Jenksismyhero

When everyone gets done with it (or at least within an episode or two of the current episode), post your thoughts.

Think Dateline or 48 Hours Mystery or one of those hour long shows on Friday night where they tell the story of a murder case, and throw in This American Life styling. Back in 1999 a guy was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the death of his ex-gf. But the case is all circumstantial evidence so it's not certain whether he did it or not. The reporter, a producer of This American Life, narrates her journey as she spends months and months re-investigating the case and interviewing nearly everyone involved, including the convicted guy. Once you listen to one episode you start asking a hundred questions and you're hooked. http://serialpodcast.org/

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 1, 2014 -> 12:35 PM) I'm genuinely uncertain about this, if I yell "I'll f***ing kill you" at someone, does that cross a legal line? The standard is whether a reasonable person would take that as a threat. To me, it's much easier to gauge the seriousness of that statement verbally rather than via text.

Anyone else listening to this? I'm up to date (through episode 9) thanks to the holiday travels. I'd like to get people's opinions on whether Adnan did it or not.

This is the more troubling issue: #illini football attendance since 2009 2009: 59,545 2010 - 54,188 2011 - 49,548 2012 - 45,564 2013 - 43,787 2014 - 41,549

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Dec 1, 2014 -> 11:18 AM) They didn't play very "well" in the PSU game, they were just the luckier of two awful football teams. And the two games before that, they were routed, so I don't know how you can say they were playing their best football at the end of the year. The Minnesota game was the only one that gave them more credibility. Let's also remember they were trailing in the 4th quarter in 11 of their 12 games, including all 3 non-BCS non-conference games. Given the 6-6 outcome, I think he earned another year, but my hopes aren't very high for 2015. I do agree with B>W, the best decision for Illinois football would be to find a new coach this year, but it's not always that simple. That's why I put "well" in quotes. But they didn't luck into the win either. They deserved that win, as they deserved the win against Minnesota - a pretty good team - and NW. To me they improved in all phases basically over the course of the year. Special teams was actually decent all year, the offense was never great, but improved, and the defense also wasn't great, but improved. I don't have much hope for the future, but I think Thomas is basically stuck with this decision. What kind of coach is going to accept a job at a lower tier Big Ten school with little recent success, taking over for a guy that got fired after getting to a bowl game? He's gone from zero wins in conference to 3. That sounds terrible, but at Illinois recently it really isn't. I think this argument just goes back to realistic expectations at Illinois.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Dec 1, 2014 -> 11:12 AM) Disagree on the improvement. Last year, the Illini blew out Cincinnati and Miami (OH) and were competitive at Soldier Field vs. Washington. This year, they trailed in the 4th quarter against Youngstown State, Texas State and Western Kentucky. In conference, last year they beat Purdue, lost in OT @ Penn State and lost competitive games @ Indiana and home against Northwestern. This year, they won close games against Penn State, Northwestern, and Minnesota, but were really only competitive in the loss to Purdue (a game they should easily have won). The differences between this year and last? They looked terrible in the non-conference, and turned some of the close games in conference into wins. I'm not sure where I stand on Beckman at Illinois, but it's definitely worth noting that this team was a lot closer to 0-12 than to winning 8 games this year... New QB and WR's accounted for a lot of the issues in the non-conference part of the schedule. Edit: injuries too. I'll admit I don't follow football THAT much, but it seemed like every beat guy on Twitter I follow tweeted out long injury lists before every game.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Dec 1, 2014 -> 08:24 AM) I used the long holiday weekend to get caught up on Sons of Anarchy. We were six episodes behind. It's tough to watch the episodes during the week because they're all at least 90 minutes. But, since we had some free days, we binged on it. Wow, a lot of stuff happened in those episodes. The last two are sure to be intense. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. I'd be surprised if Jax doesn't end up dead or in jail. Last night's Walking Dead fall finale was great. I think we all figured a main character would be killed off, but who it was and how quickly it happened was a surprise. I didn't care for it. I thought most of the season was pretty good, probably the best of the series. But the finale just went back to that old formula that sucked - kill someone to shock/surprise.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Dec 1, 2014 -> 12:00 PM) Agreed and it is also quite different to have someone you actually know in real life harass you through the internet then someone on an anonymous message board. If someone a person knows is constantly harassing or threatening them online it is entirely reasonable to be concerned that such conduct will continue elsewhere. I can understand that and I don't think the internet gives you an automatic license for threatening speech. But I'm wary of saying internet speech is the same as verbal speech. I'm a very firm believer that text alone does not provide appropriate context or tone, which means text can be taken out of context and manipulated (obviously some text is going to be direct enough, but not the majority).

