Ferguson Verdict and Liberalism

Discussion in 'Politics' started by wellwisher, Nov 25, 2014.

  1. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    "Liberalism" has nothing to do with what happened in Ferguson, Wellwisher.

    Civilians who are all armed to the teeth means that more often than not, police will just assume that gunplay will be necessary to protect their lives and the lives of others. Toy guns, or an errant backfire in an automobile can be and often are lethal in such an environment. Which political party does the NRA contribute most heavily to again? No one who is a liberal.

    An automobile is a deadlier weapon than most firearms. They are heavily regulated, and I'm fine with that. I suppose it's a good thing the US Constitution didn't see fit to have an amendment making driving one of them a requirement of citizenship.
     
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  3. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

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    No, the root cause of the riots was that a bunch of scumbags are butthurt that some guy couldn't commit strong arm robbery and then attack a cop and get away with it.
     
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  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    People that think that are ignorant of history and how people are treated by police in the present.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    So it's ok for the police to shoot teenagers who behave as Brown did - blow them away on the public street as they are attempting to surrender, unarmed?

    Can they shoot your friends and relations like that- you know, the ones who get a bit rowdy with the cops sometimes? Can they shoot people on your street like that - middle of the day, people up and around? (at least half of Wilson's bullets ended up hitting random stuff in the neighborhood - no people, by luck)

    No, they aren't. That isn't the problem.

    They think those people are being treated as they deserve to be treated, and the police are doing their job.

    The extraordinary measures taken to rig that grand jury hearing indicate that the prosecutor thought the evidence was plenty sufficient to get an indictment.

    Any time a homicide defendant's testimony seriously conflicts with the physical evidence and multiple eyewitness accounts - as Wilson's did - one expects a trial, if only to clear up the matter. If one of your relatives were shot by a policeman in that manner, I think you would object to seeing a prosecutor rig the hearing like that, and the officer not even indicted.

    This was what in other countries we call a "show trial".

    1) You have only Wilson's word that Brown reached for the gun - and he never faced cross-examination on his other inconsistencies and factual conflicts.

    2) Brown wasn't shot as he reached for the gun. He was nowhere near the gun, and he had five bullets in him, when he was killed.

    3) The law enforcement issue here is not how the innocent black are treated - it's how the guilty black are treated, compared with the guilty white. Just as the main problem with affirmative action is the undeserving white beneficiary, like Wilson (his qualifications for his job were his race and sex), rather than the undeserving black beneficiary (few black people in Ferguson had any hope of getting Wilson's job). The obliviousness to this among white "conservatives" is bizarre - a symptom.
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2014
  8. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

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    It's okay for police to shoot NFL-sized criminals in self defense. Especially when, like Michael Brown, they apparently aren't surrendering. And I wouldn't blame a cop who shot one of my friends or family members if they were doing what Michael Brown was doing.

    Find better martyrs.
     
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  9. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Except, in this case all the credible evidence shows Brown was not attempting to surrender and validates the police officer's story. Those who said otherwise are not credible because that testimony isn't consistent with either itself or the physical evidence.

    My friends and family don't get rowdy with the police ever. But be that as it may, police do have the right to defend themselves as do we all.


    First, there was no trial. There was a grand jury hearing. And yes, the prosecutor did go to extraordinary measures but not to rig the grand jury hearing but to ensure that all sides were presented. Sure the prosecutor could have gotten the grand jury to indict the police officer by cherry picking through the evidence and not presenting the grand jury with exculpatory evidence. But that wouldn't have been morally, ethically, or legally correct thing to do.

    What bothers me most about Ferguson is the Ferguson lynch mob tried and convicted this police officer even before the evidence had been collected and reviewed. The evidence didn't matter and it still doesn't for a number of folks. Now maybe the police force in Ferguson was biased against blacks and other minorities, maybe they were poor policemen. But that doesn't change the facts of this case. And if the Ferguson police force was as bad as some folks believe, why did they not take it up at the ballot box rather than rioting in the streets? If these rioters and protestors have time to protest and riot, why is it they don't have time to cast a ballot and vote the bums out? And then they wonder why businesses (e.g. grocery stores) don't want to open store in urban areas.
     
