If that’s, in fact, what happened. There is at least one witness that states Wilson made a grab for Brown through the car window. Not sure how much I’d fault Brown for resisting under those circumstances.
Note: I’d still blame Wilson for shooting Brown while running away.
You made some kind of distinction between why it is socially bad for cops to murder assholes, and whether that murder is “a big loss” and I didn’t quite follow the distinction so I wanted to know more.
It seems to me that if my son is an asshole it would still be a pretty big loss to me and my family if a cop murdered him.
The majority of witness statements made publically available have stated Brown was heading away when he jerked, as if something hit him, then turned around. At least one autopsy report has confirmed that that sequence of events is possible.
You are to take it that when people lie, it is to make themselves look better, not worse. If you believe Johnson and his lawyer decided to claim responsibility for a non-existent robbery, you are incredibly fucking stupid.
He is.
Fuck the witnesses. Witnesses lie forensic evidence doesn’t.
Witness he was running away and he jerked as if something hit him
Evidence: no bullet holes entering from the back, all bullets entered from the front or top of his head.
Conclusion: one of two things occurred:
There are some people who society is a lot better off without, and who inflict a lot more harm on society and its members than they contribute. If they die it’s no great loss to society, especially if they die as a direct result of their negative attributes.
That doesn’t mean that any individual has the moral (let alone legal) authority to decide to kill people of this sort. And on a broader level, allowing people to decide on their own to kill people that they feel society would be better off without would obviously be a disaster.
But that doesn’t mean that if such a guy gets killed in such circumstances that anyone else needs to feel as if there’s been some sort of great tragedy.
I agree. See my prior post.
I think the point is that if you believe he admitted to the robbery out of a sense of personal honesty, then you should be marginally more likely to believe his account of the shooting. After all, why impugn Brown and risk punishment by admitting to the robbery but lie about Brown having his hands up?
[I don’t really judge credibility in that across-the-board fashion, personally, but lots of people do and for them it’s a valid argument.]
Both are subject to misinterpretation.
This is not to defend elucidator’s intelligence here (or anywhere else) but I don’t know if Johnson really took responsibility for the theft. He was not charged with the theft, and my impression is that only Brown was the thief.
I mean, it’s not like this theft of some cigars was some well-planned Crime of the Century. It looks like Brown was a guy who was used to pushing people around and he decided he wasn’t interested in paying for those cigars and he wasn’t going to let some puny clerk make him pay for them. I don’t know if Johnson had anything to do with it.
The medial forearm wound is the only wound where it’s not clear from which direction the bullet came from. The other wounds indicate that Brown was facing the officer when the other 4 to 7 shots stuck Brown.
There are two bones in the forearm, the ulna and the radius, which allow the forearm muscles to rotate the wrist and hand. The radius is on the thumb side, and the ulna on the pinky-finger side.
The 2nd autopsy examiners did not mention that either the ulna or radius were broken or shattered. I assume then that the bullet passed thru a very meaty forearm (“meaty” being a non-technical term for a large muscle). Knowing this, plus the differences between an entrance and exit wound, it’s possible to establish the position of the forearm when it was injured.
Assuming that Brown’s right arm was hanging at his side, finger tips toward the ground, palm facing Brown’s leg, the medial shot would have come from behind Brown’s body.
If Brown’s forearm was held horizontally away from his right side, palm down, the medial shot would have come from behind Brown’s body.
If Brown’s forearm was held horizontally in front of his body, elbow pointed forward, palm down, the medial shot would have come from in front of Brown’s body. (This bullet could have passed thru Brown’s forearm and then entered Brown’s body. Which would reduce the number of bullets to 5? Maybe?)
If Brown’s forearm was held vertically, fingers pointed upward (the “I surrender” position), palm to the left, elbow pointed forward (odd for an “I surrender” position but possible), the medial shot would have come from the front.
Other possible positions are less likely because the bullet would have struck the ulna or radius. A 9mm bullet has a .355" diameter. The .40 S&W bullet has a .400" diameter. The .45 ACP bullet has a .454" diameter bullet. Not much room left in the forearm to pass thru without striking bone or tearing the skin.
This is a good time to mention that the holes in Brown’s shirt can be matched to the entry wounds. If Brown’s arms were raised above his head, his shirt would have been pulled upward. If Brown’s arms were at his side, the shirt would have been hanging in a normal position. If Brown’s arms were somewhere between the two positions, matching the holes to the entrance wounds would indicate approximately where they were when the bullets passed thru.
