dredmorbius
today at 1:57 PM
This isn't jury nullification which occurs during a criminal trial, and for which US Constitutional double-jeopardy protections mean that no further trial for the same offence may be brought.
This is a grand jury, which has refused to bring an indictment. There is no double-jeopardy protection here. The prosecutor has several options:
- Bring the case directly to a judge.
- File charges with a new grand jury. (Grand juries typically sit for a period of time.)
In this case, however, charges have been dismissed. There are several variants here, one is "dismissed with prejudice", which means that those specific charges cannot be applied again. TFA doesn't note this (or indeed much else of substance in this case), so the presumption is that charges are dismissed without prejudice.
What is notable here is that grand juries almost always vote to indict. This isn't a verdict of "guilty", but rather, a finding of sufficient cause to bring trial. As the saying goes, "a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich",[1] that is, overwhelmingly (apparently 95%+ of the time) a prosecutor easily convinces a grand jury to file charges.
Given that grand jury proceedings are usually secret (there are exceptions), and we have no further insight as to what the basis of this decision was, there's not much inference which can be made, though I'd lean more strongly to weak evidence than any specific anti-Flock backlash, much as I'd prefer to believe the latter.[3][4]
________________________________
Notes:
1. Sol Wachtler: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Wachtler>
2. On grand juries, generally: <https://legalknowledgebase.com/what-does-it-mean-when-a-gran...>
3. On dismissal of charges: <https://andrewalpert.com/blog/what-does-dismissed-with-preju...>
jobs_throwaway
today at 2:17 PM
The common refrain is "you can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich". The standards required to indict are quite low. The fact that they failed to get an indictment here must mean they had ~nothing.
dredmorbius
today at 2:17 PM
Quoted, and sourced, in the comment you're replying to.
Yes, I'm aware.
jobs_throwaway
today at 2:58 PM
Heh, my bad
Judges have a lot of freedom to decide sentences. They might get one willing to throw the book on him. The risk is still there.
dghlsakjg
today at 2:57 PM
Judges can’t throw the book at someone who wasn’t indicted.
dredmorbius
today at 3:14 PM
Depending on the jurisdiction and court procedural rules, there may be other routes to an indictment.
I'm no expert on Ohio law however, so I don't know what specifically applies here.
jobs_throwaway
today at 2:58 PM
How is a judge going to do that when this man wasn't even indicted?
harimau777
today at 3:08 PM
Would this still be jury nullification in a social/political sense? That is to say: since it's well known that getting a indictment is very easy, this seems that, like jury nullification, this represents society effectively saying that they don't recognize the validity of a law.
Of course like we said, we can't know for sure. Maybe the prosecutor messed up jury selection or failed to present compelling evidence.
dredmorbius
today at 3:13 PM
If words have meanings, no. Jury Nullification arises out of double-jeopardy protections specifically, which requires a trial and not-guilty verdict.
This is a failure-to-indict only.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification>
superxpro12
today at 3:15 PM
Yes
tgsovlerkhgsel
today at 3:32 PM
If what the rest of the thread is saying is true (failed indictments being rare and harmful for the career of the prosecutor), the possibility of bringing the case up again seems relatively unlikely, making this de facto jury nullification.
> There are several variants here, one is "dismissed with prejudice", which means that those specific charges cannot be applied again. TFA doesn't note this (or indeed much else of substance in this case), so the presumption is that charges are dismissed without prejudice.
Grand juries can't dismiss with prejudice, FWIW. That's a role for judges, but a judge wouldn't have seen the case at this stage to issue such a dismissal. "Charges were dismissed" in the article is likely reference to the actions of the grand jury. It's possibly an inartful way of saying "the charges were dropped by the prosecution."
dredmorbius
today at 2:53 PM
That's the part of my comment I was least comfortable with, particularly with regards to local / state jurisdictions. A judge, if involved, might request such a dismissal based on the Grand Jury's decision. Or perhaps not.
My point was to clarify (I hoped) the distinction between double jeopardy and jury nullification with Grand Jury dismissal, which ... seems to be a frequently-iterated confusion in comments.
What this isn't is jury nullification, whatever other win it represents for the anti-Flock crowd.