I doubt I'll be able to follow this thread since it's moving way too fast for someone who has a full time job and numerous hobbies (aside from being a skeptic) so I'm going put my initial thoughts down all in one last post, since it is an interesting case for me.
I probably am about as unbiased as you can get here. I can fully understand both sides of the 'debate' and sympathize with both points of view. The problem, of course, is that there is too much yelling at each other and introduction of irrelevant tangents (like the post and my response above!) and not enough dealing with the known facts, and waiting for facts to be known.
I was a public defender for 5 years in NY and I have represented thousands of accused people, the majority of whom were minorities (im 'white'), I have seen first-hand instances of police brutality, and I have witnessed racist judges and racist police. I have tried cases that involved police misconduct and allegations of racism in front of a jury--my very first jury trial was front page news because my black client alleged racial discrimination as a defense to the charges against him. I have worked closely with police and prosecutors, and unlike some of my colleagues, I never viewed it as an 'us vs them' adversarial process; I naively held to the noble idea of 'seeking the truth', which unfortunately gets laid by the wayside in a system that is designed to be adversarial. While I saw legitimate instances of discrimination and racial profiling I also heard from plenty of clients who used race as an easy excuse for their own self-imposed problems. As much as I disagree with Skeptic Tank and others who argue for 'racial purity'--I think that's archaic nonsense--I have sympathy for the conservative view that racial minorities need to take responsibility and step up to the plate to solve the issues within their own community. In short, the solution to racial disparity and discrimination is to take positive steps, not to point fingers or play the blame game.
This case really comes down to a very simple set of facts, since we already have both sides agreeing to the majority of what happened that day. Either Brown was in the process of clearly surrendering, or running away--or he was charging the officer or doing something that made the officer imminently fear for his safety. It's really that simple. Let's hope that the forensics along with numerous eye-witness statements can paint a clearer picture of what happened. Unfortunately, we may never know exactly what happened (as in Zimmerman). But all the speculation is pointless. I suspect there will be a trial--there almost has to be given what we know. I'll bow out until then, all the pre-trial bickering is really too distasteful.
