Oh, yeah, so I guess the grand jury in the Garner case was full of upstanding people who fully intended to uphold the law to the letter, right?

(Yes, I know that's not what you're saying.)

Indictment is for probable cause of any crime at all. You can't indict for specific crimes, the trial itself tries to prove the crime committed. Prosecution could have pulled manslaughter so easy that it makes absolutely no sense to refuse to indict. Besides, the DA is supposed to try and get the indictment. It wouldn't make sense for him to try and convince the grand jury that the necessary proofs for murder meant anything before the trial actually started.

So long as laws are dispensed by human beings instead of machines, it will always be subject to interpretation. Grand juries are notorious for being stacked with elderly white law-and-order conservatives - the kind of people who excel at the mental gymnastics necessary to justify any use of force by government police. Whether this makes them "upstanding people" or not is another subject of interpretation.

(Also keep in mind that we do not know what the vote was - for all we know, 11 out of 23 grand jurors voted to indict, which would make my broad generalization just slightly over 50% justified)

"the DA is supposed to try and get the indictment."

You are making the mistake of assuming that the DA actually *wanted* an indictment.

Why wouldn't he? Like others have said, it was a slam dunk case, be it murder or some lesser charge.

"Why wouldn't he?"

Probably because DAs have very close ties to the police in their jurisdiction. Everything from campaign contributions from police unions, to close cooperation between police officers and DA investigators, to regular golf outings between DAs and police chiefs. They're essentially all in bed together, and it is as silly to expect DAs to prosecute criminal conduct by police officers fairly and impartially (absent a green light from police officials) as it is to expect police officers to investigate each other fairly and impartially.

(I also strongly suspect there's an element of intimidation as well. Keep in mind that the police are the best organized and equipped gang in *any* neighborhood, and if the police decide to target you for some extralegal payback for some slight you've given them, you really have no one to turn to.)

It's also entirely plausible that there was some pressure from higher up for this, in an attempt to whitewash the whole thing and make the police seem less bad. Of course, it hasn't really worked.

DAs are elected. This is supposed to guarantee them independence, so they have no "higher ups" to answer to in cases like this, but as with all the optimistic promises of high school civics textbooks, YMMV.

So the DA is corrupt. That's your explanation?