Merged O.j simpson guilty or not guilty.

[Rolfe]

Man is mistaken for a suicide bomber, is approached by 20 cops and runs from them after they ID themselves as the police, tragedy ensues:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4712061.stm

Just a quick correction here. de Menezes didn't "run from 20 cops after they IDed themselves as police". That was false reporting, and absolutely proved not to be the case by subsequent enquiries. This is probably the #1 example of why "eye-witness testimony" should be regarded with a very critical eye.

de Menezes was sitting in his seat on the train when the armed police entered it. The armed police were entirely unidentified and not at that point waving guns. When he realised that another "passenger" (one of the plain-clothes surveillance squad) was pointing him out to these newcomers, he looked up from his newspaper, and then, as he was approached, he stood up.

One of the policemen grasped him round the torso and upper arms and forced him back into his seat. In that position he was shot seven (I think) times in the head at point-blank range.

It's unfortunate that the fantasy version concocted by an imaginative bystander was half way round the world before the truth was figured out. I'm just posting this to set the record straight.

Rolfe.

 

[cyclonic]

Just a quick correction here. de Menezes didn't "run from 20 cops after they IDed themselves as police". That was false reporting, and absolutely proved not to be the case by subsequent enquiries. This is probably the #1 example of why "eye-witness testimony" should be regarded with a very critical eye.

de Menezes was sitting in his seat on the train when the armed police entered it. The armed police were entirely unidentified and not at that point waving guns. When he realised that another "passenger" (one of the plain-clothes surveillance squad) was pointing him out to these newcomers, he looked up from his newspaper, and then, as he was approached, he stood up.

One of the policemen grasped him round the torso and upper arms and forced him back into his seat. In that position he was shot seven (I think) times in the head at point-blank range.

It's unfortunate that the fantasy version concocted by an imaginative bystander was half way round the world before the truth was figured out. I'm just posting this to set the record straight.

Rolfe.

Thats really bad.

 

[Rolfe]

Yeah, it was indeed very, very bad. However, it turned out that nobody was at fault and the commander in charge of the operation just got a gong in the recent New Year's honours list.

Sigh.

Rolfe.

 

[Belz...]

There is "guilty in criminal court" and there is "guilty as an objective fact". OJ is the latter, but not the former.

Although I know it's true in a lot of cases, I hope you don't ignore court decisions on a regular basis. Otherwise any accused declared innocent would be as good as guilty, anyway.

 

[cyclonic]

Yeah, it was indeed very, very bad. However, it turned out that nobody was at fault and the commander in charge of the operation just got a gong in the recent New Year's honours list.

Sigh.

Rolfe.

Holy $%&@! "NOBODY WAS AT FAULT! thats hard to believe.
How many fired the seven bullets?
Did the victim have his hands in his bag?

 

[cyclonic]

Judging alleged criminals by their behavior after the crime is a prejudiced and simplistic way of thinking and one you should almost always avoid.

It certainly didn't help lindy chamberlain when the australian public fed by the media in a feeding frenzy, convicted her and hung her out to dry on the 6.00 news. shameful australian history.

So maybe we should leave judging to professionals..... wait, what about de menezes?

Ok, i get your point now EeneyMinnieMoe, i agree with you.

 

[Rolfe]

Holy $%&@! "NOBODY WAS AT FAULT! thats hard to believe.
How many fired the seven bullets?
Did the victim have his hands in his bag?

I think it was two people who fired the bullets, just off the top of my head.

The victim didn't have a bag. He wasn't carrying anything at all, having left his toolbox at the house where he was returning to finish a job (he was an electrician). He picked up the free newspaper on his way into the station, used his season ticket to get past the barrier, went slowly down the escalator, sprinted the last few yards when he saw the train was already in the station with its doors open (but it turned out it wasn't actually about to depart, which is a pity considering what happened next), got on the train, looked around to select which seat he was going to choose, then sat down to read the newspaper.

He was wearing a white t-shirt, denim jeans and a short denim jacket which was flapping loose (not buttoned). It should have been obvious he had no suicide belt or rucksack. He had originally been (correctly) identified as Caucasian whereas the suspect was Asian. However, hyped-up armed policemen who were genuinely in fear of their lives believed they had been told to kill the man, so they did.

And this is a complete derail, and the full details can be found in older threads about the case. I just wanted to set the record straight when someone linked to an early and entirely wrong account of what happened. (And to appease Luciana, who was very upset about it when it happened because the victim was Brazilian.)

Rolfe.

 

[Ian Osborne]

It's unfortunate that the fantasy version concocted by an imaginative bystander was half way round the world before the truth was figured out. I'm just posting this to set the record straight.

