Grand Jury Volume 18 (cont)
It’s our loveable racist Witness 40 again! She’s brought her “journal.” I’m not going to bother, but if you want to read crazy, go for it.
Next up, a police radio engineer. He describes how radios work. No mention of how any of this applies to the case at hand.
Any one else wondering about the huge timeframe hole in Dorian Johnson’s testimony? He says he left his place and met up with Brown around 7. Brown chats with construction worker and then goes up to an apartment to talk to a friend of his or Johnson’s for anywhere up to an hour. Then all of a sudden it’s like 11 and they’re at the store. ???
Wilson testified that he radioed for help before confronting Johnson & Brown and while exiting the vehicle to pursue Brown but later discovered that his radio was on the wrong channel so the calls never went out. Maybe something to do with that?
"In summary, he was responding to the robbery call when he stopped to tell Brown and Johnson to get out of the street. "
Unfortunately, I got stuck on this before I went any further. 
Regardless of what Wilson said in testimony, during his recent television interview, he said he was … on his way to get lunch.
Moving on to the rest of the post. (sigh)
Maybe, they discussed the possibility at some other point that his radio could have been switched to a different channel, a “RIOT channel” that nobody was monitoring, or a dispatch channel that was receive only. But there’s also a button on the radio to bypass the channel setting and always call dispatch, and another button to send an emergency ping to dispatch.
But nearest I can tell, nobody’s produced his radio to show that it was set to one of these channels, and nobody’s testified that they saw his radio tuned to one of these channels. They threw it out there as a possibility, and now they’ve brought in a expert to basically say yes, it’s a possibility. But for me to care about this I want to know what Darren Wilson’s radio actually was set to, and my guess is that it got set back to the proper channel at some point so nobody will ever know what happened. I don’t know if he used one of these other buttons (orange and red, apparently), or what.
I’m not sure why it really matters, either. Darren Wilson says he radioed for backup, other witnesses say that he paused while getting out of his car to talk into his radio, and it I don’t see any reason to doubt any of that. I guess dispatch never got that message so this goes to Wilson’s credibility but it’s a really minor issue. I’m guessing they might come back to it at some point, but I dunno.
Who are you quoting? In his testimony Wilson specifically says that he heard the robbery call but it wasn’t his call. He was leaving the scene of a separate call when he came upon Johnson and Brown in the road.
He may have been before he heard the call about the robbery. There’s a transcript of the dispatch traffic out there, Wilson asks the officers involved in the robbery if they need him. Maybe he was doing them a solid.
Grand Jury Volume 19
First up, the toxicologist. Michael Brown had smoked about 2 or 3 hours before he was killed, and it was a “large dose.”
Next up, a forensic scientist. He tested various items for blood, but did not do any DNA analysis. So far, no surprises – blood on Wilson’s pants, Brown’s clothing, inside and outside the car. Probably blood on the gun.
And now the DNA analyst. This is confusing, it’s all in the DNA Analysis report but I’ll transcribe for brevity:
Q5 from Brown’s hand - Mostly Brown’s, probably some of Wilson’s
Q11, booger from the window frame of the door - Brown’s
Q12, driver rear door, exterior - Brown’s
Q13/14, from the street - Brown’s
Q15, blood from Wilson’s left thigh - Mostly Brown’s, some of Wilson’s
Q16, top of driver’s door - Brown and Wilson
Q17, driver’s side mirror - inconclusive
Q18, interior driver’s door handle - Mostly Brown’s
Q19, the gun - Brown and Wilson
Q20, Wilson’s shirt - Brown and Wilson
Q1-1, Brown’s shirt - only Brown
Q2-1, Brown’s shorts - only Brown
Q25-1, yellow bracelet found on the ground - neither Brown nor Wilson
(UNK), black bracelet found on the ground - neither Brown nor Wilson
Q24-1, stain on the Brown’s sandal - inconclusive
Q9-1, Brown’s left fingernails - Brown, inconclusive for Wilson
Q10, Brown’s right fingernails? - Brown
Q6/8, Brown’s hands - Brown
Next up, the 911 coordinator for St. Louis County. Nothing recorded on Riot A during the shooting. OK then.
Next up (this file is huge), a witness. He didn’t see much, Mike Brown running out of his flip flops but he didn’t see him get shot.
Lastly, a witness who accidentally recorded audio of some of the gunshots on her phone. The audio is played. That is all.
