Ferguson / Staten Island Decisions -- No Indictments

Spartan Squad · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

Boom_70 said:

"Everything about this case screams cronyism and coverup"

Are you then suggesting that Eric Holder and the DOJ are part of this coverup since
they were involved in the investigation ?
Click to expand...

No, I am suggesting this case was so poorly handled that even if we know the truth, it is hard to believe it.

Boom_70 · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

Spartan Squad said:

Boom_70 said:

"Everything about this case screams cronyism and coverup"

Are you then suggesting that Eric Holder and the DOJ are part of this coverup since
they were involved in the investigation ?
Click to expand...

No, I am suggesting this case was so poorly handled that even if we know the truth, it is hard to believe it.
Click to expand...

But wouldn't "everything" include Eric Holder and The DOJ?

I held out high hope that their involvement would ensure a fair process and a
result that was accepted by all.

Spartan Squad · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

Boom_70 said:

Spartan Squad said:

Boom_70 said:

"Everything about this case screams cronyism and coverup"

Are you then suggesting that Eric Holder and the DOJ are part of this coverup since
they were involved in the investigation ?
Click to expand...

No, I am suggesting this case was so poorly handled that even if we know the truth, it is hard to believe it.
Click to expand...

But wouldn't "everything" include Eric Holder and The DOJ?

I held out high hope that their involvement would ensure a fair process and a
result that was accepted by all.
Click to expand...

Yes, I am disappointed with how the DOJ allowed this farce to happen. I am hoping the feds pull a page from the 1960s playbook and bring Wilson up on charges of violating Brown's civil rights. It won't happen and it's maddening.

cranberry · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

doctorquant said:

The Big Ragu said:

... how well established grand juries are and the great purpose they serve as a "check."

Which is bullshit.

But whatever. I never suggested the prosecutor did anything illegal, the gist of your last post. I am talking about a flawed system of justice -- what you called the process -- that allows a prosecutor to treat people differently before the law, depending on whether they want to go prosecute or not.
Click to expand...

Sorry, Ragu, you're off the rails there. Grand jury or no, the prosecutor has the power to treat people differently before the law. Now matter how you slice it, that's the way it is.

As regards the use of the grand jury ... well, I am of course no legal expert, but I would assume that a former Assistant U.S. Attorney would be. Here's the position of just such a man:

[The charge is that] McCulloch instead used the grand jury to exculpate Wilson, a white (cop) privilege that a black defendant could never dream of obtaining.

To describe this as nonsense is a slander on nonsense. It is freely conceded that the grand-jury inquest into Brown’s killing was more a political than a legal exercise. That, however, was the result of intimidation by the Left’s race-mythology agitators — very much including the president and the attorney general of the United States. It was clearly not aimed at benefitting Wilson.

In a typical case, prosecutors rely on the low probable-cause threshold applicable in grand-jury investigations only for the purpose of limiting how much evidence they need to present. Contrary to another regnant myth, guilt is not in doubt in most criminal cases. Overwhelmingly, they are open-and-shut, often supported by post-arrest confessions. As a result, the grand jury can appear to be a pro forma exercise — a cookie-cutter procedure the Constitution requires before an accused person can be convicted of a crime he not only clearly committed but to which he will almost certainly plead guilty.

On the other hand, when convinced that the subject of an investigation either is innocent or is incapable of being proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, prosecutors do not present the case to the grand jury. That’s because their focus is the trial, not the indictment. If, after preliminary investigation, prosecutors do not assess the evidence as strong enough to convince a trial jury to render a unanimous guilty verdict, they dismiss the case on the basis of their own professional judgment — it never sees the grand-jury room.

At a proper trial, Wilson could not have been convicted of murder. That does not mean what happened was not horrible — it was. It does not mean Wilson is not civilly liable (although I doubt that he is). It simply means the circumstances of the shooting do not meet the high criminal-law standards for either intentional homicide or the criminally irresponsible causing of death.

...

If the Michael Brown shooting were an ordinary case, a grand jury would never have been asked to consider indicting Officer Wilson. McCulloch, the chief prosecutor, directed his office to present it to the grand jury because it was not an ordinary case — because it was a racially charged case ....

Ordinarily, prosecutors unilaterally decide whether or not to seek an indictment and, in the rare instance when anyone asks why they decided as they did, are restrained by investigative-secrecy protocols from explaining their decision. But McCulloch was understandably unwilling to make a unilateral judgment for which he would have been unable to defend himself from inevitable charges of racism. He thus directed his office to make an exhaustive presentation to the grand jury. It was both a Pontius Pilate–style abdication that made the community, rather than himself, accountable for the charging decision; and a vehicle that, with the court’s blessing, enabled him to disclose the voluminous evidence justifying the decision not to indict.
Click to expand...

