I’m not following, 'luci. You linked to an article which says that Brown was 150 feet from the police car when he was killed, not 35 feet from the SUV. Then a moment ago, someone says that Brown was 10 feet away from Wilson when he was killed.
What do you see as the meaning of the difference between these figures? I understand that there are considerable discrepancies between the numbers, but how does that change our understanding of what happened?
No. I think it’s apparent that that’s not what I was talking about. And since this is pretty much irrelevant, let’s leave it at that.
Well, in the court of public opinion, I dunno.
In the court where the grand jury was sitting, they had the opposite information feed. They were told on day 2, when the first crime scene investigator testified, who I believe was the second person to testify, said that the distance was 153 feet. He said it twice, in fact. There was a diagram and everything. 153 feet 9 inches, and then in the next breath, 152 feet 9 inches, a discrepancy which I’m blaming on the shitty court reporting.
After that, there was a parade of witnesses who pegged the distance anywhere from 5 to 40 feet.
So unlike the public, who may have thought the distance was 35 feet until the truth came out, the grand jury new up front that it was 153 feet, and was able to draw their own opinions about why 95% of the witnesses were unable to come up with that figure on their own. (I want to say there was one witness who correctly put the distance at 30 to 50 yards.)
At this point, it only brings up questions. First off, why did the police sources say 35 feet? They didn’t check?
Secondly, when Wilson tells the story, Brown is quite close, a threat, seeing as he is a huge black demon seething with rage.
There will be others, no doubt, after we have time to digest this.
The weapons guy (I forget his exact title) would not testify about any “normal” distance. The grand jury was very interested in this, for exactly the same reason you are. He simply said that you never know which way they’re going to go, it depends on the angle of the gun, the attitude of the gun, the motion of the hands, the wind, the way they bounce, the Coriolis effect (just kidding). He pretty much said that there’s no way to pinpoint where someone’s standing based on the shell casing pattern.
That said, they eject up and to the right, so I think we can ballpark it from the diagram. I may have said it here already, but Brown must have fallen damn near on Wilson’s toes. He couldn’t possibly have been more than 15 feet, probably closer when the fatal shot was fired.
Using google maps street view, I can see no barriers that would stop one from going north on Glen Owen Dr., turning left on Exuma Dr. , turning north on Inagua Dr. (Exuma Dr. does dead end/blocked here), reaching Barbados Dr. and proceeding north to Northwinds Estates Dr. The map seems to show no connection between Inagua and Northwinds, but in the street view the road over the culvert looks fine.
I also see no barrier at the intersection of Glenark [sic] and Daman Ct.
As I said, I don’t know how to find out when the photos used in Google Street View were taken.
First question, I dunno… I think that’s one for another thread. I’m only concerning myself with what the grand jury heard.
Second question, Brown was quite close, because Wilson himself ran about 130-140 feet from the police car before coming to a stop. Brown ran, well we don’t know exactly, but probably 175-185 feet. I don’t know who ran faster, but at no point is it likely that they were more than 50 feet apart, and that’s on the high end.
You’re right. I see the barrier in the satellite, but not in the street view. But Google’s old, Bing’s the new kid on the block. And here it is.
And here’s the barrier at Glenark.
eta: I’m in no way advocating that anyone use Bing, for anything, ever. But their street view photos are probably newer. That’s all.
Grand Jury Volume 20
The medical examiner again. The right hand was shot from 6-9 inches away. The hand was not affected by Brown’s fall to the pavement. Ends up the booger on the door is probably a skin fragment from the gunshot wound to the hand.
And now a different forensic pathologist, he’s a USAF officer. He did the DoJ autopsy. He testifies that one of the graze wounds on the left arm is actually a puncture of some sort, not caused by a bullet. Maybe broken glass or something sharp on the car door. He counts 8 gunshot wounds, as in 8 bullets hit him. He doesn’t buy some of the re-entry theories from the first autopsy. He says that he doesn’t see evidence that Wilson was holding Brown’s neck to prevent him from getting away. Says there would most likely be bruising. Not impossible that it happened, but it’s out there now.
Next up a witness who lives in the area. This is the podcast guy. Remember that on the podcast he said Michael Brown’s head and body were inside the car. Now he’s saying that he lied on the podcast, that Michael Brown’s head and body were not inside the car. He says Brown’s hands were on the outside of the car, and Wilson was grabbing him by the shirt. He didn’t see the shooting. He didn’t see much and his credibility is shot anyway. Short testimony.
Another thank-you Mr. Steronz.
