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pilight



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PostPosted: 12/22/14 11:49 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

What Ferguson can learn from the LAPD

http://news.yahoo.com/what-ferguson-can-learn-from-the-lapd-214547339.html


Quote:
When the former Boston and New York police chief arrived in Los Angeles in 2002, the LAPD was operating under federal oversight; a rogue unit in the Rampart Division had been caught planting evidence, beating gang members and lying under oath.



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GlennMacGrady



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PostPosted: 12/23/14 2:00 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

beknighted wrote:
There's just no excuse for this. If he thought she "clearly wasn't present," then he is giving the grand jury false information. That's completely irresponsible.


Huh?

I read this as McCulloch saying he came to believe she lied in her testimony after she had given that testimony, and after he and the jurors could compare what she said against other evidence. How could he have known what she was going to say under oath to the grand jury, about her supposed presence and what she supposedly saw, until she actually so testified?

The cops or DA may have interviewed the witnesses before they testified--or not, who knows?--but those statements aren't grand jury testimony until made to the jury under oath.
TonyL222



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PostPosted: 12/23/14 7:13 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

GlennMacGrady wrote:
?

The cops or DA may have interviewed the witnesses before they testified--or not, who knows?--but those statements aren't grand jury testimony until made to the jury under oath.


He knew well before that her story was concocted:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/unmasking-Ferguson-witness-40-496236
Quote:
In interviews with police, FBI agents, and federal and state prosecutors--as well as during two separate appearances before the grand jury that ultimately declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson--the purported eyewitness delivered a preposterous and perjurious account of the fatal encounter in Ferguson.




Last edited by TonyL222 on 12/23/14 10:32 am; edited 1 time in total
beknighted



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PostPosted: 12/23/14 7:48 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

GlennMacGrady wrote:
beknighted wrote:
There's just no excuse for this. If he thought she "clearly wasn't present," then he is giving the grand jury false information. That's completely irresponsible.


Huh?

I read this as McCulloch saying he came to believe she lied in her testimony after she had given that testimony, and after he and the jurors could compare what she said against other evidence. How could he have known what she was going to say under oath to the grand jury, about her supposed presence and what she supposedly saw, until she actually so testified?

The cops or DA may have interviewed the witnesses before they testified--or not, who knows?--but those statements aren't grand jury testimony until made to the jury under oath.


Of course they interviewed people before they testified. If they didn't, it's an even worse dereliction of duty. In the case of this witness, they also had her supposed journal in hand before she testified, and again of course they read it and knew what she would say.

I suppose it's possible that he didn't figure out until afterwards that parts of her story were actually impossible, but that's not what I'd call an endorsement of the process. The police and the prosecutor have investigators whose job is to check out witness statements in advance, and if they didn't do that in this case, it's more than inexplicable, it's irresponsible.


Howee



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PostPosted: 12/23/14 3:00 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Hope this isn't too far off topic, but this video making the rounds on fb, was allegedly made by a law student. He was approached by a cop, and his conversation demonstrates what civilian rights really are.

Can any of you 'legal minds' verify the validity of his claims?



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pilight



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PostPosted: 12/23/14 3:19 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Howee wrote:
civilian rights


We need a better term than "civilian" to delineate non-police persons. Cops are not soldiers and should not be treated as such.



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beknighted



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PostPosted: 12/23/14 3:26 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

That video has been making the rounds for a while. I don't think I've ever gotten past about first minute or so (and, for all I know, it ends soon after that) because the guy is pretty annoying.

Anyway, in general, you are not required to give the police ID, you are not required to consent to a search and you are not required to let them take anything from you. Some things change if they decide there's probable cause that you've committed a crime and they arrest you, and in particular certain searches and seizures are permitted in connection with an arrest. (The things in your possession, but not your house, for instance.)

I'd probably advise against acting the way he did unless you're white and have either a running video camera or a whole lot of people who are watching the interaction around you. Also, police seem to really hate it when you take video of them arresting people.


