So What About The Jury Verdict?

[trichcycler]

is assaulting a store owner during a robbery a felony ?

[Restorium2]

Red herring alert;

 

Wilson didn't even know about the robbery when he killed Brown. That's all BS that confuses our forward progress. Try not to chase your tails with emotional appeals that are designed to make you react in a certain way. Focus on the way to have this not happen again. That's the only way out of this rabbit hole, for everyone who really wants to. Fix the law that protects a cop that makes a mistake that kills someone. He should have to explain himself in court so all cops can learn from it. Make sure cops have the proper training to handle situations like this one. Don't hire meat heads that want to be cops. This Wilson guy says he has no remorse. He is a meat head. Shouldn't have been a cop in the first place. 

[imiubu]

Any human who kills with out remorse is a sociopath.

These types of individuals behave outside the parameters of society.

 

Seems the way of the future in law enforcement.

[Wild Bill]

I'm here in St. Louis for the holiday and the general response is one of sadness.

 

A young man who had no respect for others and thought his size entitled him to bully people to get what he wanted ran into a man with a gun. One dead and one with an albatross around his neck for the rest of his life.

 

Instead of directing their anger at those responsible the populace and those from outside who just came for the mayhem decided to take their aggression out on what is essentially themselves.

 

Much like Detroit in 1967 businesses are gone that will probably not come back. Many of these were small minority owned businesses who had put all their money into something they thought they could improve their lives with. One especially sad one was a bakery owned by a single mother.

 

Video shows teenagers trying to smash her window and when they couldn't they smashed the windows of an office next door in order to steal the furniture so they could use it to smash the bakery window.

 

They didn't even steal anything, just trashed the place. Now a young black woman with children is forced try and rebuild in what should have been her busiest time.

 

The police over responded and turned a bad situation into something unimaginably worse. While Mike Brown's natural father called for peace his step father exhorted the crowd to "Burn this b*tch down!"

 

His mother is facing charges for attempting to rob T-shirt venders selling Justice for Mike Brown shirts. Trying to make a buck off of human tradgedy.

 

The police have little regard for the people and the people have no respect for them. It seems many of the protesters have no self respect either.

 

What could have been a meaningful message to the world was turned into a national disgrace by trigger happy cops and folks looking for free flat screens.

 

Happy Thanksgiving from St. Louis!

Edited November 28, 2014 by Wild Bill

[cristinew]

The Police  want you to think it was a robbery and he was high on pot, but the cop did not stop the kids for a robbery, , It was jay walking and a big mouth that got him shot,

[t-pain]

anybody read those witness testimonies yet? 

 

 

"And it certainly looked like a leg shot to me, the way he staggered... (chuckles)"

Det. OK

"Uh, spun around. Uh.. and.. right after .. right after he was hit, he turned around and he started back toward the police officer."

Det. ok.

"and.. I'm.. we're in a residential neighborhood. There's bystanders everywhere, there's people everywhere. I .. what i saw was the officer gunned down somebody who had apparently been in a firefight with him."

 

guy witnessed a murder and chuckles about it. 

theres some interesting witness reports in there...

Edited November 28, 2014 by t-pain

[cristinew]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/25/legal-scholars-praise-ferguson-grand-jury-fairness/

 

Legal scholars praise Ferguson grand jury for fairness beyond the norm

 

 

Legal experts across the country agree that while the process that led to a grand jury's decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, was unusual, it was not unfair. Rather if it was anything unusual, it was in its fairness and openness.

Lawyers and academics told The Washington Times that, despite their personal opinions on the case, which has sparked riots over police brutality, St. Louis county prosecutor Robert McCulloch sought unbiased justice in presenting the jury with every piece of evidence and then making that evidence public.

"It was the most thorough grand jury investigation that I've ever heard of," said Stephen Saltzburg, a professor of law at George Washington University Law School.

Media outlets and supporters of Mr. Brown have said that Mr. McCulloch's prosecution was unusual because he did not go in with the goal of seeking an indictment in secret, as most prosecutors do.

But Richard Kelsey, assistant dean for management and planning at George Mason University law school, said that what makes this case more unusual is that Mr. McCulloch sought justice rather than an indictment.

"More recently everyone has head the statement that 'a good prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich,'" Mr. Kelsey said. "It is true that it is usually easy to get an indictment, but is that a just process? I would say no."

Legal scholars say that Mr. McCulloch's decision to release the evidence presented to the grand jury for public scrutiny was also unprecedented, since grand-jury hearings are usually shrouded in secrecy, both while going on and after the fact.