The discussion of the problems witnesses have with estimating distance has been interesting. My personal mental illustration is that I live in a small ranch-style house (2 bedroom, 1-car garage), which has almost no side yards – maybe 7 feet wide. Still, my property is 80’ wide, and when combined with my next door neighbor’s yard we total 160 feet: over half the length of a football field.
When I read that the chase covered 150 feet I have trouble understanding how someone could say 35’, but when I think of someone running past my yard and then my neighbor’s it seems like almost no distance at all.
Grand Jury Volume 21
The grand jury is told that none of the RIOT channel stuff they were told is relevant. A sergeant is here from the Ferguson PD to testify about radios. He actually brought Darren Wilson’s radio in. Finally. And unfortunately, it’s somewhat worthless. The prosecutors say they think his radio was on channel 3, which is REC only for the fire deparment, but the sergeant doesn’t know what channel his radio was on. So this is a lengthy discussion about department radio protocol that doesn’t tell us anything, really. He did say he went through all the recordings from all channels and didn’t hear anything from Wilson during that time.
And next up is a Ferguson dispatcher. They run through the radio transcript that was released, decoding it. It’s interesting, but not really. Ask me questions if you have them.
They play the Chief of Police’s press conference, and now he testifies. He wasn’t involved in the investigation, at all. This was intentional, he turned it all over to the County. Only spoke to Wilson once, over the phone, about nothing much. He said that Wilson didn’t carry a taser because the department didn’t have enough of them. He probably had mace but he points out that it wouldn’t be wise to use it in close quarters like that. Talks about training and policy on use of force. That’s all.
Grand Jury Volume 22
Whoa, they actually brought the patrol car to the courthouse for the grand jury to examine in person. They also have Michael Brown’s clothing, the gun, shell casings, etc. They’re going to give them gloves and masks. They listen to the audio recording of the gunshots
Witness is a police officer from Jennings, not sure where that is but I think he was a field training officer who trained Wilson there. Wilson wanted to get to know the African-American community better, to learn how to work with the community. He talks about the sort of training officers get, blah blah blah.
The physician’s assistant who treated Darren Wilson is here. “If the face is red, but never turns purple, does that mean that the impact was not hard enough to break any blood vessels?” “It was likely that the impact just involved the very superficial capillary layers, as opposed to deeper tissue which would result in the deeper purple bruising.” Explaining why the pictures taken 3 days later show no signs of bruising. Takeawy, Wilson was punched, but not that hard.
There’s a jury exchange here that I’m going to post separately because it’s crucial.
Once again - when Wilson tells the story, he’s relaying the distance from him to Brown. Not from his SUV to Brown. Apparently you are having difficulties telling the difference.
But I’m just not clear whether those questions are in any way relevant – what do you think are the relevant questions? I’m not seeing why the distance from the SUV being 35 or 165 feet is material.
Let’s just say the police were outright and knowingly lying when they said the victim was 35 feet from the SUV. How does that in any way exonerate Wilson? Or, let’s say the witnesses and forensic team accurately establishes that Brown was 160 feet from the SUV. How does that in any way cast guilt on Wilson?
The distance from Wilson to Brown is obviously relevant. But the distance from either Brown or Wilson to the SUV? I just don’t see why it matters. I’m welcoming you to enlighten me.
This exchange is on November 11th. The evidence is wrapping up and the prosecutors are talking about how the jury will deliberate.
Jury Member: “Also the charges, what do you call them?” (As in, Are you going to let us know about the charges we’re considering)
Ms. Alizadeh: “We’re going to do that tomorrow, because we didn’t have time last night today we started with this. Either the rest of today or by tomorrow we will give to you four indictments for you to consider and then we’ll give you the law on self-defense because we’ve arleady given you the excessive force or the use of force statute. Anything else?”
Ms. Whirley: “We’re still talking about the probable cause and that standard.”
Ms. Alizadeh: "We had a conversation with that even last night and we still have to kind of work that out, we’re not really sure.
Jury Member: “Probable cause, you are still looking at?”
Ms. Alizadeh: "We both agree that you can’t return an indictment unless you believe there is probable cause to believe that a crime occurred and that the defendant or suspect or the person you’re considering committed it. But the question is, if you’re going to consider self-defense and use of lawful use of force to affect an arrest are affirmative defense and they’re what we call complete defenses.
"And so if you believe that th eperson acted in lawful self-defense or if you believe the person was justified in the use of force as a law enforcement officer, then it is a complete defense, there would be no indictment on any charge.
“The question we don’t really know is that beyond a reasonable doubt, what is the standard by which you have to consider that.”
Ms. Whirley: “Those two issues.”