This is probably a good article to include in this thread:
A sampling:
Another witness had told the FBI after the shooting that he saw Wilson shoot Brown in the back, and then stand over his prone body to finish him off. But in his grand jury testimony, this witness, acknowledged that he had not seen that part of the shooting, and that what he told the FBI was “based on me being where I’m from and that can be the only assumption that I have.”
The witness, who lives in the predominantly black neighborhood where Brown was killed, also acknowledged that he changed his story to fit details of the autopsy that he had learned about on TV.
“So it was after you learned that the things you said you saw couldn’t have happened that way, then you changed your story about what you seen?” a prosecutor asserted.
“Yeah, to coincide with what really happened,” the witness replied.
Isn’t there a law that deals with lying to police investigators?
I’m sure there is for outright lying, but in many instances, people hear recounts, and merge those with what they say, not realizing they are doing so.
In this case, it’s clear that several witnesses didn’t see anything, and simply told police or the FBI the prevailing story that was going around the neighborhood. They figured if their friend saw it, and he said X, then they can say X too and it will look doubly bad for Wilson. When the autopsy was released these witnesses amended their stories to fit the physical evidence better.
When they gave their statements to the FBI, the FBI told them that was a crime to lie in a sworn statement. They lied anyway. They were then given immunity in order to testify with their amended stories at the grand jury. I think, a lot of that stuff was cut out of the transcripts but I saw that at least once a person said they’d been given immunity after changing their story.
In any case, to put Terr’s mind at ease, the prosecutors walked each witness through every part of their statements, first either playing the recording or reading the transcript, then the changed transcript from days or weeks later, and then bringing in the witness to testify. The jury was well aware of how (and presumably they could infer why) the witness changed their story. There’s enough transparency that I’m not worried about it, if anything it makes Wilson look better because it casts doubt on all testimony from people in the neighborhood.
I hate spewing this stuff from memory but I didn’t write that much down. If you go back and read my summary of the witness statements on page 1 I list the ones that were probably lying. Unfortunately, more often than not the part of the trial transcript where their witness number was announced was excised, so I can’t easily link those numbers to their trial testimony.
Lesley McSpadden told CNN’s Sunny Hostin on Wednesday. “This could be your child. This could be anybody’s child.”
(Leslie is Brown’s mother)
No Leslie. Most of us raise our children to understand the difference between acceptable behavior and that which is not acceptable. We teach them not to steal or bully others. We teach them to respect authority, even if they feel they are being wronged. We instill in them the desire to respect the rights of others as they wish their rights to be respected. So, no Leslie, it could not be my child.
There’s only one real question to ask a witness and that’s what they heard/saw. The process is repeated to get a matching story or one that falls apart.
After that the questions have to be very neutral so as not to steer a witness’s memory in one direction or another. ex: if a witness says they saw a struggle in the car the question has to be along the lines of “can you expand on what occurred in the struggle” and not “how far open was the door”.
Mmm, this isn’t a trial, it’s a grand jury. The rules are much looser.
OK but do you want the prosecutor to steer a witness? It’s obvious if the question is: “when did you stop beating your wife”. It’s not as obvious if the question is: “did you ever have thoughts of beating your wife”. Now you’ve put the thought into the juror’s head and made the person being questioned appear violent.
The article is too long to be adequately quoted.
Now, this is awkward. This is potentially a Big Hairy Ass Deal, having to do with the distance between Wilson and Brown. You may recall, it was originally and repeatedly described, by police sources, as being about 35 feet. It was not.
But StereoNZ is doing the Lord’s work here, trudging through the thickets. So, I will leave it to him as to whether consider this now, or his own sweet time. And if I burst, well, I burst…
Link above. Liberal cootie warning level red, Daily Kos. Also, spoiler alert.
+1 to appreciation for steronz’s dedication to this.
My opinion of what happened that day has shifted considerably thanks to the release of the information. This analysis has been even more thought provoking.
I have been most interested in the forensic evidence, which is more reliable than witness testimony, barring a massive conspiracy to commit fraud.
One thing that I am still trying to wrap my head around is where Officer Wilson was standing relative to Mr. Brown at the end of the confrontation. According to the map, the casings are to the south and east of Mr. Brown’s final location. How far and in what direction are they likely to travel when a SigSauer is fired?
From what I have seen from people who know SigSauers, the shells fly out forward to the right. From what Wilson said, he was 8 to 10 feet away from Brown’s final position. The position of the shells is consistent with that.
He wasn’t. See post #136, above.
Learn how to read. Distance between Wilson and Brown. Not distance between Wilson’s SUV and Brown.