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  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    No, it isn't. It's not ok for police officers to shoot people who are not threatening immediate serious harm to anybody, or claim self defense because somebody's size was scary to them, or panic and unload their gun in the direction of somebody they are supposed to be arresting because the guy had hit them earlier (or so they claimed).

    And Brown was "apparently" surrendering - unless you take Wilson's word over multiple eyewitnesses and the physical evidence we have. Why would you do that, without a trial?

    That is false. Seriously: review the pictures, the accounts, the locations of the entry wounds, the credibility issues of the witnesses and which ones are dubious.

    Check out witness #40, for example (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/unmasking-Ferguson-witness-40-496236) - the main eyewitness corroborating Wilson's account, and the only eyewitness to support everything Wilson said. Check out the audio recording analysis of the gunshots (Wilson: I retreated several feet; audio analysis: all ten shots from within a one meter circle). Look at the location of the shell casings (the total street spread about the same as the separation of the two fired from -Wilson says - inside the car), and the blood.

    There's a reason the prosecutor did not cross examine Wilson or his witnesses. His story does not appear to match what people saw, or what physical evidence is public. Normally that would be a reason to ask for an indictment, right?

    I directed that to Cowboy - for a reason.

    Let's ask this: Cliven Bundy was not shot by the police. Would it have been ok for the police to shoot him? Should the police have shot him, and rolled the tanks and riot gear on his scumbag friends - you know, the ones who are just butthurt because they can't rob government agencies and threaten people with firearms and get away with it?
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2014
  11. sifreak21 Valued Senior Member

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    Do you have no idea why people are mad? If you think it's because the cop wasn't convicted you need to do some research
     
  12. sifreak21 Valued Senior Member

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    All sides represented? Real life prosecutors are saying he was hugely biased in favor of the officer.. I tnk the law they gave the grand jury right before he testified. The law that is unconstitutional might I add. If you think it was equally.presented your need to do some more researching.
     
  13. sifreak21 Valued Senior Member

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    Or the actual reason which is he was let off without even a trial. With tons of conflicting evidence. An unconstitutional law stated right before wilson testified and not corrected until.weeks later. Imo they shoulshould be dis barred for. But your right. After all I thought wilson was black for awhile there due to all the bruising that had occurred during his life threateningfight with that massive 6ft8 340 lb man
     
  14. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, real life former prosecutors who tried and convicted the officer in the press before the investigation had been completed.
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Name one who did that.

    Every prosecutor I saw analyze the events spent much more time on the rigging of the grand jury hearing, than on Wilson's actual guilt or innocence at trial - which they left for the trial, which never happened.

    When you have figured out why the prosecutor put so much effort into rigging the grand jury finding, rather than demonstrating the prosecution's case against Wilson as would be normal, you will understand why the black people of Ferguson are seriously unhappy with this charade of justice.
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2014
  16. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Easy Sunny Hostin (CNN), I like Sunny and I agree with her on many issues. But she went over the top and into liberal la la land on this one. I was surprised to hear and see Sunny go off the deep end on this one. She is normally better than that.

    What you saw was sensationalism...the same kind of sensationalism (i.e. yellow journalism) we saw during the Swift Boating of John Kerry. Instead of conservatives doing it, liberals were staging the drama this time around. Giving the grand jury all available information and not arguing one side or the other isn't "rigging" the grand jury. What normally happens in grand juries where the prosecutor picks and chooses what he will let the grand jurors see and hear could be seen as "rigging", but the prosecutor didn't do that in this case. What the prosecutor did in this case, in my opinion, should be how all grand juries are conducted.

    Unfortunately for you and those who share your opinion, prosecutors are ethically bound not to prosecute people they know they cannot convict because the evidence doesn't support probable cause. The grand jury in this instance had all the evidence. They saw and heard all the evidence and found there was insufficient evidence to warrant a trial. They found there was no probable cause.

    There are other instances out there, the New York case in which a man was strangled by a policeman, in which you would have a better argument. In the New York strangulation case, while I don't think it arises to murder, it was certainly a case of police recklessness and incompetence.