Fotheringay-Phipps: So your point is that while it is bad for society for anyone to be unjustifiably killed by the police, it would not have been a big tragedy if Zeus had struck Brown with lightning for punching a cop (assuming he did that), because such people don’t contribute to society.
I don’t know why you’d make that point in the context of this discussion. It suggests a worldview in which there are two kinds of people, criminals and non-criminals and the criminals are generally bad people who don’t contribute to society. It’s a silly, cartoonish view of humans that is itself quite damaging to society. The truth is that the vast majority of Americans are criminals of one sort or another. And not only do they often contribute substantially to their families and communities while being criminals, they are also capable of changing and improving themselves.
Indeed, I doubt whether someone on a message board would ever suggest that a white college student who pirates a million dollars worth of media content and crashes into a family’s mini-van while driving drunk deserves to die. But a black guy who steals some cigars and gets into a fight with a cop is apparently so socially worthless that knowing nothing else about him we can conclude that his death is a benefit to all the rest of upstanding citizens.
And right now we don’t even have witnesses. Past experience has shown that some people will do anything to be on TV. Or to be the star of their own little circle. It’s human nature. How many of those heard who wind up being actual witnesses is unclear. Some may have been near witnesses who heard and then saw the aftermath and extrapolated. During a My Cousin Vinny interview the story might change and often does.
He didn’t tell the truth until he knew there was video proof that the robbery happened. That doesn’t make him honest. It just means he’s not completely stupid. Or at least his lawyer isn’t stupid.
It could simply be that that wasn’t the hill they wanted to die on. Protesting your friend’s innocence in the face of surveillance video showing him shoving a shopkeeper half his size around isn’t actually going to help you at all, is it?
Don’t be ridiculous - of course somebody would.
You don’t need a cite.
Regards,
Shodan
Well it’s a bit more than “don’t contribute”, but other than that, pretty much.
It came up in the context of what the relevance might be of whether Brown did or did not punch the cop.
I agree about the first part. A lot depends on scale. (The “changing and improving” part is too speculative.)
I didn’t say “deserves to die”, but if you stay away from these types of subtle changes I’m down on both. The death of some white kid who crashes into some family’s minivan while driving drunk is no great tragedy either. Absolutely.
I think the unstated distinction is between the violation of laws malo in se and a law malum prohibitum.
The vast majority of Americans are not criminals who violate laws that the vast majority of Americans regard as prohibiting acts malo in se – wrong in and of themselves. I think the vast majority of Americans draw a distinction between those laws that prohibit punching someone and, say, choosing to pick up a feather on the ground and finding yourself in violation of 16 USC § 668.
I agree with your larger point.
Admitting to being a potential accomplice to a crime is rarely something a lawyer would advise. I presume he did so because it helped his credibility, as you say. But in point of fact, there isn’t video proof that the robbery happened. That is, of course, how this whole tangent got started, by looking to his admission as the proof that was lacking from the video.
I agree with the overall point that he could be lying or mistaken about the shooting incident independent from his honesty about the cigars. But my willingness to separate the two acts of honesty/dishonesty is different from how some people do it.
Would a lawyer advise a client to admit being a potential accomplice to a crime in order to bolster his credibility about another case in which he is purely a witness and not at risk?
I assume the admission was based on a combination of video evidence and the fact that Brown was the guy who actually took the cigars. (IIRC the lawyer used the passive voice “some cigars were taken”). In addition, by the time that info came out, the situation in general was past the point where Johnson might be prosecuted as an accomplice for stealing cigars.
Well, I said I doubt it, and I believe that. If he killed the family? Sure, maybe. But if he just caused them some “swelling,” as the police report in this case, then I doubt it.
Can’t agree, but glad you profess that you would apply the same standard regardless of race.
To some extent, yes. The most common crimes are drug crimes, for example, which many Americans regard as malum prohibitum. But what about drunk driving and copyright infringement? Both are arguably not malo in se, but I think most Americans nevertheless in 2014 believe it to be morally wrong to engage in either, and yet very large numbers of Americans have committed those crimes.
And there’s also all those crimes that are considered part of typical youth when white people do them–fistfights, joyriding in golf carts, vandalism, online harassment, etc.–but considered evidence of chronic criminality when committed in slightly different contexts in black neighborhoods.