Charges against officers in PlayStation shooting dropped

Reality tells us that there are really no proper sides to choose from when faced with particular choices, and we think that applies to the situation we’ll be telling you of.

Some time after we put up word of the second degree murder charges placed on Christopher Long for killing Peyton Strickland, who was a suspected of stealing two Sony PS3 units from a student, we find a reversal of that decision. Kotaku got word that those same charges were just dropped because the filing of charges was an accident.

According to the Associated Press report, the filing of murder charges came to be as a result of the jury foreman’s mistake. Apparently, he checked the wrong box in the indictment form and was informed of it by other jury members when they heard about it in the news.

To explain further, here’s the pertinent portion of the AP report:

A copy of the indictment filed as evidence Tuesday shows a checked box for a “true bill” of indictment crossed out, with a heavy mark made through “not a true bill,” followed by what appears to be the foreman’s initials and Tuesday’s date.

When a grand jury wants a murder indictment, it returns a “true bill.” When it decides it does not want to issue an indictment, it returns “not a true bill.”

As you can expect, the Strickland family did not react well to the dismissal of the charges.

The one thing we can think of now is that there’s no side to ostensibly ally oneself with. A PS3 thief whose guilt or innocence we can no longer verify and a policeman whose suffers fewer expected repercussions from killing the alleged thief. It does not paint the prettiest of pictures, and it certainly leaves a sad imprint on the histories of console releases, families, the police force, and the justice system we all hold ourselves to.

Reality tells us that there are really no proper sides to choose from when faced with particular choices, and we think that applies to the situation we’ll be telling you of.

Some time after we put up word of the second degree murder charges placed on Christopher Long for killing Peyton Strickland, who was a suspected of stealing two Sony PS3 units from a student, we find a reversal of that decision. Kotaku got word that those same charges were just dropped because the filing of charges was an accident.

According to the Associated Press report, the filing of murder charges came to be as a result of the jury foreman’s mistake. Apparently, he checked the wrong box in the indictment form and was informed of it by other jury members when they heard about it in the news.

To explain further, here’s the pertinent portion of the AP report:

A copy of the indictment filed as evidence Tuesday shows a checked box for a “true bill” of indictment crossed out, with a heavy mark made through “not a true bill,” followed by what appears to be the foreman’s initials and Tuesday’s date.

When a grand jury wants a murder indictment, it returns a “true bill.” When it decides it does not want to issue an indictment, it returns “not a true bill.”

As you can expect, the Strickland family did not react well to the dismissal of the charges.

The one thing we can think of now is that there’s no side to ostensibly ally oneself with. A PS3 thief whose guilt or innocence we can no longer verify and a policeman whose suffers fewer expected repercussions from killing the alleged thief. It does not paint the prettiest of pictures, and it certainly leaves a sad imprint on the histories of console releases, families, the police force, and the justice system we all hold ourselves to.