The grand jurors in the Tamir Rice case did vote that a Cleveland police officer was justified when he shot and killed the 12-year-old boy, however, they did not vote on any specific criminal charges.
According to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office, the grand jury privately deliberated and determined that rookie patrol officer Timothy Loehmann was justified in the shooting. At that point, the grand jury investigation was concluded and the officer was not indicted.
Cleveland Scene reported Wednesday that the grand jury never voted—since there was no true bill or no-bill decision made.
While that is true, the prosecutor's office says that vote wasn't necessary because criminal charges were never discussed.
READ the entire statement from the prosecutor's office here.
Had the grand jury determined that the shooting was not justified, they would have discussed possible criminal charges and voted true bill or no-bill on those charges. But the investigation never got that far, since they determined the shooting was justified.
READ the grand jury decision here.
The county prosecutor's office website reads, in part:
At the conclusion of an investigation and Grand Jury presentation, the decision to charge or not charge ultimately rests with the Grand Jury.
If at the conclusion of the Grand Jury presentation, the County Prosecutor’s Office does not believe there is sufficient evidence to charge the police officer or officers with a crime or believes that the use of deadly force was justifiable by law or necessary by duty, the Grand Jury is informed that it has the final say. If they disagree with the assessment of the County Prosecutor’s Office, Grand Jurors can ask for a true bill-no bill opportunity or they can ask to hear additional witnesses and evidence.
But is that normal?
Joseph Frolik, spokesman for Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, reportedly told the Washington Post that other grand juries act similarly.
“I don’t want to say it happens all the time, but it’s not a rarity, it’s not an anomaly that a grand jury will basically investigate a case and end up at the end saying there’s nothing to vote on here, or there’s no charges to be filed,” he told the Washington Post in a telephone interview.
This is just one of many questions that has been raised about the way the case has been handled.
Subodh Chandra, the attorney representing the Rice family, has previously said that Prosecutor McGinty "thoroughly tainted the process" by subjecting their experts to "hostile" questioning and "inflam[ing] the media and the public with repeated, often inaccurate statements lobbying for their desired outcome."
The prosecutor has maintained that he has been transparent throughout the investigation.
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The Nov. 22, 2014, death of the 12-year-old became a flashpoint in the wake of other deadly police encounters with young black males across the country.
Tamir was playing with a borrowed airsoft gun, which shoots nonlethal plastic pellets, when someone called 911. The gun bore a striking resemblance to a real firearm, in part because its tell-tale orange tip had been removed.
Footage recorded by a surveillance camera showed then-rookie patrol officer Timothy Loehmann shooting Tamir within two seconds of a patrol car skidding to a stop just feet from the boy after a dispatcher described a "black male sitting on a swing...pulling a gun out of his pants and pointing it at people."
Questions remain about whether Loehmann told Tamir to raise his hands before firing two shots, one of which struck Tamir.