    The Ferguson Police Department may be guilty of many things. But heaping all of that garbage on a street cop who was merely defending himself isn't right either. And if the Ferguson Police Department was poorly managed, if their relationship with the community was that poor, the place to address that was in the ballot box - not robbing your neighbors and burning down the hood.
     
  17. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    That's the problem, there are too many.
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    No, it wasn't.
    I hadn't seen it, but here's Sunny's treatment: There's no sensationalism there, whatsoever, from Sunny. There's quite a bit from Wilson.
    What are you talking about? That she found Wilson's testimony "fanciful"? That's hardly a liberal opinion, and certainly has solid evidence backing it. That would be the right adjective for Wilson's descriptions of his thought processes and Brown's facial expressions, for example. That the prosecutor acted very oddly in not pressing or questioning Wilson on the improbabilities in his testimony, or its inconsistencies with the physical evidence? That's obvious to anyone who reads the transcript.
    But doing what that prosecutor did is rigging the grand jury. Read the transcript. Notice how significant witness 40s testimony seems to have been - brought back twice, she was. Did you check out witness 40 in my link above? Did you consider the many inconsistencies between Wilson's testimony and the physical evidence, as well as the more credible eyewitness accounts?

    It's not a matter of "one side or the other", it's a matter of validity, credibility, and evidence. A grand jury is normally unable to decide these issues. A trial jury is presented with evidence and argument: witnesses are cross examined, experts are challenged, chain of possession and flaws in documentation are examined, the situation is summarized from the prosecution and the defense point of views, and the case made for guilt or innocence in violating a specific, clearly explained law. The grand jury here not only had no such help, not only was buried under days of unchallenged and unexamined testimony, not only was handed a pile of laws to figure out for themselves, but was improperly instructed in the law as it pertained.

    Except that in Kerry's case the people being sensational and engaging in yellow journalism were the liars, whereas here the people being accused of sensationalism and yellow journalism are the ones retailing physical fact and accurate description.
    You may see value in using grand jury hearings as platforms for show trials and rigged verdicts, but very few people who have considered the matter would agree.

    They do that, ethically, by refusing to present the case for indictment to a grand jury. Or by presenting the best case for prosecution, and the grand jury finding it too weak. Not by rigging the grand jury hearing.

    They are also ethically bound to make the case for indictment of those that the evidence and eyewitness accounts indicate are likely guilty of a crime. Not let them off because they are white, or police officers, or the crime was committed against a criminal.

    If that's what he was doing. It doesn't look like that was the case. It looks like he was over his head and panicked, and is now lying about it. When black people in the St Louis area get in over their heads and panic and kill somebody, the Ferguson prosecutor does not cover their ass and hide their lies in that friendly fashion, however.
    So? That excuses Wilson's obviously incompetent and probably criminal actions?

    Why are you putting the entire burden of "addressing" the poor community relations of the police on the community? Is it entirely the community's fault that the Ferguson police department has Wilsons on its force? How many Wilsons has it hired, in preference to more capable black people?
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2014
  19. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    so than how come the percentage of indicatments is so radically different for police than others?
     
  20. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Aren't we supposed to hold police officers to higher standards? Are police officers not subject to intensive screening including psychological assessments in the hiring process? Officers are not your average Joes and Janes. They are specially selected and trained. So to compare them to the average criminal is just so wrong on a number of levels.

    Further, the rate of indictments has nothing to do with this particular case. It doesn't make this officer guilty. The fact the physical evidence and the credible witness testimony (i.e. testimony that doesn't change with the wind) is consistent with the officer's testimony. When people cannot argue evidence, they argue process. And the truth is, this is how all grand juries should be conducted.

    If you want to make an argument that we have two systems of justice in the country, one for the poor and one for the wealthy, that is true. We do have two systems of justice. You can argue the injustice in our system of justice. Our justice system is inadequate and unfair. The poor are disadvantaged. But that isn't relevant to this case.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    No, it isn't.