GlennMacGrady



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PostPosted: 12/23/14 5:55 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

TonyL222 wrote:
GlennMacGrady wrote:

The cops or DA may have interviewed the witnesses before they testified--or not, who knows?--but those statements aren't grand jury testimony until made to the jury under oath.


He knew well before that her story was concocted:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/unmasking-Ferguson-witness-40-496236
Quote:
In interviews with police, FBI agents, and federal and state prosecutors--as well as during two separate appearances before the grand jury that ultimately declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson--the purported eyewitness delivered a preposterous and perjurious account of the fatal encounter in Ferguson.


This witness, Sandra McElroy, was interviewed according the the Smoking Gun, but I stand by my viewpoint.

That McElroy "delivered a preposterous and perjurious account" to the police and/or FBI is an unsupported assertion by the Smoking Gun writer containing an improper legal conclusion if it relates only to the initial story given to investigators. McElroy's story can only have been perjurious after it have been given under oath to a jury.

Of course, she did testify to the grand jury twice, as the Smoking Gun reports, and it is now reasonable to conclude, after all the grand jury testimony has been completed and revealed, that McElroy's initial story to investigators and twice-changed story on the witness stand were collectively preposterous and, a posteriori, perjurious.

If you read the Smoking Gun account, it makes clear that, while her initial statements to investigators were "greeted with skepticism," it was on the grand jury witness stand that her story began to change and come apart. She made inconsistent statements under oath along with admissions that harmed her credibility. She asked for a break in the proceedings to get a piece of paper from home on which she had allegedly written everything she had seen, contemporaneously and word-for-word. This writing had never before been disclosed to investigators. Under examination, these notebook entries further damaged her credibility because they seemed to have been fabricated.

I think it would have been irresponsible, foolish, naive, improper, stupid and probably career-killing for McCulloch to have failed to bring before a grand jury a woman who had been publicly claiming for months on Facebook to have personally witnessed the shooting events from up close in person. The superficial and highly agended Fourth Estate would have gone ballistic with stories about an evil or incompetent prosecutor ignoring or suppressing percipient witnesses. Imagine the situation McCulloch would then have been in--trying to defend his actions by appealing to unsworn and perhaps confidential FBI and police witness interviews that were never entered into evidence or even proferred to a grand jury.

McCulloch did the right and smart thing by letting everyone with any arguable claim to relevant evidence to appear before the grand jury, and then let those citizens separate the wheat from the chaff. That's their job.
beknighted



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PostPosted: 12/23/14 9:58 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

GlennMacGrady wrote:
TonyL222 wrote:
GlennMacGrady wrote:

The cops or DA may have interviewed the witnesses before they testified--or not, who knows?--but those statements aren't grand jury testimony until made to the jury under oath.


He knew well before that her story was concocted:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/unmasking-Ferguson-witness-40-496236
Quote:
In interviews with police, FBI agents, and federal and state prosecutors--as well as during two separate appearances before the grand jury that ultimately declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson--the purported eyewitness delivered a preposterous and perjurious account of the fatal encounter in Ferguson.


This witness, Sandra McElroy, was interviewed according the the Smoking Gun, but I stand by my viewpoint.

That McElroy "delivered a preposterous and perjurious account" to the police and/or FBI is an unsupported assertion by the Smoking Gun writer containing an improper legal conclusion if it relates only to the initial story given to investigators. McElroy's story can only have been perjurious after it have been given under oath to a jury.

Of course, she did testify to the grand jury twice, as the Smoking Gun reports, and it is now reasonable to conclude, after all the grand jury testimony has been completed and revealed, that McElroy's initial story to investigators and twice-changed story on the witness stand were collectively preposterous and, a posteriori, perjurious.

If you read the Smoking Gun account, it makes clear that, while her initial statements to investigators were "greeted with skepticism," it was on the grand jury witness stand that her story began to change and come apart. She made inconsistent statements under oath along with admissions that harmed her credibility. She asked for a break in the proceedings to get a piece of paper from home on which she had allegedly written everything she had seen, contemporaneously and word-for-word. This writing had never before been disclosed to investigators. Under examination, these notebook entries further damaged her credibility because they seemed to have been fabricated.

