<p>I find this description by Ezra Klein compelling at least in terms of being enough question about how things unfolded to warrant a trial.</p>
<p><a href=“Officer Darren Wilson's story is unbelievable. Literally. - Vox”>Officer Darren Wilson's story is unbelievable. Literally. - Vox;
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<p>And any prosecuting DA involved in a case involving a LEO as a defendant or a defense attorney defending against a criminal/civil suit brought by a LEO plaintiff would exercise his/her Voir dire rights to exclude you from the jury for your inclination to be favorable to LEOs.</p>
<p>That is…unless the DA or defense attorney concerned has similar/same history as Robert McCulloch…</p>
<p>And one instance of Ferguson and St. Louis PDs overstepping their legal bounds and thus, showing their corrupt small-town authoritarian inclinations:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/14/ferguson-and-the-shocking-nature-of-us-police-militarization”>http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/14/ferguson-and-the-shocking-nature-of-us-police-militarization</a></p>
<p><a href=“Judge: Ferguson police violated protesters' rights”>http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/10/06/judge-injunction-ferguson-police/16835217/</a></p>
<p>One poster on this thread has made a remark at how Ferguson/St. Louis PD had more body armor than what he wore as a serving soldier in Afghanistan. That mirrors what I’ve heard from several friends/acquaintances who were in Iraq/Afghanistan as well. </p>
<p>I haven’t read all of the posts past page 7 or 8. Has anyone mentioned that it took 6 weeks for Darren Wilson to provide his story to officials? That’s ample time to concoct a story that benefits him. Do you think his lawyers helped with his version of events? Something is incredibly off about this whole GJ decision & how the prosecutor dealt with the evidence & witnesses. </p>
<p>Las!a, I read the article you posted, and it was really, really interesting. It presented a very understanding approach to the law enforcement officers’position, too. </p>
<p>I would not have indicted the officer. And I stick by my “thug” description of Brown. That he acted that way, got him killed. You do not advance towards a police officer the way he did when there is a gun aimed at you. You stop. What was the officer to do, turn tail and run? Fight him? Yes, MB acted like he was crazy. His mother feels that her son was disrespected and she is correct. He deserved to be. He was a thug, the way he acted, and crazy as well. She had to know that he was a thug before this too. I based my vote on the indictment without any consideration for any of his actions, antics before this happened, but his background supports the way he acted as a normal for him. Yes, it would have been troubling if he had been a co operative, upstanding citizen with no records of problems, and one would wonder why he acted the way he did that day he was killed, but I’d still uphold that no charges should be filed against the officer who shot him. Reading about the way MB tended to act, it just reinforces that the was a thug, and that the officer’s safety was endangered with MB’s advance and ignoring of the officer’s order. </p>
<p>However, the situation in Ferguson is one that should have been addressed a long time ago. It will be MB’s legacy that he hopefully has introduced some changes in some of the issues. That the AA community is so up in arms over this situation is tell tale of how bad things were there. I truly hope some big time changes are made. It’s just a shame that this person, MB was the one who brought things to a tipping point.</p>
<p>“the full video records Officer Groubert’s phone conversation with a supervisor, in which he concocts a story about his victim’s “threatening” actions. Apparently he doesn’t realize that his camera was rolling and would prove him a liar.”</p>
<p>Funny how that so often seems to be case. </p>
<p>You are taking the officer’s word that Brown advanced on him. Brown isn’t around to tell his story. The officer is 6’4" and he goes on in his account about how Brown looked so big - like Hulk Hogan (or was it The Incredible Hulk).</p>
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<p>There is no need to accept the words of the officer, but we should find the “words” of the people who had the chance to see the entire sets of reports … believable. Here we are trying to reinvent the wheel with bits and pieces of the press, biased positions, and a number of fantasies instead of accepting that the process of the grand jury was a fair one, and by doing starting new circles of the same old. </p>
<p>There were people tasked to look at the evidence, and they decided that most of what the press that supported the Brown family had it wrong, including the details of the altercations on a map. It is over, and it should be!</p>
<p>^ ^</p>
<p>Xiggi,</p>
<p>I’d be more inclined to believe it if the investigation and prosecution of the case was taken entirely out of the hands of the dubious local/regional and yes, state authorities to ensure there’s as little influence from the corrupt small town “good old boys” network as possible. </p>
<p>I’m really disappointed you have so much faith in the prosecutor despite his dubious record and history and numerous calls for him to recuse himself from the case. </p>
<p>Cobrat, unless I am mistaken, the members of the grand jury were local. Do you really think they should have sent the case to Montgomery or Casper? The locals should have understood the dynamics of their community. And, fwiw, if those dynamics are as bad you purport them to be in terms of racism, so should have Brown! </p>
<p>The cops always say their lives were threatened when they shoot someone. And somehow, when video comes out, often their lives were not threatened. They were lying. So why do we always believe them when there is no video?</p>
<p>There is absolutely no excuse to shoot that kid with what turned out to be a toy gun two seconds after the car pulls up, when no one else is around. Are the cops even <em>trying</em> not to shoot black kids? And what if no video had shown up? We’d undoubtedly be hearing about how dangerous he was. The kid was just a bored 12-year-old in a park.</p>
