Last night on "The Daily Show," host Jon Stewart opened the episode discussing a grand jury's "utterly depressing" decision not to indict the officer who placed a Staten Island man in a chokehold, reportedly causing his death.
Eric Garner's arrest and death were filmed by a bystander, and video of the confrontation with police -- in which Garner can be heard repeatedly telling officers, "I can't breathe" -- helped bring the case to prominence. The NYC medical examiner subsequently ruled Garner's death a homicide; its manner, the compression of his chest and neck.
Stewart attacked the grand jury's decision thus: "I think what is so utterly depressing is none of the ambiguities that exist in the Ferguson case exist in the State Island case. And yet the outcome is exactly the same: no crime, no trial. All harm, no foul."
The non-indictment sparked another wave of nationwide protests, including in Atlanta, and was announced just days after a Missouri grand jury declined to indict a police officer for shooting and killing an unarmed black teenager this summer.
"We are definitely not living in a post-racial society," Stewart said. "And I bet there are a lot of people out there wondering how much of a society we're living in at all."
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