Sure. You can question the verdict as soon as you have read all the evidence they had. Until then, you have no idea of what your talking about. You’re forming a opinion based upon ignorance not information.
Bah! This is a message board. We make do with the information we have. You’re like Bricker, you seem to confuse this with a real court. It’s the court of public opinion.
Yeah. Irrelevant.
But isn’t seeking the information itself questioning the verdict? Because earlier in the thread, you railed against the OP for starting the thread in order to seek more information. So whiich is it: can we question a jury verdict and seek more information or not?
We certainly are immune from the exclusionary evidence rule! The problem is that we’re also immune from a number of other procedural rules that improve the quality of justice. How many of the things said, so far, in this thread would have been objected to and the objection sustained? Lots!
My question for those who disagree with the verdict is: what changes would you make in the process to protect against future verdicts of this kind? Would you want convictions to require only ten out of the twelve jurors? Should we scrap the exclusionary evidence rule?
How do we make the system better? My opinion is that the system is just about as good as it can possibly be. Maybe this verdict was wrong – but what possible changes could be made that would prevent any jury, ever, from returning a bad verdict?
Sure, some training in elementary logic and rhetoric, with especial training in rhetorical fallacies, prior to service might help. Perhaps some instructive texts on juries that convicted the wrong man (or woman) in past decisions (there are tons of those) and how they went down the wrong road. Maybe a week of it for a capital crime.
The enormity and depth of the logic fail is far beyond the scope of the question. I dare say it would be better to directly ask such basic reading comprehension and elementary civics questions than to painstakingly weave them into such nonsensical and non sequitorial replies. Some of the replies have been indistinguishable from what’s typical of Freepers, Yahoo! Answers and Google Groups, neither addressing the question nor contributing any ancillary information.
To address Trinopus; questions remains as to whether or not the verdict actually was a miscarriage of justice in the first place and if so, whether it was an inherent part of the system such that its apparently perverse outcome is actually beneficial to the overall judicial system (e.g. the exclusionary rule in general). Hence the initial questions in the OP. Was the verdict a result of a very persuasive closing argument? Was some additional evidence introduced at trial--evidence that doesn't lend itself to a quick YouTube video? My initial intuition was that it hinged on legislation and case law regarding deference to officer's judgement, their use of force or some form of immunity for official actions.
I assume your (and these questions) have at least speculative answers, but time was instead spent on fairly inane sidetracks.You’re not seeking more info, and IMHO neither was the OP. You have already made up your mind, you would send several police officers to prison based solely upon a few minutes of video, ignoring days & days of other evidence.
If you are seeking info, then order a transcript. Or hire a lawyer to look into it. You’re debating, not asking.
So, five minutes of searching came up with why:
The defense attorney who won acquittals for an ex-Fullerton police officer charged with murder in the beating death of homeless man Kelly Thomas said Tuesday that Orange County prosecutors overvalued a 33-minute surveillance video that captured the final encounter between the transient and the cop.
John Barnett, who defended Manuel Ramos in the headline-making, five-week trial that ended with not-guilty verdicts Monday, said evidence about six earlier contacts between the two men and testimony that Thomas had acted violently in the past were critical to winning the case.
“These two guys were on a collision course,” Barnett said, and once jurors considered the earlier street encounters they could understand that Ramos “was not out to get Kelly Thomas” on July 5, 2011, …
And, the defense attorney said, testimony that Thomas had several episodes of violence dating back to 1995 … demonstrated that he was unpredictable and dangerous.
“It was critical to show that this guy was different than he was portrayed … that he was not just some poor homeless guy,” Barnett said. “He was homeless because he was angry and aggressive.
“You can’t just look (at the videotape),” Barnett said. “The jury needed to know who Manny Ramos was dealing with…In the interview Tuesday, Barnett also said that getting former FBI agent John A. Wilson, the prosecution’s use-of-force expert, to acknowledge that it was proper for officers in the field to rely on their training was a key turning point for the defense.
During the defense phase of the case, … the former Fullerton police training officer, testified that he saw nothing in the surveillance video that violated police training.
Michael Schwartz, Cicinelli’s attorney, also pointed to the cross-examination of Wilson as a key factor in winning the case.
Scwhartz said the prosecution, led by District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, tried to tap into emotion surrounding the case, especially by focusing on the video. But the defense, he said, “focused much more on the facts.”
The jury was able to separate the evidence from the emotion, Schwartz said.”
There. The Prosecution was based upon emotion and a video. The defense was based upon prior history, prior violent activity, training, and the fact that the defense managed to turn two of the key prosecutions witnesses testimony against them.
Remember- all that needs to be shown is reasonable doubt. The history showed doubt as to motive, the training showed doubt as to whether or not the force was within training procedures.
The jury was also especially well educated including two lawyers one of whom was foreman. So, they decided based on facts, not emotion.
You guys would prefer lynch mobs, of course. Damn that pesky evidence!
I can dig that. Maybe it ought to be part of the high school Civics curriculum, or perhaps jurors ought to get a four-hour training seminar (minimum!)
The last few times I did jury duty, they showed inspirational videos, highlighting the social basis for trial by jury, and its long history in our civilization. Maybe an additional video could be shown, highlighting logical thinking and exposing the most egregious rhetorical fallacies.
You are taking the self-serving pronouncements of a defense attorney in a post-trial speech at face value, and then calling US unthinking. Unh-hunh.
You know, you claim you’re looking for info. I suggested you read the transcript- but oh noes, that’s too hard.