<p>@cobrat =D> </p>
<p>Reading the thread, I see we really need better civics classes: again, a grand jury indictment is not a finding of guilt or innocence but of probable cause to charge. The idea that a grand jury should weigh factors like the guy’s size or statements that he charged the officer misapplies the idea of a trial to the grand jury. In other words, whether there’s officer testimony and confused forensics in the normal case means you indict and let the trial court figure it out. In most cases, they don’t even bother presenting both sides because the point is not conviction but demonstrating the possibility that a crime has been committed. I think it’s clear there’s probable cause to believe a crime was committed in this case. I also think it’s likely the officer would have been acquitted, but that’s for a trial court to decide. I also think it would have better for a) the officer, b) the police force, c) the prosecution and d) every activist of every stripe, white and black and so on, to have gone through the trial and found the officer not guilty. Why? Because that’s a definitive finding while a grand jury is supposed to rule only on probable cause, not actual guilt or innocence. Not having a trial means people will continue to believe the officer is guilty, will continue to believe he was let off by the white establishment, etc.</p>
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<p>Fixed it for you.</p>
<p>It’s fascinating how everyone wants all these videos, but no one seems to pay attention to the video of Brown stealing from a store and shoving the store owner. </p>
<p>Trayvon Martin (though I realize that was not by a cop), the kid in the car who was shot while reaching for his wallet as directed by the cop, the 12 yo kid in the park - THOSE are travesties. THOSE are people who were going about their day. THOSE are poster children for unwarranted bad behavior based on race. Michael Brown is not a poster child. it is possible to think that blacks suffer disproportionately, AND that the world is not appreciably worse off if one less thug is in it. I know that’s someone’s child. I get that, and I’m sorry for the family’s loss. But I just cannot muster anywhere near as much sympathy. CF says on other threads - lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Well, Michael Brown metaphorically lay down with dogs. </p>
<p>Some of you who say you are upset because of characterizations that Mike Brown was an angel are letting your contempt blind you, in my opinion. I don’t believe any credible objective person from the public or on this thread has casually dismissed the shoplifting or “strong arm robbery,” as you call it. Even Brown’s cohort said Brown took the merchandise from the mini-mart. And no, I don’t give any weight to his mother declaring on national TV today that the robbery is “alleged.”</p>
<p>But the point is that the punishment for robbery is not execution. And that’s why we needed a trial; to determine if Wilson’s accounts of an attack by Brown were accurate and complete. Moreover, while Brown is not a sympathetic victim, another important point is that the system needed to thoroughly examine the evidence so to hopefully produce the result that a truly innocent person would not suffer the same fate, or if a similar event occurs in the future, justice will be impartial, swift and certain. As we have seen in Ferguson and elsewhere, blameless Black males have been abused or executed by police whom believed that those men were guilty of something; Amadou Diallo for one. And think about NFL player Ryan Moats. I am frightened enough to believe that the officer who pulled him over would have shot him if Moats had been more vociferous about needing to get his family to the hospital in Dallas. Listen to the audio recording of that cop; he wanted to make it clear to Moats the he and not Moats was fully in charge of the situation, and that Moats’ physical well being was clearly on the line.</p>
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. Thank you. I think more than anything else, what disturbs me on this thread is that “centric”-minded people are taking comfort and feeling high-minded about the fact that the kid had acted badly, thus they can dismiss the fact that he is dead…as his fault.</p>
<p>Sort of makes the world feel just a little safer, doesn’t it? Cuz all those white kids who get into trouble through their own stupidity are also getting executed daily…oh, wait. No they’re not.</p>
<p>" But the point is that the punishment for robbery is not execution "</p>
<p>Are you suggesting that Wilson shot Brown to punish him for the crime of robbing the convenience store and roughing up the owner ?</p>
<p>Did you not see the video of the assault, or do you deny that the DNA of Brown in the car corroborates that story as told by Wilson ?</p>
<p>I realize that we all rely on different news sources for our information and that some ( if not all ) are skewed.</p>
<p>“Shot in self-defense” sounds so completely different from “execution”, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Add in that he rolled around in the window of a cop car and the robbery issue gets pushed off into a ditch, too.</p>
<p>For those concerned about the local aspect of the grand jury, please don’t forget that the federal investigation is ongoing.</p>
<p>I don’t see anyone saying that Michael deserved to be killed. He didn’t. As I said earlier, all kids make mistakes and we can only pray that our kids’ mistakes aren’t fatal. I do think that the fact that he was black contributed to his death. Maybe it was the deciding factor. And maybe there was nothing he could have done to prevent it once his path crossed with officer Wilson’s. But the evidence released does show that Wilson knew about the incident in the convenience store, and Brown certainly did. They were undoubtedly making assumptions about each other based on that. It is that whole bad judgment meets bad luck thing and it is heartbreaking.</p>