Ferguson Riots

[ptatc]

Walking towards somebody with your hands up in a classic surrender mode should not be considered so threatening as to justify killing someone, but we can agree to disagree on that one.

Yes we can can diagree. The officer had no way of knowing if a person you just assaulted him was tricking him by pretending to surrender so he could get close enough to attack him again.

The story totally changes if Brown stops with his hands up.

 

You have more confidence in people who are willing to commit crimes and assault police officers than I do.

[StrangeSox]

Cautioning against people who are giving a lot of credit to Wilson's testimony, libertarian legal blogger Orin Kerr points out "[...]that Wilson’s testimony seems so well-tailored to self-defense law could be seen as highly suspicious[...]"

Edited November 26, 2014 by StrangeSox

[cabiness42]

Assuming for argument that the distance was only 20 feet, he would have had to start firing on Brown much sooner than the full 9 feet of movement.

 

That's a weak assumption to begin with because we have 20 feet of blood on the other side of Brown's body, backed up by witnesses who confirm that Brown had been that far away, but if Brown really was only 20 feet away when he started toward Wilson, then Wilson is in imminent danger from pretty much the first step. The closer Brown is, the less distance he needs to cover before Wilson is in danger.

[ptatc]

I quoted jenks in that post on a side-discussion, I responded to you in a separate post?

Sorry, I didn't realize that. In respose, I'm sure it happens. Is it right probably not but if someone sees the same behavior over and over again they probably are a little sensitive to it.

 

Kind of like diagnosing a patient. I look at the sign and symptoms and can determine the probelm most of the time without touching the patient. Is it always right, no. Usually it is but it's human nature to watch for patterns.

[southsideirish71]

Cautioning against people who are giving a lot of credit to Wilson's testimony, libertarian legal blogger Orin Kerr points out "[...]that Wilson’s testimony seems so well-tailored to self-defense law could be seen as highly suspicious[...]"

 

[RockRaines]

80k is actually a huge sample size. I'm glad you've been able to determine that this research was "horribly conducted" though.

 

Regardless, this isn't the only study that has found drug usage rates for black people to be equal or lower than white people, and incarceration rates are undeniably hugely different.

Yes I can determine that. I spent a majority of my undergrad and post grad work doing research or examining research. This was half assed and is probably a huge outlier.

[RockRaines]

Oh I'm sure it happens, but not to any great degree in 2014. And I'd bet that black cops do it just as much as white cops.

Not to mention the racism against those cops when the driver claims to be pulled over only because they were a minority instead of what they actually did. Racism exists no matter what color you are.

[Balta1701]

You know, it's really a shame we don't have some system in this country for evaluating the veracity of competing claims and evidence when it comes to determining the guilt or innocence of a person after a shooting like this. You know, maybe where 2 opposing sides present their version of a story and some group of impartial people evaluates those 2 presentations. We should've written that into the constitution or something. We're just stuck debating it on message boards because of that failure.

[StrangeSox]

For what it's worth, the people who blog at VC routinely get interviewed by the media as legal experts and have had the blog itself cited in legal opinions. I'd say it's a heck of a lot more reliable than CNN, but then again, what isn't?

[RockRaines]

You know, it's really a shame we don't have some system in this country for evaluating the veracity of competing claims and evidence when it comes to determining the guilt or innocence of a person after a shooting like this. You know, maybe where 2 opposing sides present their version of a story and some group of impartial people evaluates those 2 presentations. We should've written that into the constitution or something. We're just stuck debating it on message boards because of that failure.

And yet when that happens the losing side still claim bias. First step is to determine if there is even a reason to waste time and money to debate those statement or conflicting evidence.

[cabiness42]

You know, it's really a shame we don't have some system in this country for evaluating the veracity of competing claims and evidence when it comes to determining the guilt or innocence of a person after a shooting like this. You know, maybe where 2 opposing sides present their version of a story and some group of impartial people evaluates those 2 presentations. We should've written that into the constitution or something. We're just stuck debating it on message boards because of that failure.

 

If you want to agree to an 80% income tax rate, then sure, we can have a jury trial every single time there are differing sides to a story, or we can have a system where people who prosecute crimes for a living use their expertise to determine which of these situations are most likely to lead to a conviction.

 

My house got broken into last summer, and I have circumstantial reasons to believe that my neighbor did it but no physical evidence. How about we waste the government's money on a trial that has zero chance of landing a conviction?

[Jenksismyhero]

You know, it's really a shame we don't have some system in this country for evaluating the veracity of competing claims and evidence when it comes to determining the guilt or innocence of a person after a shooting like this. You know, maybe where 2 opposing sides present their version of a story and some group of impartial people evaluates those 2 presentations. We should've written that into the constitution or something. We're just stuck debating it on message boards because of that failure.

 

Balta killed Michael Brown. I was there. I saw it.

 

Balta denies it.

 

Let's charge him and go through a trial because there's conflicting evidence.

Edited November 26, 2014 by Jenksismybitch

[Balta1701]

And yet when that happens the losing side still claim bias. First step is to determine if there is even a reason to waste time and money to debate those statement or conflicting evidence.

And considering where this conversation has gone and the level of evidence presented in the Grand Jury, there absolutely seems to be reason to be.

