Krauthammer: NYC Grand Jury Decision ‘Totally Incomprehensible’

Krauthammer: NYC Grand Jury Decision ‘Totally Incomprehensible’

On Wednesday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer reacted to the New York City grand jury’s decision not to indict a NYC police officer for the chokehold death of Eric Garner.

“The timing is unfortunate,” he said. “This has no connection with what happened in Ferguson. From looking at the video, the grand jury’s decision here is totally incomprehensible. It looks as if at least they might have indicted him on something like involuntary manslaughter, at the very least. The guy actually said, ‘I can’t breathe,’ which ought to be a signal that the guy was unarmed, and the crime was as petty as they come … He was selling loose cigarettes, which is in and of itself almost absurd that someone has to die over that. But here’s the problem – you have the feeling as I do that anybody who looks at the video would think, that this was the wrong judgment. The problem is in our system you don’t have double jeopardy. If a grand jury makes a mistake, that’s the way it is.”

“However, because of our history, there’s a way to get around that, and that’s a federal investigation,” Krauthammer continued. “And again because of our history, that has to be a violation of civil rights, which implies that this was a racial incident. So in order to get the second examination on this, without having double jeopardy, they have to squeeze this case into one of deliberate racism and I don’t know if there’s any evidence for that. But when the president says another case of inequality in treatment, the implication it was whereas you could easily explain it as one cop out of tens of thousands in the country who might have acted improperly, the use of excessive force or whatever. But the idea that it was a racial incident is required if you’re going to have a second investigation. And that I think is a problem, but that derives from our history and it forces this into the category of racism.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

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