"Usually you don't hear what evidence they considered," Mr. Saltzburg said. "I give the prosecutor top marks in terms of transparency and accountability."

The Brown family and their supporters argue that if the prosecutor had championed harder for an indictment, a full trial could have led to a conviction. But lawyers say in this case, a strong push to indict Officer Wilson merely based on the easier legal standard of "probable cause" would have merely set up a trial where the prosecution likely would have failed to get a guilty verdict based on the much stiffer "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard.

"Even if you could have gotten an indictment, what good does it do to get an indictment and then have your case thrown out," said Gabriel Chin, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Law.

"You go ahead and do a weak grand jury presentation, but if you do it in a case that's actually weak, how are you going to feel when you are prosecuting a case that you really shouldn't be prosecuting," Mr. Chin said.

Lawyers say in general, grand jury cases are subject to pro-prosecution bias because a district attorney will try to summarize their case to obtain an indictment, possibly hiding some of the evidence. Meanwhile, the accused has no right to an attorney, to present evidence on his behalf, or even to know that his indictment is being considered.

"What you hope is that it's a neutral process, but it's not when you don't have anybody in there for the other side," said Lee Cox, a Texas-based criminal defense attorney and a former prosecutor.

Mr. Cox argued that in many cases where a grand jury is seeking an indictment for a police officer, the prosecutor will try to protect the officer.

"Officers hardly ever get indicted for anything. It's common of the prosecutor and the police, they are in law enforcement together. So the public's perception is that nothing is going to happen to the officer anyway because they are both in law enforcement," Mr. Cox said.

Criminal defense attorney Guy Fronstin agreed that there is an "incestuous" relationship between prosecutors and police in grand jury proceedings but admitted that in this case that relationship did not impede justice.

"The grand jury system is a one-sided Kangaroo Court, which virutally always indicts since jurors hear the prosecutor's version of events and rule without having ever heard from the defense," Mr. Fronstin said.

"However, due to the brotherhood between prosecutors and police officers, when a police officer is the target of a prosecutor's case, it is almost predetermined that the officer will not be indicted. The incestuous relationship between prosecutors and officers did not come into play in Ferguson because there simply was not enough evidence for the grand jury to find probable cause that Officer Wilson committed a crime; the grand jury got it right," he said.

Although the jury did not indict Officer Wilson on state homicide or other charges, the case is not necessarily over.

The federal government could charge Officer Wilson with civil-rights violations, and the Brown family can still bring civil lawsuits against Officer Wilson and/or the Ferguson police department

"The family could sue and get their day in court," said Mr. Saltzburg adding that although football star O.J. Simpson was actually acquitted of murder charges, he was still found liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in a lawsuit.

"I'd be surprised if they didn't bring [to a civil court] the public stance that they took that this was unjustified," Mr. Saltzburg said.

Justice Scalia Explains Why Ferguson Grand Jury Was Completely Wrong

The high court's most reactionary judge's ruling flies in the face of Ferguson's prosecutor's actions.

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Photo Credit: via youtube

November 27, 2014  |  

 

 

After a Missouri grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown this week, it became clear immediately that Ferguson prosecutor Bob McCulloch presented the case in a way that was bound to fail. Many critics say this appears to have been entirely intentional on the prosecutor's part.

What those critics (and McCulloch) might not know is that the Supreme Court's conservative firebrand, Antonin Scalia, explicitly laid out the role of grand juries in the 1992 Supreme Court case of United States v. Williams, and it is in stark contrast with what McCulloch did. Scalia wrote:

It is the grand jury’s function not ‘to enquire … upon what foundation [the charge may be] denied,’ or otherwise to try the suspect’s defenses, but only to examine ‘upon what foundation [the charge] is made’ by the prosecutor. Respublica v. Shaffer, 1 Dall. 236 (O. T. Phila. 1788); see also F. Wharton, Criminal Pleading and Practice § 360, pp. 248-249 (8th ed. 1880). As a consequence, 

neither in this country nor in England has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence presented.

The passage was first highlighted by attorney Ian Samuel, a former clerk to Justice Scalia.

McCulloch allowed Wilson to testify for hours and made sure the grand jury was aware of every possible piece of evidence that could exculpate the cop. In his rambling press conference Monday night, McCulloch explained that the refusal to indict resulted from the combination of contradictory eyewitness testimony and other exculpatory evidence. But it was immediately obvious to legal experts that the way the prosecutor presented the evidence virtually guaranteed that there would be no indictment, and therefore no trial. As the cliche goes, a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. But, it should be added, the prosecutor has to want the ham sandwich to be indicted. 

