Prosecutors and the Grand Jury Scam: When Police Kill, Prosecutors Work From A 'Cover Up Playbook'

From Left: Timothy McGinty, prosecutor in the Tamir Rice case; Anita Alvarez, prosecutor in the Laquan McDonald
case; Robert McCulloch, prosecutor in the Mike Brown case; Daniel Donovan, prosecutor in the Eric Garner case. All
of these so-called "prosecutors" used tricks from the The Prosecutor's Cover Up Playbook.

By Ronald David Jackson

Some Rules From The Prosecutor's Cover Up Playbook:

• Draw out the grand jury process as long as possible with the hope that anger over the killing will die down.


• Leak distorted information about the victim during the grand jury process to justify not indicting killer cops.


• Allow the cop to get in front of the grand jury to tell "his side" of the story and ask the killer police softball questions.


• Hide information about the killer cops' previous bad behavior while putting the victim's arrest record on full display.


• Refuse to demand blood and hair samples to test for drug use among killer cops, while leaking information about the drug use of the victim.


• When a non-indictment is announced, make sure you do it on or near a major holiday, on a weekend or on a Friday, or late at night, or during a very cold day in winter  - all to reduce the possibility of widespread protests.


• Hide video evidence of the killer cop's guilt so as not to inflame the public and encourage protests.


• Fill the grand jury with pro-cop types, dumb people, or crazy people.

• Hide grand jury transcripts from the public so as not to reveal your cover up tactics.

• Give the grand jury bogus "legal advice."

• Refuse to give the grand jury a lesser charge with which to indict the killer cop, thus placing pressure on the grand jury not to indict because of the scarier sounding "murder" charge.

Prosecutor Robert McCulloch - The Mike Brown Case
Robert McCulloch didn't have a single prosecution of a shooting by police in his 23 years on the job. Four times he presented evidence to a grand jury in such cases and didn’t get an indictment and the Mike Brown case was his fifth failure. During the grand jury process McCulloch leaked secret grand jury information to the media which cast aspersions on Brown’s character - the New York Times was his favorite propaganda mouthpiece.

Mike Brown.

McCulloch told the grand jury that it was "legal" to shoot fleeing suspects, when in fact it's unconstitutional. McCulloch  allowed a mentally disturbed pro-cop witness to get on the stand and lie to the grand jury in favor of the cop who killed Mike Brown. This alleged witness, Sandra McElroy, had previously posted racist comments on YouTube and Facebook and even raised money for the cop who killed Mike Brown. McCulloch allowed a racist who supervised the cop who killed Mike Brown to testify in favor of the killer cop. The supervisor had circulated racist emails. Even more damning McCulloch—instead of presenting evidence as to why the cop should be charged and why there should be a trial— never even asked the grand jury to charge the officer.


Prosecutor Timothy McGinty - The Tamir Rice Case
Timothy McGinty proved to be a master propagandist in favor of the killer of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.  During the grand jury proceedings he did his best to prepare the public for a non-indictment. He drummed up a couple of "independent experts" (a Colorado prosecutor and a former FBI agent) who found that the killer cop "acted within the law."   McGinty admitted that it was highly unusual to publish such information in the middle of grand jury proceedings, but claimed, "We're trying to break that pattern." The job of a prosecutor is to prosecute, not to play the role of defense attorney for killer cops. You can be sure that if McGinty's "independent experts" had found the killer cop broke the law he would have shown no interest in "breaking any patterns." 

Tamir Rice.

The Rice family had their own independent experts who found that Tamir had his hands in his pockets when a cop shot him to death for having a toy gun. But you can bet the findings of that particular investigation never found its way in front of the grand jury. Or the fact that Tamir Rice's killer was virtually insane, showed incompetence when handling his gun, and was fired from another police department because of these issues. Did the grand jury learn of the fact that two officers were disciplined for hiring the defective killer cop in the first place? Not likely. Prosecutor McGinty also pulled the "take a long time" trick, taking an entire year to come back with no indictment for a crazy cop who killed a 12-year-old without warning who was playing in a virtually empty playground. And of course the no indictment announcement came in the middle of the holiday season, just after Christmas and just before New Years. The cops also lied by claiming they gave Tamir several warnings before he was executed, but the video tape showed  the crazy cop started shooting within two seconds of arrival. No charges of perjury or obstruction of justice for the lying cops.


