http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/25/1347320/-The-questions-no-one-asked-St-Louis-prosecutor-Bob-McCulloch?detail=email
Following his long public hand washing and cheerful mocking of witnesses, St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch stood by for a few minutes of questioning. It was a frustratingly brief exchange, during which McCulloch was three times asked the one question that McCulloch had already said he could not answer: what was the actual vote count on the charges before the grand jury.
Thank you, "professional reporters" for wasting this unique opportunity to clear up a few matters.
But there are a few things they could have asked McCulloch. Things that needed to be said in front of a national audience, which you can read below the fold.
First, instead of asking McCulloch the vote breakdown, they might have asked him this:
Question: How many charges was the jury asked to consider, and how many would have needed to vote against any charge to keep it from becoming a "true bill" of indictment?
Answer: Infinite, and four
McCulloch gave the jury no instruction on what charges they should consider. Many sources have said that the jury could have considered first degree murder, second degree murder or various levels of manslaughter. True enough. They might have also considered illegal discharge of a firearm. Or assault. Or more or less anything.
On any charge considered, it would have taken nine votes to bring an indictment. We've been given the racial breakdown of the jury, which certainly suggests one answer to "how did they come to this conclusion," but it's what we'll never be told that's the real clue. With nine white jurors, it's easy to imagine that Wilson might have been protected by a handful of jurors who held onto a racist view of events. However, because of the way things were presented to the jury, confusion on any particular vote may have been generated by people pulling for a greater charge. We can't know, because the exact votes on any charge will never be released. And it's clear that, despite McCulloch's smirking protests about being "fair" this process was anything but normal.
Giving the grand jury no instruction is equivalent to throwing them into the deep end of the pool with no swimming lessons. They had to work it out for themselves. It's not unusual for the prosecutor to not suggest a specific charge, but it's almost unprecedented for the prosecutor to dump all the evidence on the jury and leave them to figure it out for themselves. Almost, unprecedented, but not quite.
Question: How many police officers have been indicted in shooting incidents since Bob McCulloch became prosecutor way back in 1991?
Answer: None
McCulloch is the son of a police officer who was shot in the line of duty. In his 24 years as prosecutor, he has never recommended charges against any police officer. How did that happen? It happened in large part because these cases are not handled like other cases.
Question: Had this been a completely different sort of incident, one in which an officer had been killed, would you have instructed the jury in the same way?
Answer: Oh, hell no.
all presumptive but the answers had they been asked should not have reflected any difference in procedure, with the racial divide in Ferguson is as it exist now police rolling in with tanks, armored vehicle point machine guns and grenade launchers at peaceful threatening to kill them and since 1991 no police were ever guilty under his tenure, well we know they go to the limit to cover up and hire officers with questionable backgrounds from other police forces.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/darren-wilsons-first-job-was-on-a-troubled-police-force-disbanded-by-authorities/2014/08/23/1ac796f0-2a45-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html
my thought is McCulloch should be charged with malfeasance, he was covering his butt bottom line give the Wilson cheerleaders what they want no charge and screw the 67% majority population asking for him just to do his job, they knew he would not the Governor passed the buck to him he passed it to the grand jury so it would be their fault if there was opposition, but he broke protocol at the beginning and set the stage for an already willing to not charge the White murderer of a Black teen that was demonized in death so his killer as he said "he knows he did his job right" would walk free they tried to make it sound like he deserved being shot and killed 12 times.
