TYT: Justice Scalia’s Grand Jury Rant Highlights Everything Wrong With Ferguson
"On Monday, Prosecutor Bob McCulloch announced that a grand jury had decided not to indict Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Michael Brown. But that decision was the result of a process that turned the purpose of a grand jury on its head.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in the 1992 Supreme Court case of United States v. Williams, explained what the role of a grand jury has been for hundreds of years.
It is the grand jurys function not to enquire
upon what foundation [the charge may be] denied, or otherwise to try the suspects defenses, but only to examine upon what foundation [the charge] is made by the prosecutor. Respublica v. Shaffer, 1 Dall. 236 (O. T. Phila. 1788); see also F. Wharton, Criminal Pleading and Practice § 360, pp. 248-249 (8th ed. 1880). As a consequence, neither in this country nor in England has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence presented.
This passage was first highlighted by attorney Ian Samuel, a former clerk to Justice Scalia."* The Young Turks hosts John Iadarola (TYT University), Steve Oh and Jimmy Dore (The Jimmy Dore Show) break it down.
*Read more here:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/11/26/3597322/justice-scalia-explains-what-was-wrong-with-the-ferguson-grand-jury/