When Chaka Askin first learned of her uncle's death in 2012, none of it made sense.
"It was just shocking. I was upset. I wanted questions answered," recalls Askin.
Walter "Wayne" Folds was shot and killed by a Griffin Police officer after running from a park to avoid arrest.
"He was just a very loving, friendly man," remembers Askin, adding that Folds was a great father to his three young children.
The night before the shooting, Folds had cut his estranged wife with a box cutter when she surprised him in their darkened home.
The next morning they agreed to meet in Thomaston Mills Park so he could see his kids.
Griffin police showed up to meet him instead.
Sergeant Joseph Hudson, who was not in uniform, spotted Folds on a park bench and chased him into the woods.
In a struggle to handcuff the 53-year-old, the officer was scratched with that same box cutter. He got Folds face down on the ground, and shot him in the back of the head.
"It's not right. He took a life, a life that he cannot give back," said Janice Puckett, Folds' sister. "I want [the officer] tried. He needs to be put in jail for my brother."
A Spalding County grand jury thought so too, indicting Sgt. Hudson for involuntary manslaughter. But District Attorney Scott Ballard dropped the charge against the officer the next day.
"I didn't think we'd get a conviction because of the self-defense argument," said Ballard. "I was offended by the officer's actions. I certainly thought there was probable cause of a crime.
Investigative reporter Jodie Fleischer asked him why he didn't prosecute it.
"Because you're in this grey area between probable cause and proof beyond a reasonable doubt," Ballard replied, adding that he made the decision after hearing Officer Hudson's statement to the grand jury.
Hudson is still on the job in Griffin and did not return a call for comment.
Georgia is the only state that allows officers and other public officials to sit in the grand jury room and hear all of the evidence against them, before making a closing statement.
Private citizens who are accused of crimes do not get to hear the grand jury testimony against them or make a statement of any kind.
"No one else in our government, in this state, runs toward the danger of an armed individual," said Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills, who served as past president of Georgia's Sheriff's Association.
Current president, Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson, agreed, adding that officers deserve the right to explain the split second decisions they are forced to make.
But a Channel 2 Action News - Atlanta Journal Constitution investigation examined more than 170 police shooting deaths in the past five years, and found that not one officer went to trial.
Even in a case where GBI investigators believed the officers committed a crime, nothing happened to them.
"That is a problem," said GBI Director Vernon Keenan. "That law gives an officer certain rights but I don' t know that it serves the interest of justice."
Keenan added that most officer shootings of civilians are very obviously justified, but in the ones which don't appear to be justified, the Georgia law can create too big of a hurdle to get an indictment.
Byron Bennett served on a grand jury and heard the case of two south Georgia police officers who shot and killed an unarmed mother through her windshield.
He says he believed the officers' actions were criminal, but just couldn't vote against them.
"They were sitting there. I felt bad for the policemen," said Bennett. "They had tears all in their eyes."
Plus, the law prohibits grand jurors and prosecutors from questioning what the officers say.
"Have they said things that I didn't believe are factual? Yes," recalls DeKalb District Attorney Robert James.
James decided earlier this year to convene a civil grand jury to review every police shooting case, but that's rare.
Channel 2 and AJC reporters compiled and combed through 171 deadly Georgia police shooting cases in the past five years, and found well-over half were cleared by prosecutors.
Only nine went to a grand jury for consideration of criminal charges.
"There's always something that seems to trump facts, and that something is emotion," said Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.
Howard tried twice unsuccessfully to indict Union City Police officer Luther Lewis for murder.
Lewis shot and killed an unarmed teen twice in the back. But in a tearful closing statement Lewis told the grand jury the teen tried to reach up and grab his gun.
Howard says without the officer's statement, he feels he would have gotten an indictment.
Out of all 171 cases, the only Georgia officer in the last five years indicted for a deadly police shooting was the Griffin officer who killed Walter Wayne Folds.
"They could have put him in handcuffs. They could have carried him to jail and he could have been tried for whatever he had done," said grand juror Geraldine Jackson. "[Instead] he got the death penalty."
Jackson now wonders why the district attorney even brought the case to the grand jury, since he opted not to take the officer to trial despite the indictment.
"Something is wrong with the system and it needs to be fixed," said Jackson.
The Folds relatives had no idea about the officer's indictment or the case dismissal, until Channel 2 knocked on their door.
"Why is he still walking the street?" asked Puckett. "If it was one of us that shot and killed somebody like that, we would be behind bars."
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