After George Zimmerman’s controversial acquittal, one of the jurors expressed her opinion in a TV interview that he was “guilty of murder,” but said the jury’s hands were tied by the instructions they were given.
More recently, we’re seeing a pattern of grand juries failing to indict cops who committed questionable killings of civilians. Not because grand jurors are stupid or perverse, but because of a lax legal standard for holding cops criminally liable for excessive use of force. It’s the standards, not the grand jury system, that need changing.
Every police department has, or is supposed to have, a use of force (UOF) policy. Every police officer is, or should be, trained in this policy. It goes without saying that UOF policies should be reasonable and respect the rights of citizens. The question is what happens when a police officer doesn’t adhere to his department’s UOF policy and someone is killed or injured as a result.
In many cases, what happens is prosecutors don’t prosecute, grand juries don’t indict, and police unions block internal discipline. This has resulted in an epidemic of police killings of unarmed citizens all across America. That needs to stop.
The standards should be revised so that police officers who use deadly force will face criminal sanctions if they are found to have deviated from laws and policies regulating police use of force. Those policies should be clear-cut and strictly enforced. It should not be up to the police or to police-friendly prosecuting attorneys to decide whether to enforce them. Every police killing should go to a grand jury, and the courts should appoint a special prosecutor for every such grand jury proceeding. And grand juries should be instructed to return an indictment unless the officer fully complied with the UOF laws and policies of his jurisdiction.
The fundamental error of the current system is it gives the benefit of doubt to the police officer. That’s backwards. The legal system should give the benefit of doubt to the person whose life was taken, and require the police to justify every taking of life. There should be a strong presumption that people are entitled to keep their lives, unless the police can show the taking of life was necessary, and it was done in full compliance with restrictive UOF policies that are designed to preserve life and authorize the taking of life only as a necessary last resort.
If police officers know they’ll face criminal charges if they violate their department’s UOF policy, they’ll be much less likely to take liberties with that policy.