I think it would have been irresponsible, foolish, naive, improper, stupid and probably career-killing for McCulloch to have failed to bring before a grand jury a woman who had been publicly claiming for months on Facebook to have personally witnessed the shooting events from up close in person. The superficial and highly agended Fourth Estate would have gone ballistic with stories about an evil or incompetent prosecutor ignoring or suppressing percipient witnesses. Imagine the situation McCulloch would then have been in--trying to defend his actions by appealing to unsworn and perhaps confidential FBI and police witness interviews that were never entered into evidence or even proferred to a grand jury.

McCulloch did the right and smart thing by letting everyone with any arguable claim to relevant evidence to appear before the grand jury, and then let those citizens separate the wheat from the chaff. That's their job.


I really disagree. First, this is not how grand juries work. Prosecutors don't dump all of the evidence in front of them and let them decide. 99% plus percent of the time, prosecutors present cases only when they want to indict and they pretty much never approach cases this way. Besides, unlike prosecutors, grand juries aren't trained in separating the wheat from the chaff, and so it's not their job at all. As I said above, he did it this way because he counted on them being unable to indict. In fact, as it turns out, the grand jury was given an incorrect explanation of the law, based on a Missouri statute that was overturned by the courts years ago. Conveniently, that wrong explanation supported not indicting Wilson.

Second, putting her in front of the grand jury actually was what was irresponsible. If her story broke down during the grand jury testimony, it would have broken down beforehand if she'd been interviewed properly. If the investigators were "skeptical," then they needed to dig deeper, and as the Smoking Gun story makes clear, her story involved some physical impossibilities that the investigators could have figured out if they'd tried. It makes no difference if she had been telling the whole world she was there - it's a dereliction of duty not to properly vet witnesses before you present them to the grand jury, one that's just as bad as putting on a witness you know is lying.


Admiral_Needa



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PostPosted: 12/24/14 6:33 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

pilight wrote:
What Ferguson can learn from the LAPD

http://news.yahoo.com/what-ferguson-can-learn-from-the-lapd-214547339.html


Quote:
When the former Boston and New York police chief arrived in Los Angeles in 2002, the LAPD was operating under federal oversight; a rogue unit in the Rampart Division had been caught planting evidence, beating gang members and lying under oath.



What Ferguson can learn from the LAPD? Question


Quote:
LA police investigate song mocking dead black teen at ex-cop's party

A song poking fun at the killing of black teenager Michael Brown by a white policeman, performed at a retired officer's party, has prompted the Los Angeles Police Department to launch an internal investigation, its chief said on Tuesday.

"Michael Brown learned a lesson about a messin' with a badass policeman," goes the song, captured on video and posted on entertainment news website TMZ. It continues: "Michael looked like some old Swiss cheese" ... his brain "splattered on the floor."

http://news.yahoo.com/la-police-investigate-song-mocking-dead-black-teen-092122735.html
http://www.tmz.com/2014/12/23/michael-brown-song-video-dead-police-parody-leroy-brown/



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TonyL222



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PostPosted: 12/24/14 11:46 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

GlennMacGrady wrote:


That McElroy "delivered a preposterous and perjurious account" to the police and/or FBI is an unsupported assertion by the Smoking Gun writer containing an improper legal conclusion if it relates only to the initial story given to investigators. McElroy's story can only have been perjurious after it have been given under oath to a jury.



Your assertion that the DA did not know her testimony prior to the GJ is also unsupported. All any of us here have is various accounts we've read. I've read in several places that the FBI never believed her story. She was supposedly in the area to visit a friend - whose name and address she could not recall. I think that would have sent up a read flag.

So you are free to stand by your viewpoint. That would mean that the FBI and local police investigators would have let many conflicting details of her story slip by them. Believe that if you'd like. I stand by mine.


beknighted



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PostPosted: 12/24/14 12:46 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

One note - it is true that you can't commit perjury unless you lie under oath. It is, however, a crime to lie to federal investigators. I don't know about whether Missouri has the same kind of law.


