NYPD Chokehold Death Analysis & Charles Barkley Comments on Racial Profiling

Criminal defense attorney Mike Cavalluzzi and former prosecutor Loni Coombs discuss the grand jury decision in New York regarding the NYPD chokehold death - not to indict the officer who used a chokehold on Eric Garner - plus they weigh in on the prosecution in the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri case.

The coroner in the Eric Garner case ruled his death a homicide as a result of actions of the NYPD officer who applied a chokehold, but the grand jury in Staten Island still voted not to indict the officer involved.

Cavalluzzi said there are circumstances in which police officers often face resistance from people they approach, and when these situations turn violent, they also become intensely complicated. “Your response in that split second is to take him down in the best way you know how, and the only way you can take someone down if they are resisting is to do so somewhat violently,” he said.

“(The officer) is doing it with perhaps no malice, no criminal intent, but simply in an attempt to control and arrest the suspect. Maybe there’s negligence – maybe he did it incorrectly – but no criminal charges.”

Coombs said it is also difficult to know exactly why the grand jurors decided not to indict, but there are some clues in the coroner’s report about Garner’s cause of death.

“They also talked about his obesity, his heart condition, and his asthma, contributed to (his death). So maybe the grand jury just said, look we don’t know what exactly caused his actual death – so how can we say that what (the officer) did was maybe excessive.”

Cavalluzzi said in his review of the case involving the shooting death of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson, he thinks that the officers were given ample time to prepare their testimony to the grand jury.

“I think the prosecutor was very helpful in guiding them through that story, and so in that way, yes, it felt very prepared to me, and it felt each story consistent with the other,” he said. “And you know, one of the ways that you get to the truth is that stories don’t always match up… it’s when stories match up too closely that you should be concerned about their voracity.”

Coombs adds that a major red flag for her noted in the testimony transcripts was that supervising officer who went to the scene and even talked to Wilson did not compile any written reports of the conversations and statements obtained from Wilson.

“That right there is a red flag – people don’t do that because they don’t want it to be in writing, so that later if they want to change details, or if they need to move something around, they can,” she said.

“I’ve said this before, I think that Robert McCulloch absolutely did not want an indictment, and I think he controlled the environment of those grand jury proceedings in a very specific way not to get an indictment,” Cavalluzzi said.

The panel also discusses the overall handling of the Ferguson case by McCulloch, whom they believe did not explore and present the evidence in the typical manner, but instead basically threw all the evidence at the grand jurors without drawing any of conclusions by himself, or providing context.

Also discussed were recent comments by former NBA star Charles Barkley about the situation in Ferguson and the general issue of whether or not race plays a role in police shootings. Barkley has been criticized for sticking up for the police behavior in the Ferguson and Eric Garner cases, and for saying that there are legitimate reasons for police to racially profile.

“He comes from these communities, and he worked very had to get out of that community. When somebody works that hard and reaches a level of achievement that makes them enormously wealthy, enormously famous, somebody who becomes very powerful, it changes them,” said Cavalluzzi about Barkley’s remarks.

“It changes them, they cannot stay the same person. They can still maybe have sympathy for members in that community, but at the same time, yes, they become separate from it, and they look at it differently.”

“I don’t think you can discount everything Charles Barkley says,” Coombs said. “What I like about Charles Barkley is that he has the courage to speak his mind, he doesn’t worry about being politically correct, and he doesn’t back off when people start confronting him.”

Watch the full episode to hear the panel also delve into the controversy over some St. Louis Rams players who displayed on the field the gesture signifying “hands up, don’t shoot,” plus a discussion of the continuing rape allegations against Bill Cosby.