Michael Brown shooting II

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Upchurch said:
That, especially the last bit, is entirely different than what was described and suggested.
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Actually it was exactly what was being suggested, you simply created a strawman and refused to listen when told you were barking up the wrong tree until I spelled it out for you. You made the assumption that increasing the number of cops meant loading them up in riot gear, not anyone else.
 
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Iamafalser said:
Sloppy post incident investigation: http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...152574-74e0-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html

I wondered about this myself the other day when reading Wilson's police questioning on August 10, the day after. The casual way is which the gun was handled I found particularly odd since it was a weapon that had just caused a death.
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It does seem a little sloppy, but unlikely to have affected the outcome. Generally things such as bagging the weapon and not allowing washing are to avoid the removal of evidence such as if the gun was the weapon, GRS, and DNA from blood. Since it was never in doubt about which gun was used or who fired it, there was no real fear of the weapon being switched, and not having the GSR or blood evidence wasn't really a factor in the case. So yes, sloppy, but not a fatally to the case in any way or means. He didn't get off because of sloppy police work.
 
theprestige said:
What political agenda would that be?
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Poor people are bad, black people tend to be poor, their problems are all their fault, it's understandable to treat poor people (especially black ones) like animals because of it, racism is made up or at the very least vastly overplayed. Yes, that's all an over-simplification of the agenda (especially the first part) but I think you understand.


Can you give an example of this in action?
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Unfortunately no, at least I can't directly cite it. To be more clear, I'm not taking the necessary steps to cite it. That would involve me looking back through some FOX News clips which might not even be available online, which I heard while visiting my mother's house a couple days a week over the last couple of months.

I don't believe my claim is extraordinary, but if you don't want to believe it based on my remembrance I won't hold it against you.
 
Quinn said:
Here’s the simple point that all the outraged blogs and posts I’ve read seem to be missing: It is possible for ALL of the following things to be true (and I’m not saying I think all of them are, but roll with me):

• Black citizens in Ferguson (and many other places like it) have been marginalized by generations of systemic racism from many directions.
• Ferguson police have a history of treating black citizens unfairly, and the black community’s mistrust of police is entirely justified.
• Wilson is a racist jerk.
• Wilson was justified in shooting Brown in self-defense.

The trueness or falseness of that last point is entirely independent of the trueness of falseness of the other three, much as some people would apparently like to pretend otherwise. Even if the rage bloggers’ worst condemnations of Wilson, the Ferguson police, and society are true, that still does not negate the possibility that Wilson acted justifiably in self defense in this instance. It is possible for a person to be racist jerk with a racist agenda in a racist system, and still legitimately need to use deadly force for self defense.
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Yes, but that just highlights the fact that ultimately was a question of fact, which is usually the realm of a jury trial. The key word is "possible". Bullets 2 & 3 are factual statements that arguably go directly to the sate of mind of the parties involved here. Bullet 4 is a legal question that can only be determined upon a resolution of the facts influenced by 2 & 3. I suspect a full trial would have ended favorably for Wilson, but the evidentiary hurdle of the GJ was easily met here, there was more than enough testimony that Brown did not pose an imminent threat. It should have gone to trial.
 
PhantomWolf said:
Actually it was exactly what was being suggested, you simply created a strawman and refused to listen when told you were barking up the wrong tree until I spelled it out for you. You made the assumption that increasing the number of cops meant loading them up in riot gear, not anyone else.
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There has been no mention of a police liaison with the community in this thread prior to your post. What was proposed was overwhelming police numbers with the intent to cow the community into obedience. Those are quite opposite concepts and certainly not what was proposed.
 
AP story summarizing the GJ evidence:
Ferguson jury docs show inconsistencies

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — Some witnesses said Michael Brown had been shot in the back. Another said he was face-down on the ground when Officer Darren Wilson "finished him off." Still others acknowledged changing their stories to fit published details about the autopsy or admitted that they did not see the shooting at all.