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PostPosted: 12/24/14 12:47 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

TonyL222 wrote:
She was supposedly in the area to visit a friend - whose name and address she could not recall. I think that would have sent up a read flag.


Or a red one.



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GlennMacGrady



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PostPosted: 12/24/14 4:38 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

beknighted wrote:
GlennMacGrady wrote:
TonyL222 wrote:
GlennMacGrady wrote:

The cops or DA may have interviewed the witnesses before they testified--or not, who knows?--but those statements aren't grand jury testimony until made to the jury under oath.


He knew well before that her story was concocted:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/unmasking-Ferguson-witness-40-496236
Quote:
In interviews with police, FBI agents, and federal and state prosecutors--as well as during two separate appearances before the grand jury that ultimately declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson--the purported eyewitness delivered a preposterous and perjurious account of the fatal encounter in Ferguson.


This witness, Sandra McElroy, was interviewed according the the Smoking Gun, but I stand by my viewpoint.

That McElroy "delivered a preposterous and perjurious account" to the police and/or FBI is an unsupported assertion by the Smoking Gun writer containing an improper legal conclusion if it relates only to the initial story given to investigators. McElroy's story can only have been perjurious after it have been given under oath to a jury.

Of course, she did testify to the grand jury twice, as the Smoking Gun reports, and it is now reasonable to conclude, after all the grand jury testimony has been completed and revealed, that McElroy's initial story to investigators and twice-changed story on the witness stand were collectively preposterous and, a posteriori, perjurious.

If you read the Smoking Gun account, it makes clear that, while her initial statements to investigators were "greeted with skepticism," it was on the grand jury witness stand that her story began to change and come apart. She made inconsistent statements under oath along with admissions that harmed her credibility. She asked for a break in the proceedings to get a piece of paper from home on which she had allegedly written everything she had seen, contemporaneously and word-for-word. This writing had never before been disclosed to investigators. Under examination, these notebook entries further damaged her credibility because they seemed to have been fabricated.

I think it would have been irresponsible, foolish, naive, improper, stupid and probably career-killing for McCulloch to have failed to bring before a grand jury a woman who had been publicly claiming for months on Facebook to have personally witnessed the shooting events from up close in person. The superficial and highly agended Fourth Estate would have gone ballistic with stories about an evil or incompetent prosecutor ignoring or suppressing percipient witnesses. Imagine the situation McCulloch would then have been in--trying to defend his actions by appealing to unsworn and perhaps confidential FBI and police witness interviews that were never entered into evidence or even proferred to a grand jury.

McCulloch did the right and smart thing by letting everyone with any arguable claim to relevant evidence to appear before the grand jury, and then let those citizens separate the wheat from the chaff. That's their job.


I really disagree. First, this is not how grand juries work. Prosecutors don't dump all of the evidence in front of them and let them decide. 99% plus percent of the time, prosecutors present cases only when they want to indict and they pretty much never approach cases this way. Besides, unlike prosecutors, grand juries aren't trained in separating the wheat from the chaff, and so it's not their job at all. As I said above, he did it this way because he counted on them being unable to indict. In fact, as it turns out, the grand jury was given an incorrect explanation of the law, based on a Missouri statute that was overturned by the courts years ago. Conveniently, that wrong explanation supported not indicting Wilson.

Second, putting her in front of the grand jury actually was what was irresponsible. If her story broke down during the grand jury testimony, it would have broken down beforehand if she'd been interviewed properly. If the investigators were "skeptical," then they needed to dig deeper, and as the Smoking Gun story makes clear, her story involved some physical impossibilities that the investigators could have figured out if they'd tried. It makes no difference if she had been telling the whole world she was there - it's a dereliction of duty not to properly vet witnesses before you present them to the grand jury, one that's just as bad as putting on a witness you know is lying.


I can't tell whether you have any practical experience in criminal procedure, but it's obvious you're scattering all sorts of unsupported "facts" and opinions on different subjects simply to trash the indictment.

