unbeholden to police and police unions, to investigate all cases involving possible crimes against police officers. This independent prosecutor should be given resources to break down the public bias that police officers can do no wrong.
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| Officer Daniel Pantaleo |
Two partial solutions exist.
One is for Police Commissioner William Bratton to fire the cop. Bratton has that right. Chokeholds have been banned within the New York City Police Department since 1993. The videotape clearly shows that Pantaleo violated the procedure.
The second is for Mrs. Garner to file a civil lawsuit for damages caused by the death of her husband. These lawsuits have succeeded in other cases. In October she filed a $75 million notice of claim against the city, the first step in a lawsuit.
In the meantime, the unindicted killer lives comfortably while the widow of his victim struggles to provide for her six children.