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Now welcome to the award winning best of left podcast with clips today from TestTube,

all in with Chris Hayes, D-Code DC, the David Pakman show, Radio Dispatch, The Black Agenda Report,

comedian Lee Camp, this week in Blackness, activism from Black Branch and at the Young Turks.

Riots and protests broke out during July and August 2014 over the killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown.

Then in late November and early December, a grand jury decided not to criminally charge the police officers

who were responsible for the two deaths and protests erupted again.

So what are grand juries and how important are they really?

Well, a grand jury is like a test run for the prosecution. It's a way for the prosecution to see if there is enough evidence to pursue criminal charges like murder.

A grand jury differs from a trial jury mainly because it's entirely run by the prosecution and it is just determining whether or not criminal charges should be levied.

There is also no judge and no defense attorney.

The prosecutor basically just throws all possible evidence, witness accounts, and even hearsay testimony at a jury to see if, in the right conditions, a jury might decide that there was probable cause.

The jury usually numbers between 16 and 23 people called it random, just like criminal juries.

Although a grand jury's decision is independent of a trial jury's verdict, it is often a good indicator of the direction that the official trial will take.

In this case, the prosecutor found that there was not enough evidence to bring these cases to trial, even though Garner's case was officially ruled a homicide and both men were unarmed.

These decisions are also controversial because grand juries usually choose to indict.

Reports have said that 99% of all cases that go before a federal grand jury end with the prosecution taking the case to criminal trial and so do the majority of state grand juries.

There is a famous quote from a former chief judge of New York that grand juries will indict a ham sandwich if the prosecution wants them to.

However, the statistics also show that grand juries rarely indict a police officer.

An investigation by the Houston Chronicle found that police have been merely immune from criminal charges and shootings in large cities.

For example, grand juries in Dallas, Texas reviewed 81 officer-related shootings between 2008 and 2012 and indicted only one person.

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