So I dug up a page where the defense attorney sez why- “oh noes- that’s biased!”
So, you don’t want a fucking answer. You just want to complain about “the eveeeeeel politz state”.
So you’re saying we should wall order the transcript before commenting on the trial?
Should we do that with all trials before commenting on them?
For example I haven’t read the transcript of the trial over the dearth of Emmitt Till.
Should I not comment on it?
No…but you also shouldn’t complain about not knowing the full facts of the case in front of people who have read the full transcript.
DrDeth has a good point: he provided information, and you rejected it. Okay…can you provide something better?
That’s not what he said at all. He asked you what could possible be introduced to explain what was seen and heard in the video. I can’t see any logical explanation for what they did other than deliberately beating the guy with intent to do so. They were directly responsible for his death and they incited what little resistance he gave to create the excuse to do so. It was clear in the video this occurred. It was done with malice.
Good example, actually. If you were to claim that the jury made the wrong decision based on what was presented to them at trial, you would be well advised to do more research.
Both prosecution and defence lawyers, and the judge, worked to ensure that there would not be sufficient evidence presented to the jury to allow a conviction, for transparently racist reasons. Which is not to say that the jury wouldn’t have nullified even if the case had been prosecuted correctly, that certainly happened, but it was not the case at the Emmett Till trial.
It’s depressingly common to see people saying someone should have been convicted if the evidence doesn’t prove that a crime was committed, whether because they disagree with the law not making certain acts illegal, or specifically making them legal (see the Zimmerman/Martin case), or because the evidence they’ve seen outside the court isn’t the same as what the jury sees.
Sure looks like a police officer using past encounter as a reason to ramp it up. Eveeeel officer who should be in jail for beating someone dead.
If there was a crowd of people who intervened and harmed the officers in the process they would have been justified in doing so.
Well, the one person in this thread that’s consistently argued from preconceived notions without letting what people actually say get in the way of that is you, so I’m not too keen on having you lecture me on ‘facts’. While it might be that my opinion is uninformed, you have done nothing to demonstrate this; rather, you’re operating on the presupposition of that being the case, fostered by your bizarre adherence to the unquestionability of a jury verdict.
By your logic, I ought to never question the government in its decisions, since they are privvy to information I may not possess; I should believe the religious authorities on account of a ‘divine revelation’ I do not share; I should, in short, just do and believe what I’m told. The availability of the information is a red herring, since even asking for it—all that’s been done in this thread—seems to imply undue questioning of authority in your eyes. Maybe this bovine complacency works for you, but it’s not for me.
(And besides, according to what I read here, getting the court transcripts is not nearly as simple as you want to make out: first of all, it’s not free, but cost a fee, and secondly, it can take a while; also, I’m not completely sure whether the records will be freely shipped abroad, but I haven’t found anything about this. Asking online for further info is, contrary to your impression, not an unreasonable thing to do.)
There’s no way to guarantee perfect fairness in jurisdiction, but that’s not what’s at issue here. And while there’s certainly many ways to improve the legal system, such as educating the jury, or perhaps re-thinking or scrapping the jury system alltogether if it’s found to be too easily controvertible by a skilled professional rhethoricist (think about it—on average, the people sitting on the bench deciding the fate of both defendant and plaintiff are the same people that think planning their days according to the relative positions of planets millions of miles away is a reasonable thing to do), this is also not what’s at issue. It’s too easy to hide the particulars of a given case behind the abstractions of ‘the system’ as a whole, to cheap to hind behind principle when what’s at stake is the individual case.
The question is simply, what happened here, was it just, or wasn’t it? It’s not a question about whether the system works, it’s not a matter of generalities, but a concrete case in which there’s a fact of the matter regarding whether what happened was OK or not.
First of all, thanks for actually bringing some content to the thread, I really appreciate it. I don’t share your reading of it, which might not surprise you—to me, the fact that there was prior history between the officers and Thomas implies all the more reason for supposing the existence of a long-standing grudge, which paints the ‘see my fists’-comment in an even worse light; and if sitting on a suspect such that he can’t breathe is standard operating police procedure, then that’s all the more reason for questioning—but the sticking point really is once again your preconceived judgment of all those daring to question the jury’s judgment that you show in your last sentence (while simultaneously accusing us of prefabricated judgment and intellectual laziness). Why is it that you need so desparately to cling to the notion of the infallibility of the justice system that you apparently deliberately misread people’s posts to fabricate grounds for attacking them?
Is there any way to answer this exact question?
Maybe the FBI ought to launch a full and in-depth investigation, but would even that be satisfactory? If they did, and came to the same conclusions, would that, too, be rejected? Or would that pretty much settle things?
(Also…has anyone argued that what happened was “OK?” A guy died; that’s already far beyond anyone’s idea of OK. The only thing I’ve ever claimed here is that the prosecutors failed to demonstrate wrongdoing beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s “OK” in that it is how the system is designed to work – and that specific general concept is the one that matters most to me. I want the protections that the system offers me, both as a possible victim, and as a possible suspect.)
A cop was videotaped announcing his intent to fuck someone up, then carrying through with the threat and beating the shit out of the guy until he died. The fact that a group of diverse people can come to the conclusion that nobody is criminally responsible is just bizarre, and kind of scary.
The results of this trial is a demonstration that you aren’t going to get the protections of the system as a possible victim. There was an utter failure here. The ONLY success was that there was a trial at all … all too often, when cops commit wrongdoings (such as murder) they don’t even bring charges. Or lose their jobs.