Just like I’m avoiding your question about whether I think a conviction is likely, you’re avoiding my question about what the norm is when cases are put before grand juries.
I’m avoiding your question because the argument I’ve been making doesn’t turn on whether a conviction at trial is likely or unlikely. (I think the natural questions this would raise have been addressed in my prior posts.) But for what it’s worth (I don’t see that it’s worth much–my view about the probability of conviction seems like a red herring to me) if I were forced to place a bet I’d place a very small bet on acquittal.
It’s quite long, but the whole thing is well worth your time. The main thrust is that there’s an overabundance of small, separate municipalities in the St. Louis area. The need to maintain all these courts, governments, and police departments leads to an extremely high overhead, which in turn leads to a situation in which the first priority of the police and the court system is to generate revenue from petty fines (especially traffic violations), since these municipalities and police forces are absolutely dependent on them for their survival. This leads to all sorts of serious problems for the population, creating an unusual amount of resentment.
There’s more to it than that. Seriously, it’s very interesting stuff, well-sourced and convincing.
You’ve had your answer. Yes, a vast majority of cases presented to the grand jury are done differently than it was in this case. I don’t think there’s a dispute about that at all.
The issue is that you need to pretend that the facts of this case are analogous to those vast majority of cases, when that simply is not true. The cases that ARE analogous to this one are simply never presented to the grand jury to begin with. You want this apple treated like all those other oranges.
[Quote=Frylock]
I’m avoiding your question because the argument I’ve been making doesn’t turn on whether a conviction at trial is likely or unlikely.
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How could it not? That’s kinda the entire point of the whole grand jury/charging thing. To make sure that the prosecution isn’t charging people with crimes when there is no chance of conviction. You just seem to want to wave away a 200+ year old check on governmental power because … well I’m still a bit fuzzy on the why you want to try a man who will be found not guilty.
Re: your first paragraph; earlier in this thread I had considerable back and forth with those making just such a claim. I asserted, with cites, that failure to attain a true bill when a prosecutor made an effort before a grand jury is rare, and this case being – well, call it ‘presented’ is also fairly described as “differently”. I’m pleased to have you confirm my belief.
I have no disagreement with your second paragraph. I earlier asserted that I think the prosecutor should have publicly stated that his investigation of the evidence did not support either charges, or submission to a Grand Jury. And then taken the political heat for it. I fault him for his manipulation of the Grand Jury in what sure looks like a cover-his-ass don’t-blame-me maneuver that only exacerbated community tensions.
For the question in your final paragraph, I’ll speak for myself, although I suspect Frylock may be thinking along the same lines. I’d have greatly preferred a trial. Trials play by different rules. First, they’re public. Anybody can follow them, in detail, from the gallery, and surely media attention would have made daily, even hourly, summaries available to a much wider audience. In a case such as this, where the community believes it has grounds for expecting a cover-up (rightly or wrongly, to be debated as a separate matter) any proceeding that is not totally transparent isn’t going to win community trust or support. And a Grand Jury ‘presentation’ that can be characterized as unusual, even half-hearted, perhaps self-serving, does nothing to reassure a suspicious community. Were there a trial, if in fact evidence of a crime is lacking, public presentation and vigorous cross examination of witnesses would be out there for all to see. If it really is a case of “Ray Charles can see there is insufficient evidence for a conviction”, then that would be apparent throughout the trial.
I agree that some parties would not be convinced. Heck, if there was video of Brown being struck by lightning and falling down dead in front of Wilson, some parties wouldn’t be convinced. But many, many parties would be persuaded. And those who were not would be reduced to spouting conspiracy theory-type contradictions of the very publicly available evidence. I don’t think massive media attention would have been maintained at that circumstance.
I am sensitive to your point that forcing the prosecution of this particular ham sandwich via a Grand Jury indictment is violative of an important check on government abuse of power. But I just don’t see this instance as being the standard bearer of a new and different general case. And I’m sensitive to the desire to protect Officer Wilson from prosecution, given what so many see as an insufficiency of evidence of a crime. But really, Wilson is toast no matter what. It was clear that his career was over as soon as witnesses (correct, incorrect, believable, unbelievable) began speaking to the press about “hands raised in surrender”. He would be no more harmed by a show trial, and perhaps less so by a jury’s actual finding of “not guilty”, than he was by the circus already played out. This is why I “want to try a man who will be found not guilty”.
I haven’t read the piece yet - sorry - so maybe this is discussed there. St. Louis suffers in particular from very stark separation, even an antagonism, between county and city governments and funding. I think most other metropolitan communities have a more symbiotic relationship. The city of St. Louis chronically suffers in many, many ways as a result of this.
