Professor Andrew Leipold was quoted in a Portland Mercury article about grand juries for police shootings. A Portland police officer was recently on trial for shooting a homeless man wielding a knife. During the trial, the prosecutor emphasized the family life of the police officer - something he did not do for any of the other witnesses. Ultimately, the officer was not indicted, and the article questions whether or not the officer received special treatment on the witness stand.
Professor Leipold said, "It wouldn’t be surprising that a prosecutor would treat a police shooting—when they think it was a righteous shoot—differently from how they they’d treat a case before the grand jury hoping to persuade them to return an indictment.
"Frankly, if a prosecutor wants to get an indictment, or doesn’t want to get an indictment, the number of times the grand jury is going to go sideways and disagree with a prosecutor tends to be very small."
Full story at PortlandMercury.com.