Cleveland Repeals The Fifth Amendment

by JASmius



I have to say, folks, the Tamir Rice case appears to be more about gun control extremism than it does "racist" police brutality:

The twelve-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, was shot in November when officers saw him holding a gun that turned out to be a toy. Like several other recent high-profile police shootings, the shooting was caught on tape. [emphasis added]

Any man (and some women, doubtless) over the age of forty almost certainly played with squirt guns and cap guns and "ray guns" toy rifles and the like when they were kids.  Even making gun shapes with their fingers and making "PEW!  PEW!" noises.  It is - or used to be - part of growing up, a process that almost universally didn't turn us into mass-murderers.  Just as we are all dismayingly familiar with all the gun-grabber "zero-tolerance" policies that have generated so much outrageous publicity about kids being ordered to turn their NRA t-shirts inside out and getting suspended for nibbling their pop-tarts into the shape of a gun and other extremist idiocies.  It seems to me that the Tamir Rice tragedy is a horrific outgrowth of that lunatic movement.

Nevertheless, the Black Klan, never one to miss a PR opportunity this deliciously choice and tender, is exploiting an ill-advised and highly exploitable Ohio law that essentially renders the Fifth Amendment null and void:

Cleveland, Ohio, residents are invoking an obscure law to bypass prosecutors and ask a judge directly to press charges against officers involved in the deadly shooting of a twelve-year-old boy, the New York Times reports.

Community leaders of Cleveland gave the Times copies of six affidavits they plan to file on Tuesday listing the crimes they say occurred, according to the Times. Ohio is one of just a few states that let residents request such charges directly, the Times noted....

By going directly to a judge, community leaders are trying to circumvent that [grand jury] process. Ohio law allows anyone with “knowledge of the facts” to file a court affidavit and ask a judge to issue an arrest warrant. If approved, the arrest would be followed by a public hearing, and community members said that was preferable to allowing prosecutors to make the decision in secret.

“Here we are taking some control of the process as citizens,” Mr. Madison said. “We are going to participate without even changing the law.”

The hell they're not.  The Fifth Amendment is crystal clear:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury....

"Community leaders" do not a "Grand Jury" make.

Now please understand, I'm not taking sides on this case.  The police officers in question obviously erred grievously at minimum, and may well be indictable and prosecutable for their actions on that lamentable November day.  What I am addressing is the constitutional criminal justice process, which these Cleveland "community leaders" are bypassing via what sure seems to me like an unconstitutional law because they fear that the established system won't produce the verdict they want to see.

Which is to say, they clearly don't have their own Marilyn Mosby.

Exit question: Why is it that Islamic jihadists appear to have more constitutional rights than U.S. law enforcement personnel?  I'm just wondering.....