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393642/progressive-mythography-andrew-c-mccarthy/page/0/1

I recognize that my appeal to authority may not pass RickStain muster -- who among us can summon the strength to enter that pantheon of demigods? -- I think it does at a minimum justify heyabbott's position (and that of others) vis-a-vis the grand jury's use and actions.
Click to expand...

Michael c. McCarthy? This may be an appeal to a fellow wing nut but certainly not a reputable authority.

The Big Ragu · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

doctorquant said:

The Big Ragu said:

... how well established grand juries are and the great purpose they serve as a "check."

Which is bullshit.

But whatever. I never suggested the prosecutor did anything illegal, the gist of your last post. I am talking about a flawed system of justice -- what you called the process -- that allows a prosecutor to treat people differently before the law, depending on whether they want to go prosecute or not.
Click to expand...

Sorry, Ragu, you're off the rails there. Grand jury or no, the prosecutor has the power to treat people differently before the law. Now matter how you slice it, that's the way it is.
Click to expand...

You just reiterated what I was saying. The prosecutor has the power to treat people differently before the law. Indeed.

So I look at how that works out in practice, in the context of this case. I see, say plenty of black guys who come from the wrong addresses, accused with lesser evidence than there was in this case getting railroaded through the system and compare it to this case where the prosecutor was doing everything NOT to indict. ... and rather than say, "Aw gee, that's the way it is," I point out that it isn't fair.

If that puts me off the rails, I am glad to be off the train you think I should be on. That is a SHITTY, UNFAIR system -- in practice -- of justice. And people who seem so eager to defend that system raise my suspicions.

doctorquant said:

As regards the use of the grand jury ... well, I am of course no legal expert, but I would assume that a former Assistant U.S. Attorney would be. Here's the position of just such a man:

[The charge is that] McCulloch instead used the grand jury to exculpate Wilson, a white (cop) privilege that a black defendant could never dream of obtaining.

To describe this as nonsense is a slander on nonsense. It is freely conceded that the grand-jury inquest into Brown’s killing was more a political than a legal exercise. That, however, was the result of intimidation by the Left’s race-mythology agitators — very much including the president and the attorney general of the United States. It was clearly not aimed at benefitting Wilson.

In a typical case, prosecutors rely on the low probable-cause threshold applicable in grand-jury investigations only for the purpose of limiting how much evidence they need to present. Contrary to another regnant myth, guilt is not in doubt in most criminal cases. Overwhelmingly, they are open-and-shut, often supported by post-arrest confessions. As a result, the grand jury can appear to be a pro forma exercise — a cookie-cutter procedure the Constitution requires before an accused person can be convicted of a crime he not only clearly committed but to which he will almost certainly plead guilty.

On the other hand, when convinced that the subject of an investigation either is innocent or is incapable of being proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, prosecutors do not present the case to the grand jury. That’s because their focus is the trial, not the indictment. If, after preliminary investigation, prosecutors do not assess the evidence as strong enough to convince a trial jury to render a unanimous guilty verdict, they dismiss the case on the basis of their own professional judgment — it never sees the grand-jury room.

At a proper trial, Wilson could not have been convicted of murder. That does not mean what happened was not horrible — it was. It does not mean Wilson is not civilly liable (although I doubt that he is). It simply means the circumstances of the shooting do not meet the high criminal-law standards for either intentional homicide or the criminally irresponsible causing of death.

...

If the Michael Brown shooting were an ordinary case, a grand jury would never have been asked to consider indicting Officer Wilson. McCulloch, the chief prosecutor, directed his office to present it to the grand jury because it was not an ordinary case — because it was a racially charged case ....

Ordinarily, prosecutors unilaterally decide whether or not to seek an indictment and, in the rare instance when anyone asks why they decided as they did, are restrained by investigative-secrecy protocols from explaining their decision. But McCulloch was understandably unwilling to make a unilateral judgment for which he would have been unable to defend himself from inevitable charges of racism. He thus directed his office to make an exhaustive presentation to the grand jury. It was both a Pontius Pilate–style abdication that made the community, rather than himself, accountable for the charging decision; and a vehicle that, with the court’s blessing, enabled him to disclose the voluminous evidence justifying the decision not to indict.
Click to expand...

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393642/progressive-mythography-andrew-c-mccarthy/page/0/1

I recognize that my appeal to authority may not pass RickStain muster -- who among us can summon the strength to enter that pantheon of demigods? -- I think it does at a minimum justify heyabbott's position (and that of others) vis-a-vis the grand jury's use and actions.
Click to expand...

