(Mediaite) Just what America needed: A cable news shoutfest over the grand jury decision not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner.
CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin and TheBlaze’s Real News co-host Tara Setmayer squared off Wednesday in the aftermath of the Staten Island jury decision, and boy did it get tense and unnecessarily loud. Lots of hand-waving, cross-talking, and talking-past-each-other goodness that we’ve come to love from cable news.
To summarize: Hostin thinks there’s no good reason Officer Pantaleo shouldn’t at least see a trial for Garner’s death; Setmayer said we need to respect the jury process, and that since none of us were physically there (despite the lengthy, excruciating video), we can’t truly judge the situation without police evidence. Oh, and CNN legal analyst Danny Cevallos later joined via satellite to suggest that despite the chokehold being forbidden by NYPD guidelines, it is not “criminal,” strictly speaking.
Host Brooke Baldwin tried, on a few occasions, to calm the situation, but it was not easy.