An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of grand jury documents reveals numerous examples of statements made during the shooting investigation that were inconsistent, fabricated or provably wrong. For one, the autopsies ultimately showed Brown was not struck by any bullets in his back.
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What people thought were facts about the Aug. 9 shooting have become intertwined with what many see as abuses of power and racial inequality in America.
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One woman, who said she was smoking a cigarette with a friend nearby, claimed she saw a second police officer in the passenger seat of Wilson's vehicle. When quizzed by a prosecutor, she elaborated: The officer was white, "middle age or young" and in uniform. She said she was positive there was a second officer — even though there was not.
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Another witness had told the FBI that Wilson shot Brown in the back and then "stood over him and finished him off." But in his grand jury testimony, this witness acknowledged that he had not seen that part of the shooting, and that what he told the FBI was "based on me being where I'm from, and that can be the only assumption that I have."

The witness, who lives in the predominantly black neighborhood where Brown was killed, also acknowledged that he changed his story to fit details of the autopsy that he had learned about on TV.

"So it was after you learned that the things you said you saw couldn't have happened that way, then you changed your story about what you seen?" a prosecutor asserted.

"Yeah, to coincide with what really happened," the witness replied.

Another man, describing himself as a friend of Brown's, told a federal investigator that he heard the first gunshot, looked out his window and saw an officer with a gun drawn and Brown "on his knees with his hands in the air." He added: "I seen him shoot him in the head."

But when later pressed by the investigator, the friend said he had not seen the actual shooting because he was walking down the stairs at the time and instead had heard details from someone in the apartment complex.
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Upchurch said:
There has been no mention of a police liaison with the community in this thread prior to your post. What was proposed was overwhelming police numbers with the intent to cow the community into obedience. Those are quite opposite concepts and certainly not what was proposed.
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Good grief. The way you cling to your strawman would make Judy Garland jealous.
 
Upchurch said:
There has been no mention of a police liaison with the community in this thread prior to your post. What was proposed was overwhelming police numbers with the intent to cow the community into obedience. Those are quite opposite concepts and certainly not what was proposed.
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No, he mentions a more relax and friendly police force. The only people that he stated would be "cowed" were the criminal element. So unless you think that the entire community are criminals, then no, you got what was said totally wrong.
 
stanfr said:
there was more than enough testimony that Brown did not pose an imminent threat. It should have gone to trial.
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Except that more witnesses stated that Brown was charging or moving towards Wilson that claimed that he wasn't, and a lot of the ones that claimed he wasn't, changed their stories at the GJ, admitting that they didn't actually see the shooting itself and just heard, or believed that what they had said was what happened. Likewise, the physical evidence itself is extremely consistent with Brown charging Wilson before being shoot.

It appears that you are saying that this evidence all should have been ignored.
 
PhantomWolf said:
Except that more witnesses stated that Brown was charging or moving towards Wilson that claimed that he wasn't, and a lot of the ones that claimed he wasn't, changed their stories at the GJ, admitting that they didn't actually see the shooting itself and just heard, or believed that what they had said was what happened. Likewise, the physical evidence itself is extremely consistent with Brown charging Wilson before being shoot.

It appears that you are saying that this evidence all should have been ignored.
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LOL--no im just speaking from experience. In my five years as a public defender, you know how many GJ presentations I saw end in a no-bill? Hint: think of an egg. Granted, that was NY where 'one could indict a ham sandwich' but it just underlies how absurd it is to have a non-independent prosecutor completely control how all this evidence was presented to the jury. You can bet your last dollar that the evidence if given in a jury trial by adversarial attorneys would have a completely different character than what you saw in this GJ. This had jury trial written all over it. (it also had eventual acquittal...but that's another issue...)
 
stanfr said:
LOL--no im just speaking from experience. In my five years as a public defender, you know how many GJ presentations I saw end in a no-bill? Hint: think of an egg. Granted, that was NY where 'one could indict a ham sandwich' but it just underlies how absurd it is to have a non-independent prosecutor completely control how all this evidence was presented to the jury. You can bet your last dollar that the evidence if given in a jury trial by adversarial attorneys would have a completely different character than what you saw in this GJ. This had jury trial written all over it. (it also had eventual acquittal...but that's another issue...)
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Problem is that to have actually gotten it to Jury Trial, the Prosecutor would have had to hidden all of the witnesses that started that Brown charged or moved towards Wilson, including two that told stories that almost matched Wilsons perfectly. He would have had to hidden the blood evidence that showed that Brown moved towards Wilson. He would have had to hide the scene photos and maps that showed that the shell casings were all in vicinity of the shooting and not spread out down the road as they would have had to have been for the witnesses' claims to have been right. He would have had to hide the autopsy results, all three of them. He would have had to have the jury instructed to disregard the witnesses who when questioned on the stand changed their story from what they had told the police initially in their statements, admitting that they didn't see the shooting itself.