Juries aren't trained to separate evidentiary wheat from chaff? Come on!!! Juries of peers, both grand and petit juries, have been the vehicle for evaluating evidence in the Anglo-American legal system for 1000 years. They are the judges of fact. Prosecutors are politicians. (BTW, I've never seen a course in "evaluating evidence" in any of the four law schools I've been affiliated with.)

I suggest that in any "normal" case there never would have been any grand jury proceeding at all--because the totality of all the collective evidence of any crime by the policeman was extremely thin, as we can now plainly see in retrospect. The jury had an easy time confirming this. McCulloch proceeded to a grand jury only because of the tsunami of public riots, anti-police media frenzy, the racial turmoil, and even political pressure from his own governor to "try" the policeman even before any evidence had been collected, the racially charged statements of Eric Holder, and the unprecedented army of a reported 50 FBI agents.

Oh, I get it, this Ben Hur cast of federal, state and local law enforcement experts, detectives and prosecuting attornies were all engaged in "dereliction of duty" to "vet witnesses properly" over a period of months. I confess I can't argue against such "facts".

Once the decision was made to have a grand jury hearing at all, it made perfect sense in this racially charged media circus for the in-court prosecutors, which did not include McCulloch, to present all evidence. Such prosecutors, as ethical officers of the court, can challenge weak testimony by examination and commentary.

Do I think the prosecutors believed early on that Officer Wilson committed no crime? Yes, for lack of probable cause evidence. They then had two choices: (1) not to bring the matter before a grand jury and dismiss the charges; (2) to put everything before a grand jury. Option 2 was legally smart and politically wise. The grand jury would either (a) agree with the prosecutors that there was no probable cause, or (b) find probable cause for trial, in which event Wilson undoubtedly would ultimately have been acquitted.
GlennMacGrady



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PostPosted: 12/24/14 4:47 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

TonyL222 wrote:
GlennMacGrady wrote:


That McElroy "delivered a preposterous and perjurious account" to the police and/or FBI is an unsupported assertion by the Smoking Gun writer containing an improper legal conclusion if it relates only to the initial story given to investigators. McElroy's story can only have been perjurious after it have been given under oath to a jury.



Your assertion that the DA did not know her testimony prior to the GJ is also unsupported. All any of us here have is various accounts we've read. I've read in several places that the FBI never believed her story. She was supposedly in the area to visit a friend - whose name and address she could not recall. I think that would have sent up a read flag.

So you are free to stand by your viewpoint. That would mean that the FBI and local police investigators would have let many conflicting details of her story slip by them. Believe that if you'd like. I stand by mine.


I don't have any personal knowledge of what story McElroy told what investigators. I'm just going by what I read in the Smoking Gun account, the accuracy of which is also unknown to me. But that account says McElroy changed her story while on the witness stand and produced a writing she had never before disclosed to any investigator.

Based on this account, my "belief" is simply that, however weak McElroy's story seemed initially to investigators and prosecutors, it became even weaker yet under oath during the grand jury proceeding. So, the decision to put McElroy before the grand jury not only did no harm, but helped bring out the actual truth. She was a largely a phony witness whom the jury could safely ignore.
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PostPosted: 12/24/14 5:45 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

How much do we owe you, Glenn? Or just me? I'll pay. And thank you and Merry Christmas.

I'm amazed that people are still here beating away on this topic. It's enough to make a person, as someone else expressed in another thread, pack it in for this place.

Guy was a either a serial goon or a very dangerous person who on that day finally snapped. At 6 feet 6 inches and close to 300 pounds he attacked a police officer doing society's dirty work. And yet the case was pounced upon by media because there was a protest response and the news media took that to mean where there was smoke there must also be fire. But it was all just smoke and mirrors. This country is fucked up. People are fucked up. Michael Brown was fucked up. His lying POS friend is fucked up.

