It’s very tempting to jump to conclusions in either direction about the Eric Garner Grand Jury non-indictment of one of the arresting police officers.
It would be really, really easy to jump on the “injustice” bandwagon, with a visceral reaction to the video. Or to take the contrarian view because there was, after all, resistance to a lawful arrest. No resistance, no death.
In fact, we’ve gone through multiple drafts trying to sort this out.
But none of them worked because we just don’t know enough about the evidence to determine whether the death of Garner was the result of an unlawful homicide, or just a tragic confluence of resisting arrest, health problems and lawful use of force by police.
I think we’ve done well in the many criminal cases we’ve followed — George Zimmerman, Michael Dunn, Joseph Walker, Michael Brown, Theodore Wafer, Merritt Landry, and others. In fact, I think we’ve done better than well, because we always followed the evidence.
We have the video, or at least one or two of the angles, but we just don’t have enough … yet.
I want to understand this case better. That may take a day, a week, a month, or never.
There are plenty of opinions, but at least for tonight, you won’t find them here.
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