If memory serves, the eyewitness misidentified the first chasing policeman as the suspect, which is why she spoke about him leaping the turnstiles (de Menezes did nothing of the sort) and said he was wearing a heavy padded coat (de Menezes wore a lightweight denim jacket, but the lead copper wore a heftier coat).

 

[cyclonic]

I think it was two people who fired the bullets, just off the top of my head.

The victim didn't have a bag. He wasn't carrying anything at all, having left his toolbox at the house where he was returning to finish a job (he was an electrician). He picked up the free newspaper on his way into the station, used his season ticket to get past the barrier, went slowly down the escalator, sprinted the last few yards when he saw the train was already in the station with its doors open (but it turned out it wasn't actually about to depart, which is a pity considering what happened next), got on the train, looked around to select which seat he was going to choose, then sat down to read the newspaper.

He was wearing a white t-shirt, denim jeans and a short denim jacket which was flapping loose (not buttoned). It should have been obvious he had no suicide belt or rucksack. He had originally been (correctly) identified as Caucasian whereas the suspect was Asian. However, hyped-up armed policemen who were genuinely in fear of their lives believed they had been told to kill the man, so they did.

And this is a complete derail, and the full details can be found in older threads about the case. I just wanted to set the record straight when someone linked to an early and entirely wrong account of what happened. (And to appease Luciana, who was very upset about it when it happened because the victim was Brazilian.)

Rolfe.

What about all the other people on that carriage who witnessed the shooting they would be far from ok.

 

[Rolfe]

If memory serves, the eyewitness misidentified the first chasing policeman as the suspect, which is why she spoke about him leaping the turnstiles (de Menezes did nothing of the sort) and said he was wearing a heavy padded coat (de Menezes wore a lightweight denim jacket, but the lead copper wore a heftier coat).

The eyewitness you're talking about was simply mistaken, as you point out. Nobody noticed de Menezes going down the escalator because he was entirely unremarkable. The first anyone noticed was the pursuit squad in heavy flak jackets leaping the turnstiles.

However there was another "eyewitness" who presented a complete taradiddle to the press, about a man running along the platform pursued by armed men, "looking like a hunted fox" as he glanced back at his pursuers, then tripping at the entrance to the train and falling, upon which the pursuers fell on him and shot him five times.

When the true story came out, pieced together from some security cameras (some weren't working or maybe the footage was "lost") and the accounts of the real eyewitnesses, this guy was traced and asked for his comments. He refused to give another interview at that stage.

It's an absolute object lesson on the reliability of eyewitness accounts as told to the press in the initial hours of an incident.

Rolfe.

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

It certainly didn't help lindy chamberlain when the australian public fed by the media in a feeding frenzy, convicted her and hung her out to dry on the 6.00 news. shameful australian history.

So maybe we should leave judging to professionals..... wait, what about de menezes?

Ok, i get your point now EeneyMinnieMoe, i agree with you.

Thanks .

For what it is worth, I did try finding cases where a long term murder investigation was underway and the prime suspect fled to avoid a miscarriage of justice but was later proved to have been innocent. As you said, something to parallel OJ but in reverse. I didn't find a single one I could point to (aside from Alfred Hitchcock movies starring Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant). All the suspect-makes-a-run-for-it cases were cases where the suspect (or suspects) actually were guilty.

And I actually have a very good knowledge of crime stories, too, as I've read a lot on the subject and watched a lot of Court TV and Dominick Dunne. And I couldn't think of one from my store of knowledge.

When it comes to bizarre behavior on the part of most likely innocent defendants, however, I can point to Jesse Friedman (wrongly convicted for mass child molestation in a then notorious mass molestation case in the 1980s that took place in Long Island) dancing on the steps of the courthouse and clowning around with his brothers as he was about to be sentenced to 13-18 years in prison and Amanda Knox turning a cartwheel in a police station. Both were interpreted as coldness and callousness when they were the reverse- evidence of how scared and overwhelmed the young defendant was.

 

[Galileo]

OJ Simpson is innocent. He proved at his trial that evidence was planted by the police. F. Lee Bailey proved that the time window to allow enough time for OJ to do it. And the state did not present a believable motive.

Jason Simpson was the real killer.

 

[cyclonic]

OJ Simpson is innocent.

ROFLMAO! everyone is innocent in your world.

He proved at his trial that evidence was planted by the police.

Why were the 'proven guilty' police not charged then?
In California the penalty for a cop who frames someone in a murder case is DEATH.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtCSlMWT7to

And the state did not present a believable motive.

"IF I CAN'T HAVE HER , NO ONE CAN!' is not a believable motive?

Jason Simpson was the real killer.

Friday the 13 movie was like the matrix, nothing to do with REALITY.