StrangeSox

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:42 PM) Those minor equipment violations, while they may lead to being pulled over, are WAY less likely to result in tickets (in Chicago, at least). yeah, that piece in particular was about St. Louis county which apparently is known for its "speed traps" and "minor violation" traps like that. A lot of these small towns get a majority of their revenue from those sorts of violations. The article details how that came to be, but essentially you have a ton of subdivision-and-slightly-larger municipalities with their own local governments, police forces etc. that all need income, and tickets and fines are their easiest source.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:40 PM) I agree. But again, if he fails to provide that information to the grand jury, and they decide not to indict, you're all over his ass for not giving the grand jury all of the known evidence, whether it's admissible later at trial or not. I don't think it's very fair of you to keep assuming that we'd just take the exact opposite position of what we are saying now in other circumstances. We're not all lawyers, ya know. Nobody was going to be all over his ass for presenting meaningless hearsay and especially for not presenting recanting witnesses. That doesn't even make sense.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:38 PM) 1) He's not a judge. He doesn't know for sure if a witnesses information will be considered hearsay or if it may be admitted under an exception 2) He's not the other side. They may fail to make an appropriate objection. Again, you guys are arguing that he botched this procedure by giving a grand jury testimony from witnesses that would support charges, but that may later not be admissible at court. He in effect hurt his chances of NOT getting an indictment, but you're still upset about that? Getting testimony from unreliable witnesses who recant their story in front of the GJ was not going to help him get an indictment. It was only going to hurt those chances, and he made that very clear himself at his press conference.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:36 PM) No, his duty would have been to look at these witnesses and say "this is s*** evidence, proving even more why I can't bring charges in this case. So I'm not going to convene a grand jury or request a prelim hearing with a judge because my evidence is lacking." How does one witness being s*** effect other witnesses who actually saw the incident and haven't changed their story? Because someone else made some s*** up or is just repeating things second-hand undermines other witnesses' credibility? But it's not like the first time the prosecutors have a chance to talk to this people is in front of the grand jury. If they're trying to build a case (and ostensibly that's what they were trying to do in front of a grand jury), they shouldn't sabotage themselves. Knowingly presenting bad evidence screams of huge ethical violations here, to me at least. Are you really sure you want to say that this DA did the right thing in presenting witnesses and other evidence he knew to be bad? How on earth does that help anyone? If you're not trying to deliberately undermine the whole thing, why not just present the good evidence?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:31 PM) THAT'S THE INFORMATION YOU WANTED THE GRAND JURY TO HAVE!!!!!!!! You are literally arguing against yourselves here. You're saying that the prosecutor performed a terrible job because he put witnesses in front of the grand jury WITH HELPFUL INFORMATION that would support charges. You're saying he should have EXCLUDED helpful witnesses to getting a trial in this case. That makes zero sense. I want the GJ to have legitimate first-hand accounts. There were plenty of those available. I don't see why they should have been presented with second-hand accounts. I don't think that's particular helpful information. It's also not helpful to the grand jury to present witnesses who you know (or should know) are lying and then use those witnesses as a reason to not indict.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:29 PM) NO! His job is to determine if there's enough evidence to bring charges. He's not performing his duties if he essentially excuses bulls*** evidence in order to get an indictment. So he has a duty to present unreliable witnesses who weren't actually witnesses? Why doesn't he have a duty to simply not present bad witnesses who didn't actually witness anything?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:25 PM) Ah yes, the old "the jury is full of a bunch of morons!!!! How can we expect them to come to the right decision that I want!" argument. That doesn't presume that the jury is a bunch of morons. It acknowledges that a bunch of non-lawyers and non-experts trying to sort through 70 hours of testimony and a bunch of police reports with little or no guidance from experts on what it means etc. is placing a huge burden on the grand jury that they aren't going to be able to meet. That's why in a real trial both sides build a narrative instead of just throwing everything they possibly can at the jury and saying "you decide!"

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:26 PM) God Balta, you are so out of your element on this one. Seriously. Prosecutors and defense attorneys usually have a pretty solid idea of what someone is going to say during testimony, don't they? Shouldn't a competent prosecutor ask a potential witness if they actually were a witness before they're seated in front of the grand jury? Can people perjure themselves in GJ testimony or is none of it sworn?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:24 PM) Definitely not at trial (at least not as proof that he did surrender). My understanding is that a grand jury usually follows the same rules of evidence, but not as stringent. I bet it's allowed. Again, it's more fact based. Witness 1, what did you see/hear. "I heard my friend say that she saw" should never have been presented to the GJ if it in fact was. That's intentionally sloppy work by the prosecutors to even bring these people in without screening them first.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:24 PM) http://www.nytimes.com/news/ferguson/2014/...guson-shooting/ also this: Editors' Note: November 25, 2014 An earlier version of this post included a photograph that contained information that should not have been made public. The image has been removed. That seems pretty irresponsible.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:22 PM) Another indication that he wanted all potential facts out there for the grand jury to decide. Or another indication that he wanted to bury a grand jury in as much s*** as possible with no help in sorting it out or challenging any particular pieces of evidence so they'd throw their hands up.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:21 PM) He's probably referring to the witnesses who are relying on what they heard someone else say. Which is hearsay. Isn't that normally not allowed in a regular trial? Is it allowed in a grand jury?

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:16 PM) Most of the statements put out there are hearsay since they didnt actually witness the event. I understand the definition. Most isn't all, and there's multiple people who actually witnesses the event who present a different story than Wilson. Which witnesses are just giving hearsay testimony, and why were they even allowed to give it?

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:18 PM) A pair of NY Times journalists printed a story that included Wilson's new home address. In less than two hours, several blogs had posted the home address of the journalists. Somebody needs to keep this going by posting the home addresses of the bloggers who posted the home addresses of the journalists who posted Wilson's home address. that sounds pretty s***ty

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:14 PM) Yep, the same way you determined it was legitimate. The outlier of native americans is a huge point to the issues with the study. What outlier? Native American populations have well-documented struggles with alcohol and drug abuse, especially on reservations. That would also explain incarceration/prosecution differences if it's mainly handled (or ignored) by reservation police.

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:

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:01 PM) 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.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 12:56 PM) 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.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 12:56 PM) 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?

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[...]"

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 12:40 PM) I haven't seen anything indicating the audio recording was validated. Even if he only moved 9 feet, that's about half the distance between himself and Wilson. 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.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 12:38 PM) Don't try to deflect the discussion. I haven't said a thing about that and really don't care to discuss it. I was discussing this case and the facts of this case. That is the point of this discussion. I quoted jenks in that post on a side-discussion, I responded to you in a separate post?

QUOTE (ptatc @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 12:33 PM) And I've said repeatedly, that it doesn't matter. Any movement toward a person who you just assaulted should be considered threatening. The officer had every right to feel threatened by a person who had just assaulted him. 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.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 12:33 PM) I've seen a couple references on TV to the distance from the fatal blow. Forensically, it's a very easy thing to nail down at close range. The actual word "charging" was not used by all of the witnesses, but it was much more than a couple steps. There was enough forward movement for there to be multiple rounds of shots fired. Was that audio recording with the shots in the background ever validated? If so, the shots all happened in 2-3 seconds. If you're staggering or walking, that's only a few steps. At say a 3' pace at the most for a walk, that's 9' or so.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 12:19 PM) And as I've pointed out before, blacks are going to be pulled over more than whites simply because of where they live, so of course those arrest numbers are going to be different. Do you think the common perception of being pulled over for a "DWB" or "Driving While Black" has no basis in reality?