Your appeal to authority -- as convincing as his "the Left's race mythology" presentation of his OPINION was : -- is a huge problem for me. He suggests that the use of a grand jury was a farce. But not to worry, cause we can just trust him, it got the outcome it should have gotten. Gee, that makes it so much easier to swallow.

Plus, I call bullshit on "guilt is not in doubt in most criminal cases. Overwhelmingly, they are open and shut," therefore. ... they only prosecute the ones where the guy is OBVIOUSLY guilty.

That is pure crap. And if you have any doubt, I'll be happy to detail hundreds of those open and shut cases (including the ones with the confessions) in which the people convicted were later exonerated.

The narrative closer to reality (not the National Review version) is that prosecutors make whatever cases they are motivated to prosecute into open and shut cases.

Hokie_pokie · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

doctorquant said:

The Big Ragu said:

... how well established grand juries are and the great purpose they serve as a "check."

Which is bullshit.

But whatever. I never suggested the prosecutor did anything illegal, the gist of your last post. I am talking about a flawed system of justice -- what you called the process -- that allows a prosecutor to treat people differently before the law, depending on whether they want to go prosecute or not.
Click to expand...

Sorry, Ragu, you're off the rails there. Grand jury or no, the prosecutor has the power to treat people differently before the law. Now matter how you slice it, that's the way it is.

As regards the use of the grand jury ... well, I am of course no legal expert, but I would assume that a former Assistant U.S. Attorney would be. Here's the position of just such a man:

[The charge is that] McCulloch instead used the grand jury to exculpate Wilson, a white (cop) privilege that a black defendant could never dream of obtaining.

To describe this as nonsense is a slander on nonsense. It is freely conceded that the grand-jury inquest into Brown’s killing was more a political than a legal exercise. That, however, was the result of intimidation by the Left’s race-mythology agitators — very much including the president and the attorney general of the United States. It was clearly not aimed at benefitting Wilson.

In a typical case, prosecutors rely on the low probable-cause threshold applicable in grand-jury investigations only for the purpose of limiting how much evidence they need to present. Contrary to another regnant myth, guilt is not in doubt in most criminal cases. Overwhelmingly, they are open-and-shut, often supported by post-arrest confessions. As a result, the grand jury can appear to be a pro forma exercise — a cookie-cutter procedure the Constitution requires before an accused person can be convicted of a crime he not only clearly committed but to which he will almost certainly plead guilty.

On the other hand, when convinced that the subject of an investigation either is innocent or is incapable of being proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, prosecutors do not present the case to the grand jury. That’s because their focus is the trial, not the indictment. If, after preliminary investigation, prosecutors do not assess the evidence as strong enough to convince a trial jury to render a unanimous guilty verdict, they dismiss the case on the basis of their own professional judgment — it never sees the grand-jury room.

At a proper trial, Wilson could not have been convicted of murder. That does not mean what happened was not horrible — it was. It does not mean Wilson is not civilly liable (although I doubt that he is). It simply means the circumstances of the shooting do not meet the high criminal-law standards for either intentional homicide or the criminally irresponsible causing of death.

...

If the Michael Brown shooting were an ordinary case, a grand jury would never have been asked to consider indicting Officer Wilson. McCulloch, the chief prosecutor, directed his office to present it to the grand jury because it was not an ordinary case — because it was a racially charged case ....

Ordinarily, prosecutors unilaterally decide whether or not to seek an indictment and, in the rare instance when anyone asks why they decided as they did, are restrained by investigative-secrecy protocols from explaining their decision. But McCulloch was understandably unwilling to make a unilateral judgment for which he would have been unable to defend himself from inevitable charges of racism. He thus directed his office to make an exhaustive presentation to the grand jury. It was both a Pontius Pilate–style abdication that made the community, rather than himself, accountable for the charging decision; and a vehicle that, with the court’s blessing, enabled him to disclose the voluminous evidence justifying the decision not to indict.
Click to expand...

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393642/progressive-mythography-andrew-c-mccarthy/page/0/1

I recognize that my appeal to authority may not pass RickStain muster -- who among us can summon the strength to enter that pantheon of demigods? -- I think it does at a minimum justify heyabbott's position (and that of others) vis-a-vis the grand jury's use and actions.
Click to expand...

Looking forward to the rebuttal of this post.

It certainly aims to debunk the theory that the DA, a wanna-be cop, went out of his way to protect the killer cop.

