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Does that sound familiar? It should. A duly constituted jury already considered both those theories and quite properly rejected them. And just by the way, the black forelady said the jury had concluded that race was not a factor in the shooting. Not exactly grounds for maintaining that there is a substantial likelihood of conviction the second time around.

So the Department of Justice guidelines militate rather clearly against a second federal prosecution, and for the record, I'm inclined to doubt there will be one. But how would you like to have your life and liberty dependent on the Reno Justice Department's following its own policies? (Atty. Gen. Janet Reno is, of course, a woman of honor and integrity: When she ordered the attack on Waco, that was an innocent mistake.)

And those aren't the only legal proceedings the cops have to worry about. Immediately after the shooting itself, a battery of high-profile lawyers began campaigning for the right to sue the cops and the city civilly on behalf of Amadou's grieving mother-whose anguish would apparently be lessened by several million dollars. (But Paula Jones was in it for the money.)

CNBC's Loaded Question

The first dream team angling for the right to sue the cops consisted of Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr., Barry Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld. While these guys frequently materialize when someone is accused of murder-it's usually on behalf of the accused. Indeed, amid the wrangling between Amadou's mother and father for rights to the probable million-dollar payoff, various other chichi lawyers have stepped in for a shot to sue the police, too.

The only criminal defendants in the world who can expect to have this sort of legal talent arrayed against them are white cops.

Technically, a wrongful-death suit against the city and the cops shouldn't be worth very much. Liability is based on pain and suffering, future earnings, and financial loss to one's family. Diallo was single, had no children, was a street vendor, and died fairly quickly. That would typically be worth several hundred thousand dollars, if that. Most lawyers are estimating that the city will settle for millions of dollars.

In the wake of the jury's verdict acquitting the cops, television news programs grilled the jurors after introductions along these lines from CNBC's "Upfront Tonight": "Seven of the 12 jurors agreed to tell us how they reached their sweeping verdict, even though the officers admitted firing 41 shots at an unarmed man." (Emphasis added.) The interviewer, Rehema Ellis, asked the jurors such fairminded questions as, "Can you sleep comfortably' at night?" (In unison, the jurors said, "Yes.")

For Ins denunciations of the police in the Diallo case, Tme magazine crowned Al Sharpton "the voice of black outrage" in an article tided, "Big Al's Finest Hour." While the article chided Sharpton for refusing to apologize to Steven Pagones, the white former prosecutor Sharpton falsely accused of kidnapping and raping Tawana Brawley (and for which Sharpton was ordered to pay $65,000 in a defamation suit last year), the article modestly concluded: "Sharpton has the makings of a moral leader."