Do Prosecutors Purposefully Throw Cases Against Cops

In face of the Oakland transit shooting case we are left to ponder whether there will be a vigorous prosecution on the part of the District Attorney. Whereas it only took 6 days for the DA to charge those who destroyed property during the protest of the shooting; Alameda County district attorney Tom Orloff took a week and a half to charge the murder despite clear video evidence. He did so only then due to the uproar, and with no way to defend the shooting. It has been suggested before that prosecutors don't really want to prosecute police officers. But when officers actions are so outrages, that they can't defend the officers even with giving them all benefit of the doubt, they charge them only because they can't defend not charging. Yet, since these DAs actually don't want to try the officer in the first place, and they only do so because they can't defend not doing so, that they intentionally throw the case.

The National Black Police Association even says this takes place. Christopher C. Cooper, JD on behalf of The National Black Police Association writes “It does not matter that two of the officers who killed Sean Bell are black. The larger issue is that police officers of any color, in jurisdictions throughout the United States are given a blank check to abuse people of color. Prosecutors routinely look the other way and if they prosecute, they throw the fight (a real possibility of what happened in the Bell case). ”

Ann Schneider at The Indypendent breaks down some of how this went in the Bell trial. In a piece entitled “Going Through the Motions: Prosecutor’s Strategy Doomed Bell Verdict” she writes:

I entered Judge Arthur Cooperman’s courtroom one afternoon, mid-trial. From the information being elicited, I guessed it was the defense lawyer questioning the witness. But it was the prosecuting attorney, establishing that the officers had heard of as many as three guns inside Club Kalua that night. Thus, Assistant District Attorney Charles Testagrossa, who was supposed to be prosecuting the three officers, established a justification defense for them!

Worse, the prosecution chose to introduce the grand jury testimony of each officer. This was a serious strategic mistake, because it allowed the defendants to remain silent. Since it is the prosecution’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a defendant always has the choice to testify or not. In a criminal case, a judge may not draw “a negative inference” from the fact that a defendant chooses not to testify.

We know that the police planned to offer as a defense that they were justified in believing that their lives were in danger. So to convince a judge or jury they had a reasonable belief they were being fired upon, they normally would have had to say something about their state of mind.

Thus, they would have been subject to cross-examination, which could have yielded some interesting revelations. Instead, the prosecution chose to introduce their previous testimony at the grand jury, lessening their need to speak in their own defense.Proof that this was a disastrous choice is the fact that the defense team’s strategy changed six weeks into the trial. After the prosecution rested, the police defendants decided that they no longer needed to testify.Again, this is what happens when they bother to prosecute.

A report coming out in the L.A. Times a few years ago showed that L.A. County refused to prosecute 75% of police misconduct cases referred to them, where on the other hand they prosecuted 75% of all other cases referred to them. In Oakland we're dealing with the same governmental system that allows the Oakland police to basically refuse to provide information on the outcomes of cases even to the City Council