Walking through the filth in the streets made me want to retch, but I hid it. Anyway, we all know Easterners are filthy, right? Look at how they live. Never mind that they can’t use sorcery to keep their neighborhoods clean the way Dragaerans do. If they want to use sorcery, they can become citizens of the Empire by moving into the country and becoming Teckla, or buying titles in the Jhereg. Don’t want to be serfs? They’re stubborn, too, aren’t they? Don’t have the money to buy titles? Of course not! Who’d give them a good job, seeing how filthy they are?
―Steven Brust, Yendi
Every once in a while, our friends show their (ahem!) “true colors”. Today it took the form of a post coming across a social media feed, one of those whining articles about, “Look! A black person committed a crime! And the victim was white! Where’s the racist Obama! What’s the matter with that racist Al Sharpton! Waaaaaaah!”
And no, we are not impressed. The following is a list of questions these people are skipping:
• Were the suspects arrested? (Yes.)
• Were the suspects charged with a crime? (Yes.)
• Were the suspects charged by a prosecutor directly or through grand jury indictment? (Prosecutor.)
• Why were the suspects not indicted by a grand jury?
• Why did the prosecutor not call them to testify on their own behalf at the grand jury investigation?
• Why did the prosecutor not call a string of witnesses with the intention of undermining his own case?
• Why did the prosecutor not falsely inform the jury of what the law says?
• Where are the lines of “law-abiding” people demanding due process for the accused?
And, certes, we might note that some questions can be answered according to the circumstance described in other answers. Why did the prosecutor not do this or that at the grand jury hearing? Because there was none. Why was there none? Because the prosecutor has the discretion to file charges on his own. Why did he do that? Because, under the circumstances, he could.
And, actually, that’s what it looks like for the vast majority of people accused of crimes, even those indicted by grand juries.
And that, in turn, is why the federal government is involved.
But wait … there’s more!
This Is 