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Dec 1, 2014 -> 11:54 AM) Because kids and teenagers use it to seriously harass others. It's incredibly cruel the way they use the internet to bully. But as a parent, how do you not teach your child to just ignore it? Literally, press the "ignore" button that's on 99% of all social media platforms. It's pretty simple.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Dec 1, 2014 -> 09:37 AM) This team wasn't any better than last year so I don't want to see him back. He is still a dead man walking and that is the worst thing our program can have, as we know. This is actually the best coaching opening environment we could have possibly asked for. Illinois would have been the best available second tier job as it stands. I don't even see anything close to it actually. Compare that to 2012 where we were competing against Arkansas, Arizona, Ole Miss, UNC, Pittsburgh, Arizona State, Rutgers, Texas AM, UCLA and Washington State. Not including top programs like Ohio State and Penn State. This year it looks like, um, Kansas? Iowa State? More pieces will move down the line but still, way better than the last time. Oh I totally disagree. They're still not "good," but they were in more games this year and actually won a few of them. It's not like they really lucked into their wins either. They played "well" in all of them. I also liked that they played their best football at the end of the year. Beckman also deserves credit for handling the Lunt situation. Sticking with O'Toole wasn't the popular choice, even with Lunt struggling.

It's ridiculous to me that people can feel intimidated over the internet. They're f'n words. Stop reading them and they go away!