Jury Member: “Will that be outlined in writing for us as well?”
Ms. Alizadeh: "I don’t know because we don’t know. If this matter were a trial, it would be different because, obviously, in a trial it is beyond a reasonable doubt. And in a trial it is the obligation of the defense to raise the issue, and if the issue is raised, it becomes the obligation of the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person did not act in lawful self-defense or was not justified in the use of force, but that’s in a trial setting.
"So we don’t know how this, this investigation was, we talked about yesterday, is not typical on how we would present cases to the grand jury. This is an investigation and I believe, and I think Shelia [Whirley] agrees, I don’t want to speak for you, that your determination of whether or not force was justified either as self-defense or use of force to affect an arrest is part of your decision process.
"So that’s something for you to consider. I don’t think the answer is simply, well, we believe that a crime was committed, you know, probably cause to believe a crime was committed and he did it and not at all talk abou those defenses.
"But I don’t know, we don’t know what kind of instruction to give you on, do you have to believe that there’s probable cause to believe that he used excessive force. I don’t know, we don’t know that. We don’t want to tell you the wrong thing. So we’re still trying to work that out.
“Okay. I hope I haven’t said too much. We want you to make the right decision, we want your decision to be based on the law. And given that neither Sheila nor I have ever had this experience before and actually, we talked, there’s only been one grand jury investigation on officer’s use of force in the past 15 years that anybody can remember, so we’re kind of not sure how to proceed.”
Ms. Whirley: “We’ll get it.”
Ms. Alizadeh: "We’ll get you that instruction. It will be up to use whether we are right or wrong, but we will give you that guidance.
“We are your legal advisors under the law, that’s what our job is to tell you what the law is. Of course, presenting all the evidence that we can present for you and then you all are going to have to make of that what you will.”
I’ve been struggling with the question this whole time – Did the grand jury make the right decision? What would I do if I were on the grand jury? And that’s been my question; as a layperson, what standard do I need to use to determine if this should go to a trial? And I’m 100% flabbergasted to find out that, as of 2 weeks ago, not only did the jury not know, but the fucking prosecuting attorneys didn’t know either.
Lawyer people, help me out. Is this not strange?
They were at pains to establish that Brown was quite close to Wilson when he turned and “charged”. The further Brown is, the less threat. Even a demonic thug seething with dark rage can only move so fast. Having just been shot, and all.
We can talk about all this in the Pit. As people/reporters are reading the transcripts and documents, stuff is popping up. There will be plenty to discuss.
The forensic evidence (we already discussed it in this thread) established pretty definitively that
Brown moved back toward Wilson at least 21 feet.
Wilson was not far (8-10, maybe 15 feet) from Brown when the last shots occurred.
If you have any information contradicting this, please present it.
I think it is becoming clear to me that you’ve simply confused two issues: the article you posted about 35 vs 150 feet pertains to the distance of the shooting from the police car. Now, you’re talking about the distance between Wilson and Brown. It seems clear from the testimony that Brown had walked away from the SUV and Wilson pursued. So while the distance between the two men is obviously relevant, perhaps you’ve simply misread the article that reported on discrepancies between estimates of the distance between the shooting and the SUV.
Grand Jury Volume 23
A forensic pathologist, this is the guy who did the private autopsy for the Brown family. This autopsy was done after the embalming. He, uh basically agrees with the other forensic pathologists. Moving on.
Next witness (64, who was interviewed a second time on Nov 11th), I think this is someone who was in the car with witness 48? She was in a car with a bunch of people, at least. “Mike got about to the corner and then he turned around like he was giving up and he started coming back towards the officer. I really don’t know what was going on at that point. I seen him get shot a couple of times and he hit the ground.” His hands were up at first. “He stopped and he turned around like this, and then he started moving towards the officer and kind of looked like he picked up a little bit of speed, and then he started going down. He was holding his chest when he went down.”
Next witness is a criminal investigator working for the prosecutors. He describes a witness who gave a statement to police, and then later said he didn’t see anything. The prosecutor says that they agreed that they’d bring these witnesses into the grand jury, play their statements, and then have them say that they actually didn’t see anything, but in this case, because of a disability, they did a phone interview. They play the phone interview.
Next witness is a police detective with the county, he’s already testified at some point but I don’t remember him. He’s the primary case officer. He talks about how hard it was to secure the crime scene, the CSI folks were interrupted several times and had to stop working. He talks about canvasing the neighborhood to find witnesses. He explains the decision not to arrest Darren Wilson. They use “perspective shots” to locate all of the witnesses and where they were at the time of the shooting. Wish I would have been there for that.