The people who projected what has been a national disgrace for decades, that is the killing by police, warranted only by their own self-determined policies, of citizens who should not have been killed ONTO THIS ROTTEN STINKING example of a case where an officer killed an unarmed black teenager were just plain stupid. And everyone who doesn't have that nugget of judgment, discernment, fairness, societal responsibility, required apparently to know what's right from wrong in this case is as much a part of the problem as any other part of the problem. Shame is ON, people. That cop could have been protecting you or yours.

What some people don't seem to give a shit about, unfortunately, is that there is a truly vast swath of the American public, white America, who looks at this case, the convenience store video, the IGNORANCE and violence of the response and the aftermath, and they are turned OFF. Everything they fear and everything they think about blacks, Liberals, the news media, etc. has been given a giant booster shot that Fox News or the KKK couldn't have dreamed up in their wildest fantasies.

I don't know if many of you've heard this... but most of America look at the police as protection FROM the Michael Browns of this country ANYWAY. And NOW more than ever. Thank you for that, Ferguson! But people do need protection from the Michael Browns of this country. Everybody with a good job and a nice house does. Every affluent community not based in some liberal stronghold of the country does. And on down the economic ladder to the less well off, the struggling middle class and the working class who live in closer proximity to high crime areas. The police represent some measure of physical security for most everyone in this country, their loved ones, and their property.

So that a guy 6 foot 6 inches tall and 300 pounds can't just come along and decide he's going to take your shit because he's too big and too bad for you to do anything about it.

In this particular case, on this very message board, you have multiple progressive left leaning liberal Democrats... whatever... who have expressed their traditional distaste and suspicions of the police and specifically on this subject matter in general... but who have been over the months giving a hard thumbs down to this case in Ferguson. That's people who want to fix this country and fix the how and whys of when law enforcement uses deadly violence so that this number of people killed, which is going to always skew to minorities, goes way way down.

All of those people like me and I won't even name the others here... would be allies and would be behind this case... if the details of the case itself were different.

We keep having these moments hand delivered to us by the news media that set race relations back 50 years. So many of that vast swath of America could be and would be on board with the outrage if this case was like SO many other outrageous examples and then you would have real change. But that possibility has been squandered. For decades. These protests are going nowhere. They will fizzle eventually or end in some well deserved beat downs. Because the police are now really pissed and the taxpayers who employ the police are looking at each other with raised eyebrows and a mutually agreed upon resolve that NO... sorry folks.... some things are NOT going to change.



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Every woman who has ever been presented with a career/sex quid pro quo in the entertainment industry should come forward and simply say, “Me, too.” - jammer The New York Times 10/10/17
beknighted



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PostPosted: 12/24/14 11:23 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

GlennMacGrady wrote:
benighted wrote:
I really disagree. First, this is not how grand juries work. Prosecutors don't dump all of the evidence in front of them and let them decide. 99% plus percent of the time, prosecutors present cases only when they want to indict and they pretty much never approach cases this way. Besides, unlike prosecutors, grand juries aren't trained in separating the wheat from the chaff, and so it's not their job at all. As I said above, he did it this way because he counted on them being unable to indict. In fact, as it turns out, the grand jury was given an incorrect explanation of the law, based on a Missouri statute that was overturned by the courts years ago. Conveniently, that wrong explanation supported not indicting Wilson.

Second, putting her in front of the grand jury actually was what was irresponsible. If her story broke down during the grand jury testimony, it would have broken down beforehand if she'd been interviewed properly. If the investigators were "skeptical," then they needed to dig deeper, and as the Smoking Gun story makes clear, her story involved some physical impossibilities that the investigators could have figured out if they'd tried. It makes no difference if she had been telling the whole world she was there - it's a dereliction of duty not to properly vet witnesses before you present them to the grand jury, one that's just as bad as putting on a witness you know is lying.


I can't tell whether you have any practical experience in criminal procedure, but it's obvious you're scattering all sorts of unsupported "facts" and opinions on different subjects simply to trash the indictment.

