FERGUSON

[Jackalope]

No, I believe he's suggesting that if the prosecutor wants an indictment, then witnesses will be called which support the prosecutor's wishes. If the prosecutor wants no true bill, then he'll act accordingly.

It isn't an adversarial process. The prosecutor controls the process.

I'll note that the prosecutor doesn't *require* a grand jury indictment to pursue a conviction, though it helps.

If you care about transparency and the adversarial process, grand juries are a pretty shitty way to accomplish that.

The prosecutor probably did not want an indictment after reviewing all the evidence. If that is the case...should the prosecutor be required to indict just to appease the mob?

I don't recall suggesting anything of the sort.

And perhaps you don't know this, but I'm not a big fan of entertaining hypothetical questions based on conditionals that neither of us is in position to know jack shit about.

To indirectly answer your question, of course a prosecutor shouldn't indict to appease the mob. The flip side of that coin is that they also shouldn't let bad cops off the hook.(*)

(*) I have no idea whether this is the case here. FWIW, I'm undecided as to how I feel about the case. What I am not undecided about is the way that prosecutors can manipulate grand juries to get the outcome they want, for good or ill reason. You seem to be wont to ignore the latter possibility.