Your initial statement was about “love” and “hate” which do impact objectivity. If it’s just “distrust” then only my second point applies. A person’s view on what a police officer most likely did, and how this was dealt with by other members of the police (& other elements of the law enforcement community, including prosecutors) is impacted by the extent to which he trusts those entitities.
That said, I don’t think a trial would have impacted public opinion much anyway. To the contrary, the indictment would have been “proof” that the guy was guilty, and the innocent verdict would be just an indication that the prosecution threw the case, the judge and jury were biased, etc. etc.
What would be interesting is if - as expected - Holder’s civil rights investigation also fails to indict. He has more credibility than the local prosecutor did, so you wonder if that might have more impact.
[Beyond that, it’s possible that time would. Blacks overwhelmingly thought OJ was innocent at the time of the trial and verdict, but changed their views over time. Might be different here, in that this case might not have the staying power that the OJ case did.]
Yep, no true bills are relatively rare, as are calling that many witnesses and presenting that much evidence.
I disagree completely. I think the heat from perceived not doing enough to obtain an indictment is tons less than if he had refused to take it to the grand jury at all. Granted, nothing would have changed the mind of many of the people who were upset with the handling of the case, but I do think there are at least some people who are less upset when they actually take the time to look over the actual evidence. Had there not been a grand jury proceeding, there wouldn’t have been an easily accessible gathering of testimony given under oath that covered the evidence in this case. For that reason alone, it’s a step up from having the prosecutor refuse to even present it.
Yes. They make a person go through months, possibly years, of being hated by a segment of the community, of having their life dragged out, of having their families constantly troubled, of costing the government millions of dollars and hundreds of man hours. I think you’re either too dismissal or lacking in experience if you think that a long, drawn out trial wouldn’t do any additional harm to Wilson, his family, and the community.
And the result wouldn’t make a lick of difference. Given the evidence in this case, Officer Wilson wouldn’t ever be convicted.
So, you want to scapegoat a man, possibly continue to ruin his life, all for a sham trial that will do absolutely nothing to convince the segment of the population that won’t change it’s mind at all anyway.
I think that would be a bad choice. Of course, there were no good choices, but the grand jury presentation was the best of a bad lot.
The grand jury documents were released. The evidence is out there. That evidence shows, very clearly, that the prosecution couldn’t ever prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Having a show trial that would serve no purpose is a horrible idea.
As I have mentioned previously, I have to quit reading these kinds of things.
The reporter presents, right at the start of the article, the case of a poor black woman who doesn’t want the police called when she gets into a traffic accident (allegedly not her fault). She doesn’t trust the police, so she doesn’t want them summoned. And why doesn’t she trust the police? Because she has four different warrants out for her arrest in three different jurisdictions. She gets a lot of tickets for things the reporter is pleased to call “minor” - things like speeding, driving on a suspended license, no insurance, no seatbelt, no registration, and most of all for ignoring the tickets altogether - simply not showing up for her court date because she can’t pay her fines and (apparently) hopes it will all just go away, and she can go on driving without a license or insurance or registration.
The entire Ferguson police force could be as black as the ace of spades, and it isn’t going to fix this woman’s stupid. If you can’t afford to pay the fine, then don’t speed and wear your seatbelt. If you can’t afford insurance, take the fucking bus.
OK, maybe this woman can’t grasp the notion - she obviously has parts on order (when she found out that she had to post a bond she couldn’t afford to make sure she would actually show up for her court appearances, she freaked out and was put on suicide watch after a psych eval) - but for crying out loud, “I don’t trust the cops because they arrest me when I break the law” is not a way to summon a lot of sympathy.
No, it wasn’t worth my time and only convinced me that police protection and the judicial system requires money to operate. A shocking realization. :rolleyes:
I already understood why someone who had outstanding warrants wouldn’t want to call the cops. They had outstanding warrants - duh.
There’s this cool new program called Photoshop that allows people to digitally manipulate photographs. What will they come up with next, huh? Phones that you can put in your pocket?
There’s a whole lot of folks declaring things that simply aren’t reflected in the record. For instance, “doorhinge” states: “Wilson attempted to apprehend (aka tackle him and wrestle him to the ground and cuff him) Brown because Brown attacked Wilson and Wilson suspected Brown of robbing the store.”
I’m afraid Wilson declared that he was NOT chasing Brown to arrest him. Please refer to his testimony and also his television interview hours post-non-indictment.
“If Wilson had always intended to shoot Brown, then there would have been no reason for Wilson to leave the immediate vicinity of his vehicle. And Wilson could have used the vehicle to steady his aim.”
