Question

The officer involved in the Michael Brown shooting was not indicted by the grand jury that heard the case. Why? Do you think that the officer who shot Brown had other options available to him? What would they have been? If other options were available, why didn’t he use them?

Answer 1

• The grand jury had a lot of choices: it could have issued an indictment on one of four charges: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, or involuntary manslaughter.
• But most of these weren't realistic options. All along, legal experts have said that it was unlikely that Wilson would be charged with first-degree murder. That would have required evidence that he maliciously set out to kill Brown. Second-degree murder charges were theoretically possible, but this choice was unlikely if jurors decided that Wilson feared for his life when he killed Brown.
• But,the main reason he was indicted was he was a police officer. And the law is relatively easy on police officers who kill people in the line of duty.State laws, guided by a couple of Supreme Court precedents, have laid out a set of circumstances in which a cop killing a civilian is justifiable homicide.
  
• The court said a police officer is allowed to shoot under two circumstances,to protect their life or the life of another innocent party and to prevent a suspected violent felon from escaping.
• If the grand jury was convinced that Wilson believed Brown to be a violent felon, the police officer would still only be able to claim that he was justified — if Brown was fleeing when Wilson fired at him
• I dont think any other option was available for the police officer based upon the case information,I guess the objective to shoot was to threaten Brown and not kill him,but because he got killed it was acoording to the court in the line of his duty and not intentional or planned killing.I think Brown since he was unarmed,did pose a deadly threat for the police officer which lead to shooting.When a suspect escalates a situation by being non compliant and even worse by actively resisting, it is up to police to overcome that resistance with force.Typically the amount of force used will be one level higher than the suspect's. In a perfect world this would not be necessary, but in the real world there are times when force is the only option available to keep an officer or the public safe and thats exactly maybe what the police officer's intention was,to protect himself and the innocent people around.