What did he have left? And as a public defender, if your client was indicted on that sort of evidence, how would the trial go?
 
PhantomWolf said:
Problem is that to have actually gotten it to Jury Trial, the Prosecutor would have had to hidden all of the witnesses that started that Brown charged or moved towards Wilson, including two that told stories that almost matched Wilsons perfectly. He would have had to hidden the blood evidence that showed that Brown moved towards Wilson. He would have had to hide the scene photos and maps that showed that the shell casings were all in vicinity of the shooting and not spread out down the road as they would have had to have been for the witnesses' claims to have been right. He would have had to hide the autopsy results, all three of them. He would have had to have the jury instructed to disregard the witnesses who when questioned on the stand changed their story from what they had told the police initially in their statements, admitting that they didn't see the shooting itself.

What did he have left? And as a public defender, if your client was indicted on that sort of evidence, how would the trial go?
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I don't know--what im saying is that how the evidence is presented makes a huge difference in how a jury comes to decisions. We'll never know how the evidence would have been presented by an attorney truly interested in cross examining the hell out of evidence favorable to Wilson. I haven't looked through all the 'evidence' from this GJ but from what ive seen there was enough to take this to trial. You seem to think this was a fair and impartial presentation. I'm not so sure about that.

Incidentally, one reason I can't answer your question is that GJ proceeding are private--so I don't have the benefit of seeing many of them. I sat in on two of them as I recall and it was a very one-sided presentation! Sure, they tried to get around criticism of that point in this case by releasing all the evidence, but that just seems like a sorry attempt to overcome the inherent problems with this presentation.
 
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stanfr said:
I don't know--what im saying is that how the evidence is presented makes a huge difference in how a jury comes to decisions. We'll never know how the evidence would have been presented by an attorney truly interested in cross examining the hell out of evidence favorable to Wilson. I haven't looked through all the 'evidence' from this GJ but from what ive seen there was enough to take this to trial. You seem to think this was a fair and impartial presentation. I'm not so sure about that.
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Well I hope it was a fair and impartial presentation. You seem to think it shouldn't have been, but should have had anything that might have harmed an indictment stripped out. From the evidence I have seen, it shouldn't have even gone to GJ. Just from the physical evidence along, it's clear that most of the claims that the media spread about wide and far are total rubbish.

I suggest that you do look at all the evidence, they made it available for exactly that reason, so people can see that it wasn't just fudged.
 
stanfr said:
Incidentally, one reason I can't answer your question is that GJ proceeding are private--so I don't have the benefit of seeing many of them. I sat in on two of them as I recall and it was a very one-sided presentation! Sure, they tried to get around criticism of that point in this case by releasing all the evidence, but that just seems like a sorry attempt to overcome the inherent problems with this presentation.
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Yes, I'm aware that most are very one sided, but then they tend to have something to work with. When you start digging into the evidence you find that it either falls apart real quick, or it supports Wilson's version. When your witnesses that claimed that Brown was stationary, facing away from, or had his hands up all in their statements then crumble on the stand and admit that they didn't see the shooting, and just heard that is what happened, you're in trouble.
 
I think the outcome is the same anyway.

The GJ would have to be manipulated by the prosecutor to indict, imo.
So, the prosecutor would have to believe a crime was committed.

If they did indict, it doesn't go much farther anyway. It fails at an early hearing, imo.

Should it somehow get to trial, there's no chance of conviction, imo.

What the mob wanted was a murder conviction. That was never going to happen under any scenario as far as I can tell.
 
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