This week's quiz from the Lester & Charlie Institute of Forward Thinking!
You may have seen our favorite (if not-so-shocking) headline this week: 100 Brains Missing in Texas!
Those brains have apparently since been accounted for. We doubt, however, that anyone found them on a grand jury. Not if that grand jury was deciding the fate of any white police officer who killed an unarmed black man.
New York is just the latest American city reeling from the disturbing reluctance of grand juries to hold police officers accountable -- in the New York case, despite clear documentary video evidence of the officer's use of an illegal chokehold and an unambiguous ruling by the city medical examiner that the resulting death was a homicide.
We aren't, of course, privy to the secret testimony heard by grand juries. But all of us have seen the footage of Officer Daniel Pantaleo using a chokehold to kill the unarmed Eric Garner. We've heard Officer Darren Wilson call Michael Brown a "demon." Other recent stories that have gotten less attention include two white police officers caught on video assaulting a black woman -- slamming her head on the counter, dragging her across the floor by her feet into a "detox cell" to await a strip search -- all over a supposedly unpaid parking ticket. While that woman received a cash settlement, the two officers who assaulted her were (surprise!) not indicted by the grand jury.
So we gotta ask: Who is serving on these grand juries?
Can it be just a bizarre coincidence that every grand jury decides that no police officer ever did anything wrong? Or is something more insidious going on here?
That's when we unearthed this shocker: A copy of the questionnaire that all prospective members of grand juries must fill out before they are chosen to serve.
After reading it, at least we now know why we've never been asked to sit on a grand jury. This "questionnaire," if it were a math test, would probably mark us wrong for saying 2+2=2+2. Still, someone has to serve, so there must be more than a few people who have passed this test -- and subsequently doled out what passes for justice in America.
So how would you do? Do you think YOU are qualified to serve on a grand jury in America? First you have to pass the official test. Good luck.
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