QUOTE (SnB @ Dec 1, 2014 -> 08:41 AM) We expected a bowl game for him to keep his job, he did it and deserves another year. 6 wins in 2015 won't cut it though. Unfortunately I agree. I just hope this isn't a Zook situation where we're stuck with him for 3 more seasons.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 30, 2014 -> 02:59 PM) There was an awesome camera angle on a Brooks pass to streaking Butler that I wish I could haVe recorded. The type of plays that make you love basketball. Check the Bulls tv recap video. That was a great pass.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 28, 2014 -> 10:32 PM) First half of Illini basketball I am able to watch all year and they are on pace to score 42. So it's your fault! They got tons of open looks, just couldn't hit anything. So far so good to start the 2nd.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 03:03 PM) I know, and even you agree, that the prosecution had no interest in actually getting an indictment out of this case and presented no coherent argument or interpretation of the evidence to the grand jury. Can you imagine many regular juries ever reaching a guilty verdict if they were presented evidence and testimony in a similar manner? I don't agree with the bolded. All indications are that he went above and beyond what he needed to do to find a judicious result here. He let people decide whether it was going to be worth bringing a case to trial. The GJ said nope. It's not really contradictory. I'm saying in a perfect world he would have just said I'm not bringing charges, I don't see sufficient evidence. But there was a political pressure to do something. In lieu of taking a weak case to trial, he left it up to people to decide whether charges would be warranted. I think that was unusual but appropriate given the circumstances. You guys keep arguing that his presentation of the evidence to the jury was unfair, but you're not really giving examples. I guess getting some background of Wilson as a cop wasn't necessary, but it's not going to change the facts needed to bring a charge. What else about how he presented the case was so prejudicial? What evidence was known that he didn't provide the GJ that may have resulted in charges? I'm not aware of any. All indications are that he gave every piece of information possible and he was very fair about it.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 02:57 PM) I don't think we let that happen in either case. In the case of a trial jury, each side presents the evidence they feel is necessary to prove the case they're making. They don't call every single witness or introduce every single bit of medical evidence for a reason; they filter it down to what they feel is necessary to make a strong case. The prosecution and defense are supposed to have the same piles of evidence and statements of witnesses to work off of, so that neither side hides anything, but in the case of a trial neither side would have called most of these witnesses. Why? Because of the sheer number? That has nothing to do with it.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 11:23 AM) That's the troubling thing along with this. Usually, you should be working to increase your workload. Derrick has decreased his workload and in fact, played less basketball so far than he did for the US team and it's leaning towards less and less. And when he does play, he's not playing like he's trying. Before he would start the break and blur through the defense, now, he gets the ball on the fastbreak and he looks to skip it ahead to someone else which I've never seen him do prior to this year unless someone was a half court ahead of him with no one around. In the halfcourt, he literally brings the ball up the court, then dumps it off to someone else. Usually doesn't sell himself in the play either. Just goes through the motions. He gets the ball back, if there's no clear lane, he'll not even look to pump fake or shoot, he'll just pass it off to someone else while not even looking at the rim. And that's when he decides to play. He'll have a 5-8 minute spurt where he tries to score, and that's that. Rest of the game is coasting. Eh, I don't buy this. When he's played, he's been Derrick Rose of old with some rust. When he's played and gotten hurt, then obviously he's not pushing it. I do agree with ss2k5 though - I've noticed he looks defeated. He's not having fun. He's not trying to dominate and show people he's the best. He's almost resigned to the fact that he's made of glass.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 02:43 PM) It was not organized in a manner that a typical case is i.e. by someone making a specific argument in favor of a specific conclusion. Am I wrong to assume that prosecutors and defense attorneys each choose to introduce evidence and present witnesses in scripted order to build their story in the most effective way possible? And that, since nobody was actually advocating anything here, this wasn't done? Do you think we should always ask grand juries to sort through all possible evidence when there's an issue of facts, or isn't that normally left to trial juries? And do you know his order of witnesses didn't make sense or was somehow difficult to follow? I just don't get why you think more information means more confusion and a guaranteed no indictment order. Every case has issues of fact. I don't really get why you think that's important. He could have gotten an indictment. Everyone agrees with this. He didn't want to bring charges, he knew he had a weak case, and so he decided to leave it to a jury of people to decide whether there was enough evidence. He was in cover your ass mode the entire time. Why is that unreasonable? What sense would it make for him to present a "best case" to get an indictment, knowing full well that at trial it was basically a loser case? That makes no sense. You and I and everyone else knows that politically he could not have decided unilaterally to not press charges. That wasn't an option. This is the next best thing. Let people see the information he has and make the decision.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 02:13 PM) But a grand jury's job isn't to get buried under a mountain of disorganized evidence and sort it out. That's an impossible task to ask of them. More frequently, their job is to rubber-stamp indictment requests, sometimes at the rate of one every 52 seconds. Again, if we see a radical break away from overzealous prosecution as a result of this, awesome, but I'm doubtful. Why do you keep saying disorganized? Do you have any evidence that this was the case?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 02:04 PM) i wonder what the racial breakdown of the Grand Jury is. IIRC the guy said either 6 or 9 whites, 3 blacks.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:58 PM) How you see that as a more judicious process than an adversarial trial is equally beyond me. Because I don't think that people should be charged without sufficient proof to do so? I don't think "unarmed black teen dead + white cop = murder" like some people?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:43 PM) 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. Those witnesses had other information than JUST hearsay about whether they saw him surrender. They're still witnesses to portions of what happened and the aftermath.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:41 PM) 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. Correct. But it's also clear his goal wasn't to get an indictment simply because he could (and he could have). He wanted a grand jury, people of the county, to decide that with all of the potential information, good or bad, in front of them. How you guys think that is a less judicious process is beyond me.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:39 PM) 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? He made it seem like the majority of those witnesses who claimed to see the surrender changed their stories. I don't know if that's true or not. He doesn't know if it's bad. He might think that, but again, he's not a judge or the defense attorney. And again, you're arguing that he should have not put people on the grand jury stand to testify what they heard, hearsay or not, when that evidence supports efforts to bring charges. You want him to put on a less than stellar case from the get go. I don't know why you think that makes sense. Again, it goes back to the getting an indictment of a ham sandwich. You can put on one witness on that you know will say "I saw Wilson kill Brown." and leave it at that. Wilson can't defend himself. There's no adversarial component to it. The grand jury hears self-serving information and makes a decision on that. That is WAY less acceptable than putting on every bit of information he's got, whether it will ultimately be heard by a jury later at a trial.