Prosecutor Daniel Donovan - The Eric Garner Case
Daniel Donovan used the "big charge" trick during the grand jury process: he refused to ask grand jurors to consider a reckless endangerment charge in the choke-hold death of Eric Garner. Even though the prosecutor has total control over who gets to testify in front of the grand jury, the cop who chocked Eric Garner to death was allowed to get in front of the jurors and give an "I didn't mean it" sob story, something a prosecutor wouldn't allow to happen if he was actually after an indictment: "Most defendants don't even know grand jury proceedings are being brought against them, nor are they invited to testify in their own defense, former prosecutor Lalit Kundani wrote in the Huffington Post." The fact that choke-holds are illegal in New York (and most other jurisdictions) didn't seem to become a problem for the killer cop during these grand jury proceedings.

Eric Garner with his wife, Esaw.

Donovan also failed to grill the killer cop while he testified: most honest prosecutors would have kept the killer in front of the jurors for many hours while they drilled down in search of inconsistencies. Did the prosecutor inform the grand jury of the killer cop's record of brutality? We'll never know because a judge ruled that the grand jury minutes should be kept hidden from the public. "There is no question that a grand jury will do precisely what the prosecutor wants, virtually 100% of the time," says James Cohen, a law professor at Fordham University who specializes in criminal procedure. Legal experts say the Eric Garner grand jury did exactly what the prosecutor wanted: nothing. One witness who testified before the grand jury said that by time he got on the stand the jurors' minds were "already made up" in favor of the killer cop: while he was testifying the jurors "talked and used phones," demonstrating no interest whatsoever in what he had to say. And obviously the prosecutor didn't demand they give the witness their full attention. Donovan wanted to run for higher office in a pro-police county - he wasn't about to risk his political future over a murdered black man.


Prosecutor Anita Alvarez - The Laquan McDonald Case
Anita Alvarez definitely knew a cop had committed cold blooded murder when he pumped 16 bullets into a mentally ill Laquan McDonald, many of the bullets coming after McDonald was already on the ground. Alvarez knew that the cop had committed cold blooded murder because she had a video tape, which she hid from the public until a court order forced her to hand over the tape.

Laquan McDonald.

Alvarez pulled the "wait as long as you can" trick and did nothing for 14 months after McDonald was executed, and only managed to bring an indictment against the killer cop the day the video tape was released.  And Alvarez didn't bother to indict any of the cops for obstruction of justice even though they lied and claimed McDonald had lunged toward them when in fact the video  showed nothing of the sort. Police officers also erased video footage from a Burger King security camera. Alvarez offered no indictments for obstruction of justice for that attempt at a cover up either. Alvarez hid the video tape and did nothing for over a year because she wanted to help mayor Rahm Emmanuel get re-elected and probably hoped for a way to let the killer cop go free. In other words, Alvarez covered for both the cops and the mayor of Chicago. Meanwhile, Alvarez and her fellow cover-up artists in the city administration knew their was a murder committed - that's precisely why they provided the McDonald family with $5 million in "shut up money" long before the video tape went public and long before there was an actual indictment and trial.

RELATED STORY:  How to Get Away With Murder - Prosecutor Guides Grand Jury, No Indictment for Officers in the Death of Tamir Rice

RELATED STORY: Prosecutor Who 'Intentionally' Blew George Zimmerman Case — Has Record of Disproportionately Seeking Death Penalty for Black Men and Charging Minority Kids As Adults

Do you know of any other tactics from The Prosecutor's Cover Up Playbook? If so, place them in the comment section below.

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