To describe this as nonsense is a slander on nonsense. It is freely conceded that the grand-jury inquest into Brown’s killing was more a political than a legal exercise. That, however, was the result of intimidation by the Left’s race-mythology agitators — very much including the president and the attorney general of the United States. It was clearly not aimed at benefitting Wilson.
In a typical case, prosecutors rely on the low probable-cause threshold applicable in grand-jury investigations only for the purpose of limiting how much evidence they need to present. Contrary to another regnant myth, guilt is not in doubt in most criminal cases. Overwhelmingly, they are open-and-shut, often supported by post-arrest confessions. As a result, the grand jury can appear to be a pro forma exercise — a cookie-cutter procedure the Constitution requires before an accused person can be convicted of a crime he not only clearly committed but to which he will almost certainly plead guilty.
On the other hand, when convinced that the subject of an investigation either is innocent or is incapable of being proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, prosecutors do not present the case to the grand jury. That’s because their focus is the trial, not the indictment. If, after preliminary investigation, prosecutors do not assess the evidence as strong enough to convince a trial jury to render a unanimous guilty verdict, they dismiss the case on the basis of their own professional judgment — it never sees the grand-jury room.
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