    People have gone to the trouble of providing you with specific items of disagreement between Wilson's testimony and the physical evidence, and specific reasons to regard the witnesses supporting Wilson as less reliable than whose contradicting him (witness 40 was so lacking in credibility that the prosecutor may be facing charges of suborning perjury if it turns out he knew in advance)

    and you continue to repeat what by now appears to be simply a falsehood, without even acknowledging the issues with it.

    Please retract your claims, or support them in light of the issues raised with them. Simply repeating them is not reasonable.

    Yes, it is. The behavior of the white police force in Ferguson would not be tolerated in a rich or white community, and Wilson's exemplification of the problems with it are the main source of motivation for the riots, etc, you find relevant here.
     
    Last edited: Dec 20, 2014
  22. Bells Staff Member

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    24,270
    The prosecutor has admitted that the witness whose testimony was so consistent with the officer's testimony was lying under oath about what she testified to.

    The day before she first appeared in front of the grand jury, she approached the FBI investigators (four weeks after the shooting) - since the prosecutor had invited anyone who saw anything to come and testify, claiming to have been there and her eyewitness account matched Wilson's exactly. The problem was that his testimony and his version of events had appeared in the media the day before. When FBI investigators questioned what she was even doing in Ferguson on that day, she claimed she was there to visit a school friend. The address, phone number and name she provided were false and fabricated. FBI investigators and their prosecutors who questioned her doubted her story and became even more skeptical because her eyewitness account was just about word for word what was reported in the papers the day before. Not only that, she has lied to police in the past when she falsely tried to insert herself a witness in another case and she has a history of making racist comments online...

    So they discounted her and correctly advised she was lying because it was abundantly clear that she was not even in Ferguson the day of the shooting.

    McCulloch put her on the stand the next day and she became the star witness that corroborated Wilson's testimony. While on the stand, she admitted she had lied to the FBI the day before about what she was doing in Ferguson that day. That she wasn't really visiting a black school friend. Instead she told the grand jury that she was an amateur anthropologist who was there to study black people and their behaviour so that she would stop referring to them as "niggers" and start calling them "people". If that wasn't enough, she then told the prosecutor that she had written in her journal when she got home from witnessing the shooting that day, so not content with having allowed her to perjure herself once, they invited her back, with her loose pieces of paper and allowed her to testify again and lie again and the evidence of her journal was presented to the jury..

    If you are going to claim this is how all grand juries should be conducted, then perhaps you need to explain yourself.

    Unless of course you are saying that prosecutors allowing witnesses and inviting them to perjure themselves to make sure people are not indicted is how grand jury proceedings should be conducted?

    And no, the issue with this case and the questions raised is because the physical evidence does match Wilson's testimony. It would only match if Brown was "running and charging" at Wilson using a walking frame and crawling on the ground.
     
  23. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    How are the cherries? You are cherry picking and being either deceptive or ignorant. There was more than one witness. And there were many more witnesses against Wilson who clearly lied about what they saw.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/thes...wns-shooting-were-wildly-inconsistent-2014-11

    And none of that changes the fact that only the only credible testimony, testimony consistent with the physical evidence, is the testimony which corroborates Wilson’s version of events.
    I did, you just didn’t like the answer. And I am not going to endlessly repeat myself for your edification. It is a waste of time, but I will repeat it one last and final time. This prosecutor provided the grand jury ALL THE EVIDENCE as opposed to an edited and biased version of the evidence which is the norm. I think grand juries should have all the evidence presented to them objectively as this prosecutor presented the evidence in the Brown case.
    Except, the prosecutor didn’t invite witnesses to perjure themselves…damn minor details again! The prosecutor allowed them to give their testimony and he let the grand jury determine their credibility. That is what jurors do.

    Yes, the physical evidence in this case is consistent with Wilson’s testimony, and that is why Wilson is a free man today. That is why the grand jury acquitted him. People like you had already tried and convicted Wilson even before the investigation had been completed. All that was needed was a mock trial and an execution. And when the investigation was completed, a lot of people found themselves in a rather embarrassing position because the evidence didn’t support their beliefs.
     
    Last edited: Dec 20, 2014

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