This is not a jury nullification (which is an emergent property of US Constitutional double-jeopardy protections), but a failure to indict, that is to bring criminal charges (a "bill of indictment") for potential criminal conduct.
In this instance, the case has been dismissed, but might conceivably be brought again.
Why grand juries make the decisions they do is hard to determine, as their operations are (usually) secret. This may have simply been a case of insufficient evidence of a crime, or identity of the suspect ("probable cause"), as appealing as a broader backlash theory might be.
Much of this article appears to be either speculation or unsourced information if there was in fact resistance to bringing a Flock case by this grand jury. The latter might indicate a violation of secrecy oaths by jury members or other court officers.
Specific practices vary by state, not all of which use grand juries. All federal criminal cases rely on a grand jury.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_juries_in_the_United_Sta...>
This sure feels exactly like jury nullification
A true jury nullification occurs in a trial, which would stop this from being brought again due to double jeopardy. That's one of the things that makes jury nullification so powerful. This, on the other hand, is a pre-trial rejection, so they can try again.
This is before an indictment is even filed. Jury nullification takes place at the trial deliberation stage, after arguments have been presented from both sides with a judge presiding. This is no where even there yet.
Why do you differentiate? If they are doing it solely because they believe the law should be ignored rather than basing the decision on the facts and laws, why should it matter what part of the process the jury is participating in?
> Why do you differentiate?
Because words mean things, and precision matters.
An actual jury nullification cannot be appealed, and the accused gets to go scot-free forever in that jurisdiction, even to prosecutor's chagrin. In this case, the prosecutor could gather another grand jury and try again, at any time, without restriction, if they so choose.
Buried lede is that this is someone's chance to coin a new term for "something that feels like jury nullification but isn't because it's a grand jury and the internet lawyers are being pedantic because they really don't like the idea of people being able to point at an honest-to-god case of jury nullification."
Because the law differentiates, not me. When the GJ does not return a True Bill it means that a jury of our peers believes there is insufficient evidence to charge someone with a crime.
That is a wholly different definition than jury nullification, where one or more members of the jury return a "not guilty" verdict because they reject the law or its application irrespective of the defendant's guilt.
The standard of proof differs. A GJ is not required to find a defendant guilty; instead, they must determine whether there is sufficient evidence to suggest the possibility of a crime. The subsequent proceedings will then determine the outcome.
As you don't have any of the details, you cannot judge whether this decision is congruent or incongruent with the law (ie would most impartial judges have made the same decision). There could have simply not been enough evidence to indict in the first place. Or there could have been key evidence that was excluded due to violations of civil rights, improper procedures, etc.
I very recently sat on a jury for a criminal trial in which we found not guilty. After my service ended, I looked up the case docket and found several details that pushed my personal analysis to the defendant likely having committed the alleged offense in my personal balance-of-probabilities reasoning framework. But the evidence and arguments presented at the case were so lacking (due to those details having been excluded in limine, as well as needing to meet the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt) that we jurors deliberated for all of five minutes because we had started off in unanimous agreement of not guilty.
(and just in case it's not clear, I have no regrets about that! Even knowing what I know now, I would have chosen not guilty - the government simply didn't meet the burden of proof, and our civil liberties are important)
Getting back to this case. If we take it as a given that grand juries readily indict as the bar is low and prosecutors generally make sure to have their ducks in a row, we are still left with multiple possibilities of how politics might be involved here. Which is more likely - that the prosecution presented a well-substantiated argument that the jury then completely disregarded (ie "nullification"), or that prosecutors were politically encouraged to press this despite glaring holes in their case?
Since Ohio is a fairly red state, I wonder if this could be a "You can food some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." As much as I am angry at MAGA for not prioritizing my civil liberties, it does seem like conservatives are starting to notice that those in power don't actually care about conservative principles like privacy, small government, and individual liberty.
Conservative voters themselves have been quite clear that they don’t actually care about any of those principles either.
I remain skeptical.
Or, they are convinced the other side is much worse
The term "voter" seems relevant -- in my conversations with conservatives, they care quite a bit. In the way they conduct themselves (ignoring voting), they care quite a bit. It's only the voting in which there's an obvious disconnect. Ignoring that risks applying the wrong fixes to the wrong places.
Voting is where the rubber meets the road. If they don't vote like they care, then they don't care for all intents and purposes.
Voting is choose between two terrible candidates, neither of which represent the majority of any group’s interests. No one ever elected has delivered 100% satisfaction to the majority of their constituents.
A reminder to support approval voting, star voting, and proportional voting so we can end the 2 party system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU https://www.equal.vote/
> Voting is choose between two terrible candidates
This framing makes it seem like the candidates are identically terrible. Which is never the case.