This tells me someone has no clue about the practicalities of shooting and how accurate one’s aim is even in a non-stressful situation. Brown’s body was, I believe, about a half football field away from Wilson’s vehicle.
"Wilson chased Brown because Wilson intended to detain and arrest Brown. "
Well, no, that’s not what the official record reflects (and if the testimony reflects this, please cite where, because it means Wilson in effect during his television interview all but admitted to perjury during his GJ testimony).
Speaking only about the practicalities of shooting, if you intended to shoot someone who had just begun running away from your car, why would you wait until they were “about a half football field away” before you fired? Would you consider 15 feet to be too easy? 15 yards would certainly be more of a challenge. How far would “Quigley Down Under” allow a suspect to run before he took him down?
Hamlet, IANAL and I am happy accept that your knowledge and experience vastly outweighs mine in matters of law. But in matters of public perception and acceptance, I don’t concede that your interpretations are necessarily always superior to mine.
I think that ‘presenting’ the case this way made a situation fraught with public relations nightmares worse rather than better. I still think the prosecutor should have either presented the case to the GJ in the usual way (even if the ham sandwich was almost certain to be found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in the resulting trial) OR simply declared the evidence insufficient himself, if that was his belief. I’m not a cop hater, nor am I naïve about public perceptions and race relations. I agree that the evidence I’ve seen (although I admit to not bothering to read very much of it) probably would not sustain a guilty verdict. So I’m not objecting to the legal outcome. I am though very much objecting to handling this in a manner that an already suspicious community could easily view as a whitewash. (Pun somewhat intentional.) Again, some would not be convinced no matter what the evidence; but most people would at least have to acknowledge an insufficiency of evidence. But we can agree to disagree here.
As for ruining Wilson’s life, well frankly I have somewhat less sympathy. While not criminal, almost everything he did in his encounter with Brown could and should have been handled differently. From the moment he recognized that the two walking men were the apparent perpetrators of a strong-arm robbery and backed up to confront them from inside his patrol car, it was clear that the confrontation wasn’t going to go well. Brown first trapped him in his own vehicle and, probably in reply to Wilson’s impotent commands and threats, slapped him around. Attempting to retake command of the situation, Wilson drew his service weapon and almost had it taken from him. Maybe he got slapped around a bit more. He fired his weapon in a place and a manner clearly inconsistent with his training, posing as much danger to himself as it did to Brown. Then the perpetrator ran off, with Wilson left to follow, yelling threats and firing into the neighborhood. All of this should have been handled differently. Brown was after all armed only with a box of Swisher Sweets. He was well known in the community and was an unmistakable presence. He could have been apprehended later and charged with a host of felonies. But instead, Wilson gave chase, firing as he came.
Subsequent actions by both parties are perhaps less amenable to change. At the penultimate point Brown was apparently approaching Wilson – running, shambling, staggering, whatever --, and nothing in the evidence clearly shows Wilson’s shooting to kill to be a crime “beyond a reasonable doubt”. But at any time in the encounter right up until that final several seconds, had Wilson just backed off and called for backup, it is unlikely that Brown would have died that day. And unlikely that there would have been riots.
So yeah, given the totality of the circumstances, putting Wilson through some considerable effort to defend himself, and causing him to be the target of some community outrage, at least until a trial would have shown a real attempt to convict him failing due to genuine lack of evidence, would have been alright with me. I do believe that the “us versus them” attitude of many police forces needs to change. Making a public-outrage example of a cop who may have remained within the law but engaged in actions exhibiting some incredibly poor judgment ultimately resulting in a dead citizen would be an acceptable – to me – end result.
Fair enough. I think, even if the community reactions were the same between a refusal to even take it to the grand jury and a finding of no true bill, that, at the very least, there is a record of witness statements and evidence given under oath and released to the public. I don’t think anyone could argue that having that evidence out there, as opposed to just a statement declining to prosecute, is a much better thing.
So dislike him. Think what you wish of his actions. Protest.
But when you’re advocate taking the powers of the government to put him on trial, to make him pay for attorneys, to have any possible resolution put off for a year or two, and to put him through a trial that you KNOW won’t result in a guilty verdict, you’ve gone too far. That’s abusing the system. And it’s antithetical to the very reasons this country has such protections in the Constitution.
You want to scapegoat him. Fine. But don’t use the criminal justice system to do it.
I do also.
I think you’re willing to sacrifice the protections afforded by the Constitution, as well as the oaths of prosecutors, and a sense of fairness, in order to make life hell for someone who made a mistake that was not illegal.
