Trend Watch

Justice

Protests following two recent grand jury decisions ...

When:

Lookups spiked on December 3, 2014.

Why:

A grand jury in New York found that the police officer who held Eric Garner in a choke hold would not be charged. Mr. Garner died shortly after the incident, which was recorded on a phone camera by an onlooker. This grand jury verdict came a week after a grand jury in Missouri similarly refused to indict the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown. Both Eric Garner and Michael Brown were black, and both police officers are white; protests against racism took place across the country as a result of both decisions.

Justice means "the process or result of using laws to fairly judge and punish crimes and criminals." It comes from the Latin word with the same meaning, which entered English through French following the Norman Conquest, when the Normans introduced their legal system (and its vocabulary) to Britain.


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