[cabiness42]

And considering where this conversation has gone and the level of evidence presented in the Grand Jury, there absolutely seems to be reason to be.

 

With the level of evidence presented to the Grand Jury, it should be obvious that a conviction is impossible.

[Balta1701]

Balta killed Michael Brown. I was there. I saw it.

 

Balta denies it.

 

Let's charge him and go through a trial because there's conflicting evidence.

At least an unarmed person who was shot to death would have a day in court.

[StrangeSox]

Yes I can determine that. I spent a majority of my undergrad and post grad work doing research or examining research. This was half assed and is probably a huge outlier.

You can tell that just from a news article on the study and without even looking at the methodology section of the actual paper? That's pretty amazing. How did you determine that 80k was a laughable number for a survey, though? From a pure statistics standpoint, that's a huge sample size.

 

The ACLU has its own report specifically on marijuana usage and arrest rates highlighting this problem.

[StrangeSox]

If you want to agree to an 80% income tax rate, then sure, we can have a jury trial every single time there are differing sides to a story, or we can have a system where people who prosecute crimes for a living use their expertise to determine which of these situations are most likely to lead to a conviction.

 

It's just weird how frequently they determine that situations involving police officers don't warrant a charge.

[Jenksismyhero]

It's just weird how frequently they determine that situations involving police officers don't warrant a charge.

 

Let's assume there are 100 police shootings in a year. How many do you really, honestly believe would be questionable enough to warrant charges?

[cabiness42]

It's just weird how frequently they determine that situations involving police officers don't warrant a charge.

 

By the nature of their jobs, police officers are put into situations where they are forced to kill other people far, far more often than private citizens. Now, there are very likely situations out there where there officers should have been charged but weren't, but that doesn't make it right to charge Wilson in this case. You have to admit that there is more than enough evidence that the defense can use to justify self defense, even if you personally don't feel that it was justified.

[RockRaines]

And considering where this conversation has gone and the level of evidence presented in the Grand Jury, there absolutely seems to be reason to be.

I think all police shootings should be examined very deeply, I am not sure if an actual public trial is the solution but there has to be investigation in general into everything surrounding it. In this case I havent seen anything other than heresay that would be used as evidence against the officer.

[Balta1701]

With the level of evidence presented to the Grand Jury, it should be obvious that a conviction is impossible.

No it isn't in the least.

 

There needs to be some actual filtering done of the evidence. The police officer's statements of him turning into the hulk would be demolished by an actual cross examination. There needed to be an actual investigation by a qualified person of which witness accounts actually hold up, which don't, and how do those fit with the physical evidence at the scene.

 

It could be entirely possible that when you line up the witnesses with the actual physical evidence, a group of them all fall out immediately due to not having been able to see what they claimed to see and a much clearer story emerges. A wise man once said "a courtroom is a crucible, in it we burn away irrelevancy until we are left with a purer product, the truth".

 

Instead, 60 different witnesses were presented to people with no filter and they had to figure out how to process them, with no one other than themselves to ask questions and no experts brought in to do things like give counterpoints to presented physical evidence.

 

This is why we have an adversarial system, so that you don't end up with the person who is supposed to be prosecuting a shooter defending that shooter in a press conference while saying "and this is when the final 10 shots were fired".

[RockRaines]

You can tell that just from a news article on the study and without even looking at the methodology section of the actual paper? That's pretty amazing. How did you determine that 80k was a laughable number for a survey, though? From a pure statistics standpoint, that's a huge sample size.

 

The ACLU has its own report specifically on marijuana usage and arrest rates highlighting this problem.

Yep, the same way you determined it was legitimate. The outlier of native americans is a huge point to the issues with the study.

 

Regardless I hope you find your peace on this topic, its clear you are super involved emotionally. And have a good thanksgiving all, I have to go clean my house for 25 people coming tomorrow, ugh

[Balta1701]

I think all police shootings should be examined very deeply, I am not sure if an actual public trial is the solution but there has to be investigation in general into everything surrounding it. In this case I havent seen anything other than heresay that would be used as evidence against the officer.

You really need to research the definition of Hearsay. A witness statement is by definition not "hearsay". The way you just used it, the officer's testimony is "hearsay".

[StrangeSox]

In 129 years, no Wisconsin review board has faulted a police officer for killing someone.

 

this is from the 538 article linked previously, bunch of links embedded in the original:

Cases involving police shootings, however, appear to be an exception. As my colleague Reuben Fischer-Baum has written, we don’t have good data on officer-involved killings. But newspaper accounts suggest, grand juries frequently decline to indict law-enforcement officials. A recent Houston Chronicle investigation found that “police have been nearly immune from criminal charges in shootings” in Houston and other large cities in recent years. In Harris County, Texas, for example, grand juries haven’t indicted a Houston police officer since 2004; in Dallas, grand juries reviewed 81 shootings between 2008 and 2012 and returned just one indictment. Separate research by Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip Stinson has found that officers are rarely charged in on-duty killings, although it didn’t look at grand jury indictments specifically.

[RockRaines]

You really need to research the definition of Hearsay. A witness statement is by definition not "hearsay". The way you just used it, the officer's testimony is "hearsay".

Most of the statements put out there are hearsay since they didnt actually witness the event. I understand the definition.