Prosecutors drop gun charges over and over. Some suspects go on to kill.
In 2012, Mario McGill and several other armed men broke into a Charlotte home and shot a man in the leg, police said.
The next year, McGill was accused of firing a gun near a woman’s feet.
And the year after that, police said, he slammed the same woman to the ground and pointed a handgun at her.
Prosecutors dismissed all three cases, saying the evidence was weak.
McGill was used to that.
From late 2007 to 2014, Mecklenburg prosecutors dismissed nine consecutive weapons charges against him, records show.
He was free on Jan. 5, 2015. That was the day McGill shot and killed Robert Miller, a childhood friend.
Lisa Miller says she’s unsure why McGill killed her 26-year-old son at a west Charlotte apartment complex. But she believes Mecklenburg County’s justice system is sending a dangerous message to those who commit crimes with guns.
“It says if they get off one time, they can continue to get off,” Miller said. “They’re taking people from their families. And it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Cases like McGill’s have contributed to an alarming statistic: From 2014 through 2018, Mecklenburg prosecutors dismissed 68 percent of weapons charges, a higher rate than any other urban county in North Carolina, a Charlotte Observer investigation found.
Statewide, prosecutors dismissed about half of all weapons charges during the five-year period.
Thank goodness Charlotte is too far to visit, I could never tolerate the insane Liberals there.
The investigation found:
▪ More than half of the roughly 300 people charged with murder in Mecklenburg County since 2015 had prior weapons charges.
For 28 murder suspects, a conviction on an earlier weapons charge — rather than a dismissal — would have put them behind bars at the time of the killing.
▪ Prosecutors regularly dismiss serious charges — including armed robbery. From 2014 through 2018, Mecklenburg prosecutors dropped 57 percent of all robbery charges — a rate higher than any other urban county in North Carolina and almost twice as high as Wake County.
▪ Former prosecutors said they had little choice but to plea bargain or dismiss most charges. That’s because prosecutors shoulder heavy caseloads and operate in a state-funded court system that is so overburdened that less than 1 percent of felony cases go to trial.
The idiot Sheriff in Charlotte is a Black Bo Jangles dancing for the Rich White Liberals who love the Diversity of watching young Black man kill each other!