Juries aren't trained to separate evidentiary wheat from chaff? Come on!!! Juries of peers, both grand and petit juries, have been the vehicle for evaluating evidence in the Anglo-American legal system for 1000 years. They are the judges of fact. Prosecutors are politicians. (BTW, I've never seen a course in "evaluating evidence" in any of the four law schools I've been affiliated with.)

I suggest that in any "normal" case there never would have been any grand jury proceeding at all--because the totality of all the collective evidence of any crime by the policeman was extremely thin, as we can now plainly see in retrospect. The jury had an easy time confirming this. McCulloch proceeded to a grand jury only because of the tsunami of public riots, anti-police media frenzy, the racial turmoil, and even political pressure from his own governor to "try" the policeman even before any evidence had been collected, the racially charged statements of Eric Holder, and the unprecedented army of a reported 50 FBI agents.

Oh, I get it, this Ben Hur cast of federal, state and local law enforcement experts, detectives and prosecuting attornies were all engaged in "dereliction of duty" to "vet witnesses properly" over a period of months. I confess I can't argue against such "facts".

Once the decision was made to have a grand jury hearing at all, it made perfect sense in this racially charged media circus for the in-court prosecutors, which did not include McCulloch, to present all evidence. Such prosecutors, as ethical officers of the court, can challenge weak testimony by examination and commentary.

Do I think the prosecutors believed early on that Officer Wilson committed no crime? Yes, for lack of probable cause evidence. They then had two choices: (1) not to bring the matter before a grand jury and dismiss the charges; (2) to put everything before a grand jury. Option 2 was legally smart and politically wise. The grand jury would either (a) agree with the prosecutors that there was no probable cause, or (b) find probable cause for trial, in which event Wilson undoubtedly would ultimately have been acquitted.


I'm going to start with the last paragraph. If they believed there was no probable cause, then the right thing to do was say so and not go to the grand jury. (By the way, there were never any charges to dismiss - he was never arrested.) The only reason to go the grand jury if McColluch thought there was no probable cause was, in fact, political, which is what I've been saying all along. He didn't want to take the heat for not indicting Wilson, so he used the grand jury for that purpose. It was never, ever about finding the truth. If he'd wanted an indictment, he'd have gone about it completely differently (and he would have ensured that the grand jury was told the correct legal standard, too, not one that had been overturned years ago). (And, really, to think that the "in-court prosecutors" weren't fully directed by McColluch on how to handle this case is pretty unrealistic.)

There is, by the way, a course in evaluating evidence in law schools. Most everybody who has any interest in litigation takes it. It's called, unsurprisingly, "Evidence." There's a huge body of law on the question of what makes evidence credible and not credible, and about what evidence can be used in a trial. The specific reason all of that law exists is because of concerns that juries can be swayed by evidence that is not trustworthy or that makes them like or dislike a party in case for irrelevant reasons because they don't know how to judge some things. A lot of evidence never makes it to the jury because, in fact, they are not trained in separating the wheat from the chaff. And history demonstrates that if you give juries too much information, they can get overloaded and give you bad results. (For instance, there's good reason to think something like that happened in the O.J. Simpson trial.)

And I will note for about the tenth time that I am not saying the grand jury should have indicted Wilson. While I'm convinced that Wilson's behavior was the root cause of Brown's death, that's different from saying he bears legal responsibility, and I know that I don't have enough information to make that judgment. Rather, I'm saying that the game was rigged by the prosecution, so there was no chance he would be indicted, which is a much different thing.




Last edited by beknighted on 12/25/14 10:21 pm; edited 1 time in total
TonyL222



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PostPosted: 12/25/14 8:47 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

GlennMacGrady wrote:

Based on this account, my "belief" is simply that, however weak McElroy's story seemed initially to investigators and prosecutors, it became even weaker yet under oath during the grand jury proceeding. So, the decision to put McElroy before the grand jury not only did no harm, but helped bring out the actual truth. She was a largely a phony witness whom the jury could safely ignore.


As I said, all any of us here have are third hand media accounts and the released GJ info. TMZ, while sensational (that's why it exists) is usually a reliable source and to date no one has refuted its story - but you for no apparent reason other than it doesn't fit with your narrative. What it does is point out is that her story would have immediately been seen as "preposterous" by even a rookie investigator.