It also suggests that but for the racial unrest surrounding the case, it never would've seen the inside of either a grand jury room or a courthouse.

This is not a story being widely told in the press. Why is that?

franticscribe · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

Stoney said:

franticscribe said:

Stoney said:

Baron Scicluna said:

Stoney said:

Boom_70 said:

Wilson should have never done that interview. He comes across as a squarely mall cop that should have never been allowed to carry a gun.

Gave off a weird vibe. Never really looked Stepanopoulis in the eye.
Click to expand...

I just watched it and basically agree. Wilson is damn lucky he'll never face cross examination at trial. he would have gotten scorched. Unfortunately Stephanopolis never grilled him about the discrepancies and gems of illogic in his story.

Wilson has almost single-handedly flipped my position in the last day. I was pretty much buying into the prosecutor's reasoning when the GJ findings were announced. But now after reading the self-serving fantasy-like account he gave, and watching him interview, my general impression is that this guy is probably lying his ass off.
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Wilson wouldn't have to face cross-examination if he doesn't testify at the trial. His lawyer, I would assume, wouldn't call him up.
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Bullshit. You are assuming incorrectly. Although it's often advisable for a criminal defendant not to testify, that does NOT apply to a case like this where he's to mount a defense of deadly force justification based on the deceased's conduct, with the shooter as the sole source of most of the justification story.

If he didn't testify, he'd have no way of getting in evidence of the alleged grabbing of the gun, the "go fuck yourself", the supposedly fearing for his life, the "you're too much of a pussy to shoot", the "grunting noise", the charge, and all the other fantastical details of his "attacked by crazy black man" story.

He absolutely would've testified. And, yes, he wouldve gotten utterly scorched on cross examination.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but it's entirely possible to lay the groundwork for a self-defense claim during the state's case-in-chief.
Click to expand...

By "groundwork", do you mean the details in his story that I just described? If so, how?
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Sorry. Hadn't been on the site for several days. You can often get a great deal of that in through effective cross-examination of the state's witnesses, especially when - as in this case - the defendant provided a detailed statement to investigators.

Everything that's in this statement here can come in through the state's witnesses as long as they put the investigators who took that statement on the stand. And if they don't put that investigator on the stand, well, then the state's case will have a whole the size of a Mack truck in it.

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1370766-interview-po-darren-wilson.html

old_tony · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

RickStain said:

How do you tell the difference between a bull-charging demon-faced blood trail and a turning around to surrender because holy shit he's shooting at me blood trail?
Click to expand...

By the fact that the former happened and the latter didn't?

RickStain · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

Hokie_pokie said:

It certainly aims to debunk the theory that the DA, a wanna-be cop, went out of his way to protect the killer cop.
Click to expand...

Really? I don't think we read the same article.

That article said "The DA was in the tank but he had to be because the mean lefties forced him to be."

RickStain · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

old_tony said:

RickStain said:

How do you tell the difference between a bull-charging demon-faced blood trail and a turning around to surrender because holy shit he's shooting at me blood trail?
Click to expand...

By the fact that the former happened and the latter didn't?
Click to expand...

Well, that does settle a lot.

doctorquant · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

cranberry said:

Michael c. McCarthy? This may be an appeal to a fellow wing nut but certainly not a reputable authority.
Click to expand...

Andrew C. McCarthy ... You know, the guy who prosecuted the World Trade Center bombers (the Blind Sheik et al.) in 1993. Pretty sure he'd be a reputable authority on how grand juries work and how they're used (and when they're not).

The Big Ragu said:

Plus, I call bullshit on "guilt is not in doubt in most criminal cases. Overwhelmingly, they are open and shut," therefore. ... they only prosecute the ones where the guy is OBVIOUSLY guilty.

That is pure crap. And if you have any doubt, I'll be happy to detail hundreds of those open and shut cases (including the ones with the confessions) in which the people convicted were later exonerated.
Click to expand...

Come on, Ragu. The overwhelming majority of cases (90 to 95 percent) don't even get to the indict-or-not stage; the accused pleads guilty almost always. Only a very, very small portion of cases actually wind up being substantively weighed by grand juries. Now of these, a very, very large portion go on to trial. But that's because prosecutors tend to take to grand juries only those cases for which they're very confident probable cause can be demonstrated.

RickStain · Dec 2, 2014

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

And once again, there was almost no chance of a conviction. And maybe there shouldn't have been an indictment. But that doesn't change that the way that the PA behaved was inappropriate.

He faced pressure for an indictment because the local police mishandled the case badly from the moment it happened, but that doesn't justify him mishandling the case as well.

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