On 12/2/14 5:41 PM, F*O*A*D wrote:
On 12/2/14 5:27 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 12/2/2014 5:19 PM, Let it snowe wrote:
On 12/2/2014 12:07 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 12/2/2014 11:41 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 02 Dec 2014 08:19:33 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:
Kathy Alizadeh is the Assistant Prosecuting Attorney who handled the
evidence presented to the Wilson Grand Jury.
At the beginning of the deliberations she handed out copies of the
Missouri statue that covers the conditions under which a police
officer can use deadly force for the juror's to consider. (The
statute
is very favorable to the police and to Wilson.)
Turns out the statute she handed out for the juror's benefit was
written in 1979 and had been declared unconstitutional by the US
Supreme
Court in 1985. She didn't bother correcting this "error" until near
the
end of the deliberations when she handed out the "correct" statute.
She allowed the jurors to listen to all the testimony and evidence
using
the 1979 statute as a guide for how police can respond.
Here is what she told the jurors:
“Previously in the very beginning of this process I printed out a
statute for you that was, the statute in Missouri for the use of
force
to affect an arrest. So if you all want to get those out. What we
have
discovered and we have been going along with this, doing our
research,
is that the statute in the state of Missouri does not comply with the
case law. This doesn’t sound probably unfamiliar with you that the
law
is codified in the written form in the books and they’re called
statutes, but courts interpret those statutes.
And so the statute for the use of force to affect an arrest in the
state
of Missouri does not comply with Missouri supreme, I’m sorry, United
States supreme court cases.
So the statue I gave you, if you want to fold that in half just so
that
you know don’t necessarily rely on that because there is a portion of
that that doesn’t comply with the law.”
She never explained to the jurors what the differences were in the
two
documents. A juror asked if a Federal Court finding overrules the
original State statute.
Alizadeh's response to the juror's question:
“As far as you need to know, just don’t worry about that.”
Well what was the difference?
Was it significant to the case?
My guess, the old statute allowed the cops to shoot a fleeing felon
and they changed that part.
Since Wilson was making a "defense" case I am not sure it matters.
Brown's fatal wound was not in the back..
Absolutely correct. The part that was unconstitutional was permitting
the cops to use deadly force on someone who is fleeing. If I were
arguing for a conviction or indictment of Wilson, I'd lose because
there
is no evidence Brown was shot in the back or that Wilson shot at Brown
while Brown was walking away.
But that's not the point. The point was that the DA's office used
every
bit of evidence, including outdated statutes, to influence the GJ
for no
indictment even before all the evidence and testimony was heard.
That's not the function or purpose of the DA's office in this
situation.
The statute thing could have been an honest mistake which she corrected
when she learned of the federal ruling.
Could be. But no attempt was made to explain what the change was and,
when one of the jurors asked if a federal court can over rule a state
statue her answer was basically, "don't worry about it".
This was a high-vis case. Every aspect of it was discussed in detail by
the staff at the prosecutor's office every day. Presenting the wrong
info to the jury wasn't a mistake. We have allowed the police in this
country to get out of control and in many areas they are backed up by
crooked prosecutors.
There are very few if any police shootings of suspects in England,
France, Japan, and Germany, yet there are many hundreds of such
shootings here every year. The modus operandi here for the cops seems to
be "shoot first so you don't have to ask questions later."
But hey, it's mostly non-white kids the cops seem to be shooting, and
that pleases the righties, right?
Forgot this:
Trigger Happy Cops
THE shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American, by a
police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, is a reminder that
civilians—innocent or guilty—are far more likely to be shot by police in
America than in any other rich country. In 2012, according to data
compiled by the FBI, 410 Americans were “justifiably” killed by
police—409 with guns. That figure may well be an underestimate. Not only
is it limited to the number of people who were shot while committing a
crime, but also, amazingly, reporting the data is voluntary.
Last year, in total, British police officers actually fired their
weapons three times. The number of people fatally shot was zero. In 2012
the figure was just one. Even after adjusting for the smaller size of
Britain’s population, British citizens are around 100 times less likely
to be shot by a police officer than Americans. Between 2010 and 2014 the
police force of one small American city, Albuquerque in New Mexico, shot
and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits
killed by all of England and Wales’s 43 forces during the same period.
The explanation for this gap is simple. In Britain, guns are rare. Only
specialist firearms officers carry them; and criminals rarely have
access to them. The last time a British police officer was killed by a
firearm on duty was in 2012, in a brutal case in Manchester. The annual
number of murders by shooting is typically less than 50. Police
shootings are enormously controversial. The shooting of Mark Duggan, a
known gangster, which in 2011 started riots across London, led to a
fiercely debated inquest. Last month, a police officer was charged with
murder over a shooting in 2005. The reputation of the Metropolitan
Police’s armed officers is still barely recovering from the fatal
shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian, in the wake
of the 7/7 terrorist bombings in London.
In America, by contrast, it is hardly surprising that cops resort to
their weapons more frequently. In 2013, 30 cops were shot and
killed—just a fraction of the 9,000 or so murders using guns that happen
each year. Add to that a hyper-militarised police culture and a deep
history of racial strife and you have the reason why so many civilians
are shot by police officers. Unless America can either reduce its
colossal gun ownership rates or fix its deep social problems, shootings
of civilians by police—justified or not—seem sure to continue.
http://tinyurl.com/pyuvf2u
--
I feel no need to explain my politics to stupid right-wingers.
After all, I am *not* the Jackass Whisperer.