My "reason" tells me that McElroy would have had to explain to FBI investigators right away WHY she was even an area she had no reasons to be in and her story would have fallen apart right away. I'm also sure the investigators were aware of the uninformed and biased FB post well before the GJ. The DA, FBI and police investigators would all have to be incompetent to not know her story was fabricated before her GJ testimony. THAT's what I believe and why.

jammer I just don't believe that even a guy 6'6" and 300lbs is dumb enough to charge like a bull at someone with a gun who has already shot him once. You start to run, you keep on running. Instead he stops, turns, makes some dramatic notorious gansta statement and charges and armed policeman. Yeah, right. Of course there were witnesses who saw this. No wait, that was McElroy.

I'm neither "left leaning" nor have a distaste for the police. My brother-in-law was the police chief in Riverdale, GA, and my fraternity brother is an officer in Denver. Both of them need to shoot to kill when threatened or the public is threatened. But by your on words, the police have a special responsibility in deciding when yo use force to make an arrest and when to use deadly violence. $35 worth of cigars in Ferguson and $2 cigarettes in NYC just don't rise to that level for me.


GlennMacGrady



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PostPosted: 01/01/15 3:39 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

beknighted wrote:

The only reason to go the grand jury if McColluch thought there was no probable cause was, in fact, political, which is what I've been saying all along. He didn't want to take the heat for not indicting Wilson, so he used the grand jury for that purpose.


I agree completely with this, and that's what I said. It was not politically possible for McCulloch simply to drop the the case and bring no charges. His career would have been killed. Literally his life and those of his family could even have been in danger from the crazed rioters and racial pot stirrers. He was smart to use the grand jury to make the decision.


beknighted wrote:
It was never, ever about finding the truth.


Well, I can't agree with this because it contradicts the previous point. The "truth" is a matter of judgment. I believe the prosecutorial team was early of the judgment that Officer Wilson was guilty of no crime. Call that the truth of the situation if you like. By presenting all the evidence to the grand jury -- instead of just the incriminating evidence as prosecutors usually do -- the prosecutors gambled that the jurors would reach the same judgment (= truth) that they had privately reached. And that's what happened. Legal truth prevailed with minimal political heat on the prosecutors and legal system.

I simply don't agree that law students learn how to evaluate the substantive truth of admissible evidence. They do learn lots of fuzzy rules about admissibility, which have even fuzzier exceptions, but none of those rules apply to a grand jury proceeding. The prosecutors can introduce whatever they want and, as far as I know, can say what they want. No judge or other lawyer is even present, and the whole process is secret.

You fully well know that common folk jurors are the judges of fact in our system of jurisprudence. Not lawyers. Not judges (except in bench trials). What's true or not is simply a matter of human experience and common sense as adjudged by common people. The butcher, baker and candlestick maker have as many of these qualities as any lawyer.
pilight



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PostPosted: 03/15/17 7:54 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

According to the cop who shot him, Michael Brown never reached for the gun

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/us-district-court-document-including-officer-darren-wilsons-list-of-admissions/2371/




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Stonington_QB



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PostPosted: 03/15/17 9:41 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

You know, I'm all for equal civil rights and everything but there has to be SOMEBODY better out there to get behind than Michael Brown.

For the life of me I don't get why some of you feel this deep connection to this guy. You've already chosen which side you want to win regardless of the evidence and the decision. It's puzzling the people some of you choose to defend (and the things you get bent out of shape over).

Somewhere out there is a man more deserving of this level of attention.


pilight



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PostPosted: 08/08/18 11:44 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Prosecutor who led probe of Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson loses primary

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bob-mcculloch-wesley-bell-michael-brown-shooting-ferguson-prosecutor-who-led-probe-loses-democratic-primary-to-black-city-councilman/

Quote:
Many onlookers saw the election as a referendum on what happened in Ferguson. It marked the first time McCulloch had been challenged since Brown's death.



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