In contrast with Scalia, here are McCulloch's instructions to the grand jury before they began deliberating:

And you must find probable cause to believe that Darren Wilson did not act in lawful self-defense and you must find probable cause to believe that Darren Wilson did not use lawful force in making an arrest. If you find those things, which is kind of like finding a negative, you cannot return an indictment on anything or true bill unless you find both of those things. Because both are complete defenses to any offense and they both have been raised in his, in the evidence.

Sounds a bit like a defense lawyer, no? It was only by McCulloch's inclusion of Wilson's testimony, that evidence to support these “complete defenses,” was heard. Either McCulloch is completely ignorant of the history of how grand juries work as codified by Scalia, or something more sinister.  

Scalia has not commented directly on the Ferguson ruling.

 

[cristinew]

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/parents-police-officer-murdered-unarmed-son-in-michigan-up/29107152 

[Wild Bill]

Just read this in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The cause of the trouble has been found.

We should have known that reefer makes negroes go crazy, Anslinger told us years ago!

 

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/prosecutors-repeatedly-stressed-brown-s-pot-use/article_71a79204-ff00-5070-9d1e-96098250e723.html

[cristinew]

Thank God for I Cloud ,  The Police deleted this but they could not get to the cloud , When filing them back it up ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GncaM_lt3-E  

[outsideinthecold]

Personally I don't think Officer Wilson should have stood trial. Or that Mr. Brown should have died for that matter.

 

They were just the unfortunate ones who happened to find themselves in a situation that was inevitable to happen sooner or later.

 

Like the movie 'Contagion' this was just another time the wrong bat met the wrong pig.

 

But condemning Officer Wilson who was a both a perpetrator and a victim of police excess is as narrow-minded as believing Mister Brown was an innocent school boy who had a wonderful life cut short by uniformed assassin.

[Wild Bill]

Thank goodness those courageous officers were willing to sacrifice their fists to save us all from a pregnant woman and a man trying to put a sock in his mouth. They'll probably get a medal for valor.

[outsideinthecold]

I doubt Mister Brown consumed much pot as fifteen nanograms is the DOT lower testing limit.

 

Twelve nanograms wouldn't qualify Mr. Brown for a 7411 probation violation.

 

I do hold the police and Governor Nixon very responsible for the violence.

 

If they had only scattered their stash of confiscated Marijuana around Ferguson before announcing the Grand Jury's decision the protests would have died before they got started.

Edited November 28, 2014 by outsideinthecold

[Wild Bill]

Edited November 30, 2014 by Wild Bill

[cristinew]

Just read this in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The cause of the trouble has been found.

We should have known that reefer makes negroes go crazy, Anslinger told us years ago!

 

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/prosecutors-repeatedly-stressed-brown-s-pot-use/article_71a79204-ff00-5070-9d1e-96098250e723.html

Yes it was on CNN also,  Now Police have the right to shot if you have that in your blood,

[phaquetoo]

This may be the problem with Missouri law, I am trying to understand this better to see if it pertains to Michigan:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleeing_felon_rule

If it pertains to Mi law can I shoot some one when I catch him stealing my narcotics?    

 

judge jury and executioner!

 

Peace

[phaquetoo]

That isn't true.  Maybe you're a particularly good shot.  The time it takes to draw, level, aim, fire is long enough as it is without trying to draw a bead on a moving leg, etc.  That's why they are trained to shoot in the chest like Phaq said.  Biggest target and more of a chance of hitting the target if your trajectory is slightly off.  This isn't the movies and the adrenaline and life/death emotional part is a little different than deer hunting.

 

I had a buddy from high school who was an Army Ranger.  He was taking a tinkle when on a mission in Iraq but still in supposedly friendly territory.  He was engaged at about 15 feet by an enemy soldier.  His M4 was slung over his shoulder to free up his hands (which never would've been the case if it wasn't friendly territory).  Luckily his hands were in a position to immediately draw his m9 berretta.  He got off 7 rounds before the "haji," as he called him, hit the dirt.  The insurgent was hit by 3 rounds fired by a buddy's M4 and not a single round from the m9.  This is a guy with more training than most any cop and a guy who was on his 3rd tour in Iraq.  He was humiliated for missing.  He was teased from then on out for being caught with his dick out both literally and figuratively.  He wasn't hit so he was lucky but the funny part of the story was that a common phrase used was "don't be caught with your dick out" and it wasn't meant literally yet he fit the bill literally and figuratively.  Luckily for him the insurgent's gun jammed and he didn't get a single round off.  Unfortunate part was that the insurgent was carrying an Amercian m16a2.  Our own weapons were used against us a lot in Iraq.

