Guestus Aurelius wrote:Before BLM formally started, there was the killing of Trayvon Martin also. Opinions varied here. My take was that George Zimmerman should have been tried and convicted of something, but that the prosecutors seriously overreached in charging him with murder and maybe even manslaughter. I read the jury instructions, and it seems to me that the jury got it right. The prosecution had to prove malicious intent beyond a shadow of a doubt (crimes of negligence weren't on the table). And yet, when I shared these views with my own (SJW) sister, she actually called me a racist. For agreeing with her that Zimmerman deserved to go to prison, but blaming the prosecution for fucking up instead of blaming the jury.
I'll already had the same conversation, triggered by Freddie Gray failures. Incompetent and/or overly-political prosecutors are a serious problem, especially when they are elected officials. You can predict pretty well what's going to happen by the press conference when someone is charged. Read what Dershowitz has written about Angela Corey (the Zimmerman prosecutor). Some of the same is already being written of Marilyn Mosby (the Baltimore DA). And then there was OJ.
Yes, you can argue that part of the job of a prosecutor is to convince the public that the guilty will be punished (to prevent unrest). But that argument can also be used to justify even more anger against the DAs who over-charge and then fail, as this often causes even more unrest.
You can also argue that over-charging is a tactic, designed to get a plea when you might get nothing if you go to trial. I've seen people argue that Angela Corey was "conditioned" to do this with Zimmerman, because her one previous high-profile case was one where she bluffed an over-charge against a minor and it worked: the kid's lawyer convinced to kid to plead. But even if you allow for this tactic (which I would argue is unethical and possibly illegal), you need to read the situation correctly and almost anyone could tell that Zimmerman wasn't going to plead.