Correct. They each offer their own unique flavor of extreme terrible.
Edited this after the fact to reduce the intensity of my tone.
This “both sides” nonsense is not particularly convincing when one party literally has masked goons on the street sending people extrajudicially to concentration camps.
In other words, “the point of a system is what it does” applies to humans as well.
Alternatively, they can care about principles and issues that differ from that of the other party.
No candidate is going to perfectly match your desires. So voting becomes a measurement of where your priorities lie.
Of course, media and the candidates themselves will use propaganda to manipulate your priorities.
Right-wing media has done a great job convincing people that the greatest threat to them are trans women in women's sports and illegal immigrants.
Given that the Republicans claim to be the “party of personal responsibility”, I utterly reject this attempt to frame its voters as the poor and unfortunate victims of manipulation and choose instead to hold them personally responsible.
Most of the erosion of our civil liberties is too abstract and requires education and awareness. Average voters will defer to generic arguments about "safety" from authorities. The "four horsemen" get trotted out so often that they're basically show ponies at this point.
The Flock(tm) cameras are very conspicuous. Even the dullest among us can see these engineering senior-design contraptions ruining the most rural landscapes. You don't have to read EFF press releases or read interviews with Snowden to understand what is happening. It was a baffling miscalculation not to anticipate this backlash happening.
It's not just "conservatives" who are behind this. The Clinton and Obama administrations did their best to undermine our right to privacy at every step and turn, just as the others have.
At the same time, our security state apparatus is in a full-force China panic; they've failed to offer a better social contract. We are the ones actually getting a social credit system, without getting anything in return.
Let's call it Grand Jury Nullification
> Police in Union Township, a Cincinnati suburb, accused Cody Morelock of disassembling the camera, its support pole and solar panel on June 13.
To add to this, it stood out to me that the headline uses "destroy" but the article uses "disassemble" to describe what happened. Not that the act of calmly dissasembling something couldn't be indicted as potentially criminal (if a ham sandwich can be), but it stands out regardless. Maybe he literally just walked up and started unscrewing things. That would be the most civil form of "vandalism" I can imagine; force them to (pay someone to) come set it up again until they give up or try something else.
The actual source article[1] mentions the equipment was destroyed. The SAN.com republication linked here dropped that detail.
[1] "Investigators alleged Morelock removed bolts securing the camera system, bringing down the camera, solar panel and support pole before destroying the equipment." https://local12.com/news/local/felony-charges-dismissed-agai...
Considering that the enterprising people suffering from unhousedness in tents are frequently described as being involved in the repair of bicycles the frames of which can be more than a month of rent, I am somewhat underwhelmed by the amount of signal in phrasal choices implying civility.
Is this an AI generated comment?
What do any of these words have to do with a person disassembling a camera in a surveillance dragnet?
Sounds like SpaceX with unscheduled rapid disassembly
> Not that the act of calmly dissasembling something couldn't be indicted as potentially criminal (if a ham sandwich can be)
Why do you doubt this? If I calmly disassemble your car in the middle of the night, haven't I committed a crime?
Where I live, calmly disassembling property that is't yours is, at minimum, vandalism: https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/penal-sect-28-03/
> A person commits an offense if, without the effective consent of the owner . . . he intentionally or knowingly tampers with the tangible property of the owner and causes . . . substantial inconvenience to the owner or a third person . . . .
My guess is the cost to remedy this disassembly is over $2,500, making this a felony. Even if not, if a government Flock camera is considered a "public service" then it's a felony no matter the cost to remedy because it falls under "causes wholly or partly impairment or interruption of property used for . . . public communications, public transportation, [] or other public service . . ."
Putting aside this specific case, I wonder how that $2,500 cost is calculated?
Flock owns the devices and leases them out I think. Hypothetically somebody could take the device down and put it in a nice tidy little box for them. Then the cost to remedy is… how much they charge the town to send a person out to put it back up? Or how much it costs them internally to send somebody out to put it back up?
If it is the latter, I guess it must just be somebody’s travel costs and wages (could be figured out like any contractor).
If it is the former, does that have to be the same cost they always charge to send out maintenance people? (Since a disassembled, not destroyed camera should be one of the cheapest issues to deal with, right?). Otherwise it seems like they could exploit the law by specifically “charging” enough to make it a felony whenever they suspect tampering.
True, it does not say the reason for the decline to indict. It could have as much to do with the overall decline in quality of the DoJ and its cases as a whole over the past year. Many nonsalient crimes will also go unprosecuted under this DoJ, but they will not generate headlines like this one.
It appears this prosecution was brought by local Ohio police; the federal Department of Justice would not have been involved in any way.
The US DoJ does not prosecute in county courts.
From TFA: "A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict..."