 

And yes I own several handguns and I range fire them plenty.  Never hunted with one though.

I carry a side arm when I deer hunt,,,to many times I had a deer come up on me from the wrong side, and by the time I can get my 30.06 around to get a shot off the deer is gone, but my side arm is right there, 357 boom dead deer!

 

when our soldiers in iraq and afagan are in arms fighting they need to clean their weapons a few times a day to keep them acurate,  sand is the enemy to any kind of short or long gun, our own guys have to many misfires!

 

That was a good story about your friend and Im realy happy things worked out for him, I would rather be teased about getting caught with my dick out than be dead lol!

 

My old man has more trophy's than god, from all the yrs he was a cop and had to do regular target practice, right in the basement of his police station and the contests he basicaly had to enter because he was the best shot in his dept!

 

but cops are in no way shape or form taught to shoot to injure, they are taught to shoot to kill, and that is shoot for the chest, like deer hunters we shoot for the front shoulder, which will break their front legs and or go thru their vitale organs and kill them,,,how many times has any one shot a deer and dropped them dead with one shot?  I have! and im sure many more have also, I dont like tracking deer, but I have had to also do that!

 

Peace

[trichcycler]

Michigan Cop Stops Black Man for Walking With Hands in His Pockets in Freezing Weather http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/11/30/brandon_mckean_michigan_cop_stops_black_man_for_walking_with_hands_in_his.html

You were walking by … you were making people nervous,” the white police officer answers when McKean asks him why he was stopped.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“By walking by?” an incredulous McKean asks.

 

 

“Yes, they said you had your hands in your pockets,” answers the officer, who also begins to record the encounter with his phone.

 

 

 

“Wow, walking by having your hands in your pockets makes people nervous to call the police when it’s snowing outside?”

[Restorium2]

Weak cops being scared. No one called the cops with a serious complaint.  911 will not do a thing unless someone reports seeing a deadly weapon. They would just laugh if you said someone was walking with their hands in their pockets. 

Edited December 1, 2014 by Restorium2

[Habenero]

 

 

but cops are in no way shape or form taught to shoot to injure, they are taught to shoot to kill, and that is shoot for the chest, like deer hunters we shoot for the front shoulder, which will break their front legs and or go thru their vitale organs and kill them,,,how many times has any one shot a deer and dropped them dead with one shot?  I have! and im sure many more have also, I dont like tracking deer, but I have had to also do that!

 

Peace

Right.  That's the training.  The reason is because it is very hard to aim for and hit a limb and even if you did it won't necessarily incapacitate.

[Restorium2]

Right.  That's the training.  The reason is because it is very hard to aim for and hit a limb and even if you did it won't necessarily incapacitate.

And with that in mind you don't go right up near a guy who can physically clean your clock until you have back up because you know you are going to have to kill him if he resists. Period. 

[Willy]

Michigan Cop Stops Black Man for Walking With Hands in His Pockets in Freezing Weather http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/11/30/brandon_mckean_michigan_cop_stops_black_man_for_walking_with_hands_in_his.html

You were walking by … you were making people nervous,” the white police officer answers when McKean asks him why he was stopped.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“By walking by?” an incredulous McKean asks.

 

 

“Yes, they said you had your hands in your pockets,” answers the officer, who also begins to record the encounter with his phone.

 

 

 

“Wow, walking by having your hands in your pockets makes people nervous to call the police when it’s snowing outside?”

Nazis / unfreakin believable!! and they wonder why we hate them....

[trichcycler]

I keep hoping this is in someway the fault of the media.

[Restorium2]

I keep hoping this is in someway the fault of the media.

Not with that video showing the cop lying and doing something stupid that could have gotten someone killed. He made the same mistake Wilson did. Left himself no alternative to shooting this guy if he resisted. Hang back until you have back up. Observe from a distance until you have enough muscle to not have to kill the guy if he freaks out on you. 

Edited December 1, 2014 by Restorium2

[Wild Bill]

Michigan Cop Stops Black Man for Walking With Hands in His Pockets in Freezing Weather

 

Good thing he didn't put his hands up, he might have been shot!