False. It’s only important to hear the witnesses who are actual witnesses. It’s a scam to hear witnesses who didn’t see the incident and then in the aftermath claim that many of the witnesses weren’t witnesses at all, as this man who claims to be a district attorney complained to excuse his depraved bias and malfeasance.
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Exactly. As has been pointed out, there was no one at the grand jury to challenge the veracity of any of the district attorney’s staged testimony. This is a sham, pure and simple.
Answer: white privilege.
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One witness was recorded on cell phone as the incident unfolded and put his hands up in the air to demonstrate what he was seeing. That kind of testimony isn’t subject to inaccurate memory. This whole thing was a travesty, but the outcome was no surprise at all. Some legal experts said the way the “prosecutor” handle the grand jury proceedings was unprecedented, and they were saying it well before the jury’s decision was announced.
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I hope this posts, it is a cut and paste from another thread, but it fits here even better;
Someone who knows the process needs to describe the difference between the way a civil or criminal trial jury is chosen and the way a grand jury is chosen. In lieu of a real legal expert, I’m going to give it a try.
Unless I am mistaken, there is no advocate for the shooting victim involved in the process. In a criminal trial, lawyers for the defense and the prosecution, or in a civil case, the defense and the plaintiff question perspective jurors and eliminate the ones they think have prejudice or predisposition.
Which is why it takes so long to pick some juries, and why a lot of perspective jurors are brought in.
But in a grand jury like this, the prosecutor is the only arbiter of that selection.
While the grand jury members have the right to ask anything they want of the accused (in this case Wilson) there is no one in the court who is the victim’s (Michael Brown’s) advocate, thus, no one with a personal or professional agenda or duty to expose misdirection or ambiguity on the part of any witness, particularly the accused.
So, unless one of the jurors chosen by the prosecutor had a reason to question Wilson’s assertions in an adversarial posture, if the prosecutor didn’t go there, no one would.
Someone correct me if I am wrong.
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Here in Delaware if the Grand Jury refuses to produce a NO BILL they must hear all the witnesses which was done in this case
Maybe there should be an automatic manslaughter charge with every police shooting, and the probable cause determined in a criminal court, not by a grand jury? That alone would remove the veil of protection that “allows” some of these shootings.
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How do you know they “made it up”? They may have simply misinterpreted what they saw. It’s entirely possible that Brown flinched or made some sort of movement when the gun was fired that they interpreted as a reaction to having been hit.
Well, the prosecutor is supposed to take on that role, but in this case, he appeared to be on the side of the defense from Day 1.
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If this is a legal travesty, then let[quote=“JEP07, post:25, topic:13654”]
the victim’s (Michael Brown’s) advocate(s)
[/quote]bring a civil suit. They will have all the evidence collected by the state, by the feds (I assume) and any they want to bring forward. Let justice prevail.
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Are you getting paid by the Ferguson Police Department? Why do you feel the need to answer every poster who suggests that Wilson may not have been innocent of murder/wrongful death here? I read a post that questions the absence of an indictment and I know there’s going to be a reply from MrComments. And yet, when I’ve asked you repeatedly to name the witnesses whom you claim have recanted, you don’t answer me. You go on making the same unsubstantiated and possibly deceitful claim. Why is that? You’re so eager to lecture people on a topic you couldn’t possibly understand with any more certitude than the rest of the posters here, but when it comes to corroborating your claims, you shut right up. Just whom do you represent here? Your position long ago exceeded the opinion of one man – you’ve made more than thirty posts on this topic. Whom are you actually representing here?
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I answered a very specific question. Don’t use my specific answer to a specific question to piggyback your opinion onto the thread.
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I know too many african-americans that have problems and fear of the Police. I don’t doubt the issue. But it is begginnig to appear to me that this was the wrong case to hang the hat on.
This was a policeman that had never used his gun in the line of duty. He was not George Zimmerman out looking for a pretext to use coercive force. He didn’t have a history that suggested he was an abusive cop, despite being one in predominantly African-American community with a predominantly White force with a predominantly white political establishment. On the other hand, who doesn’t hit the ground when an armed policeman tells them too? I remember the movie “Good Will Hunting”: You struck a cop, you are going in. Who strikes a cop?
It now looks to me that the Prosecuting Attorney didn’t see much of a case, but if he dismisses it, he would be tarnished as subjectively against African Americans, so he delegated it to a Grand Jury, and the collective decision was unanimously the same.
This reminds me of Rather-gate. Bush was awol. But the hat was hung on the wrong evidence. In the case of Rathergate, Bush’s awol was dismissed from the court of public opinion, to devistating effect. On the issue of unjust police enforcement levied against African-Americans, the issue will re-emerge in another case. It has been set back, in my opinion. But it will re-emerge, and still we all have to keep working for a better society.
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The prosecutor relied on one witness – Witness #10 – in describing the events of the shooting. Witness #10 was the only witness who described Brown as “charging” Wilson after having been shot. No other witness made such a claim. Consequently, McCulloch relied on the testimony of Witness #10 as though McCullochy were a defense attorney for Wilson. But the entirety of Witness #10’s testimony included several "I don’t recall"s and "I can’t remember"s, not to mention several actual changes in his story of what he claimed to have seen. (In his first interview he claimed that Brown and a friend were on the sidewalk, and then later he changed that recollection to Brown and friend being in the street.)
In a trial, this witness, the one McCulloch relied upon to create the scenario which vilified Brown and exonerated Wilson, would never have survived cross-examination. This is one small aspect of a drastically flawed proceeding that indicates a need for trial. That’s a certainty, MrComments. More so than all your specious claims.
He didn’t have a history that suggested he was an abusive cop, despite being one in predominantly African-American community with a predominantly White force with a predominantly white political establishment.
Not only is Wilson caught lying in his official report here, but explain to me this one puzzlement. If you just shot a kid – for whatever reason – are you going to let that dead body lay out in the street, in the sun and the heat, for four and a half hours? You might choose to say that’s not Wilson’s call, but I disagree. He’s the shooter – you think on a relatively small town force like the Ferguson PD, Wilson couldn’t tell someone to retrieve the body he just killed that’s still laying in the street? What could possibly be the reason for leaving a dead body in the street for 4.5 hours?
Kind of like the way some warring tribes in ancient civilizations would put a severed head on a lance and stick it up in front of the castle? As a warning. You think the Ferguson PD might have left Big Mike to cook in the street for hours as a warning to the rest of the community?
I do.
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I wonder if the Grand Jury hear testimony from the lady who was standing right next to Witness 40. #40 said she yelled to Michael Brown to “sit your ass down”. Certainly, witness 40 made very racist written comments in his journal, And I also wonder if these journal entries were actually made on Aug 9th. I find it a bit odd that this witness’s journal mirrors the defense of Darren Wilson. I doubt that there were others who testified before the GJ but I sure want to know if there was more than this racist who said that Brown was coming at Wilson. I’m most interested in whether or not the lady who was next to #40 testified before the GJ, and what did she say happened.
Since the GJ decided to believe Wilson’s version that Brown was running toward him looking like “a demon”, and there was one witness #40 who corroborated this, the mostly white (9 whites) decided not to indite.
If this core defense could be seriously questioned, most especially the likely white witness #40’s story, Wilson’s self defense would go out the window.
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