Probably better for the overall justice system then the three rednecks going away - if prosecutors have to start worrying about justice, maybe we’ll actually get some.
Why did this even go to trial? On what possible basis could anyone have expected an acquittal?? I remember the Twinkie defense, but not the Toenail defense.
Well, that’s sort of how the legal system works. Can’t just lock someone up without a trial in this county. Or at least you shouldn’t. The more pertinent question instead is how did this almost NOT go to trial. And as noted above prosecutor misconduct seems to be a big part of the answer to that one.
On the basis of ingrained cultural racism, that’s how. This verdict is triumph of reason over irrationality. But let’s not kid ourselves that it couldn’t have gone the other way if you got the “right” mix of jurors on the wrong day. At the very least we might have gotten a hung jury because one stubborn asshole refused to convict good white men. Times are very slowly changing, but sadly humans have a seemingly bottomless capacity for irrationality.
Remember that the video became public because Bryan’s lawyers sent it to a tv station. They thought, and they repeated this yesterday in a scrum after the verdict, that the video demonstrated that their client acted lawfully and self-defence applied. They hadn’t anticipated that the video would be what triggered the charges and would be used by the prosecutors as the crucial evidence that they committed an assault and murder.
I assume you are wondering why they didn’t plea to a lesser offense. They may not have been given the option, or not one they would accept. After the public outrage over both the event and the attempted cover-up, letting them plea to like, manslaughter, would have created a shitstorm.
There was a report that Bryan asked for a plea deal but the prosecutors refused.
And the inevitable speculation has started about the grounds for appeal:
Personally, my reaction is the judge made the right calls here.
The case turns on what information the three accuseds had at the time. Trying to put in information unknown to them about their victim should be irrelevant.
Also don’t see what “use-of-force” means here, other than to build an argument that “I had a gun pointed at him and he shouldn’t have come at me, so I let him have it,” which seems to have been the self-defence claim.
Well, one of them used to be a cop, and US “use of force” rules for cops is insanely biased in favor of the cops.
So they might have been trying to muddy the waters, and say, “The former cop was just doing what he was trained to do, and so was his son, by osmosis, or something, I guess?”
That is the ultimate irony of this sad case. The lesson should be: don’t talk to police. Unless you’re a racist and a murderer, in which case go ahead and video-record your crime and offer it up so that not only police see it, but enough of the world to express outrage and overcome the racist system that has hitherto sheltered you from justice. Don’t just talk to police.
It’s my understanding that the “use of force” expert testimony usually comes into play when the trial involves a sworn law enforcement officer.
Which these defendants weren’t. I think that’s why the judge wouldn’t let them use one. Travis tried to act as his own “use of force” expert while testifying - I think the prosecution objected, they thought it was a back door way of getting in the testimony, but the objections were overruled.
This is an old article, but the information in it was new to me. Apparently Daddy McMichael skipped out on much of his required training, including use of force training - a lot, to the point where he was explicitly stripped of his law enforcement powers and prohibited from acting as a law enforcement officer.
I’m wondering if the prosecution was blocked from brining this up, and if it would have been let in if Greg McMichael had testified.
I think the defense did a laughably horrible job, I actually did laugh during some of the testimony from the neighbors “terrified by the crime wave”, specifically that of the housewife whose husband always seemed to be running off to “protect” the single mom who lived nearby. I think they were just hoping for one racist who would buy the “citizen defenders of the community” bullshit instead of realizing that the defendants were, to quote the close captioning on my TV……”ask wholes”.
I read the story about Bryan’s asking for a plea deal, but that allegedly didn’t happen until after the trial was well underway, maybe not even until after the defense rested. I wonder if he could have gotten one if he’d cooperated sooner.
I was also thinking that his lawyers antics ……all the complaining about black pastors and woke mobs….might have been an attempt at getting some right-wing media coverage favorable to his client…….”Woke Mob Influences Trial, Good White Men Railroaded”, or something like that,
But it didn’t work, AFAICT, outlets like Fox are taking the “This totally righteous verdict proves there is no racism in America” spin, while the more radical right-wing outlets are basically ignoring the whole story. As of yesterday, at least ….they may get bolder.
Disagree. The defense they presented was terrible, but that’s because that’s all that was available to them. They polished that turd to the best of their ability. They just couldn’t change that it was a turd.
I think their failure/inability to properly spin that narrative (or to have it taken up) was the temporally adjacent Rittenhouse trial. But for that already satiating the appetite for a “good guy with gun” self-defense narrative (and >cringe< being a more plausible case for self-defense in spite of my persistent belief that Rittenhouse is a murderer), the McMichaels and friend might well have been the darlings instead. But as things unfolded, they became the exception that “proves” the rule (about the good guy with a gun being the best thing for America).
That is, the fact a jury and the media was able to be distinguish the McMichaels from the “true” good guy with a gun model (the likes of Rittenhouse) means (to a certain spectrum of the media and the viewing public) that the good guy with a gun theory is still reliable and sound and there is nothing to see here folks, no need to rethink gun culture or to fundamentally remake America.
Yeah, of course I know they’re entitled to a trial. My point was that with the video, it seemed pretty open-and-shut, and I would have expected any defense lawyer to say “You’re toast, plead guilty”. OTOH there is some discussion of them not being allowed to plead to a lesser charge, so maybe it was “Might as well roll the dice” because racism. Still, at some point pleading guilty and asking for leniency might be supposed to lead to a better outcome than broke and guilty per a jury. Maybe either way they’re toast, so it’s just a question of how dark that toast is.
If the prosecution doesn’t agree to a reduced charge, then pleading guilty to murder and asking for leniency can only get you a life sentence with an argument for being able to ask for parole 30 years from now.
If you’re 52 or 65 (Bryan and McMichael senior), that’s not much of a benefit.
I also suspect they think they were innocent. Sincerely. Pleading guilty to murder when you don’t believe it was murder would be a hard pill to swallow.
Agreed. The whole case hinges on what the murderers knew at the time of the murder. Turns out, all they really knew was that there was a black man running through their neighborhood and that he had stopped at a construction site a couple of times.
That’s certainly consistent with the defence leaking the video. They seem to have thought that would calm everything down.
Nice little False Arrest lawsuit there. I wonder if the HOA or the President personally will have to pay.
What’s great about this verdict is how many Republicans have come forward in support of it like did with the Rittenhouse verdict. It really shows how classy Republicans are, and not just politicizing Rittenhouse for their petty own means to continue to fake “culture war” BS. It truly is something that has united both parties.
Oh, that didn’t happen? Huh. I wonder why not.
I can never think of the term “citizen’s arrest” without hearing Gomer Pyle yelling “Citizen’s arrayest! Citizen’s arrayest!” on that episode of The Andy Griffith Show. Jim Nabors ruined it for me. That alone would prevent me from ever making one.