Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:33 PM) 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. 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.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:33 PM) And he's also not doing his job if he knows witness statements are bull plop and presents them to the GJ anyway. In an actual trial, what would be your reaction if a prosecutor called someone to the stand and then under cross examination admitted they were basing their statements on hearsay? That actually happened in this case and the prosector's office was the one doing the cross examination. 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?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:31 PM) So he has a duty to present unreliable witnesses who weren't actually witnesses? 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." In reality though, I think in this situation what happened was some of the witnesses recanted their prior press interview statements during the grand jury proceeding. It came out there. That's an assumption on my part based on the press conference. I haven't read the transcripts. Why doesn't he have a duty to simply not present bad witnesses who didn't actually witness anything? Because in this case he didn't want to bring charges but he didn't want to be the sole decision maker there, knowing the incredible backlash that would come either way. He wanted every possible piece of evidence, good and bad, to be given to a grand jury so that they could decide what charges, if any, to bring.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:27 PM) 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? Depends. It's not like they get to interview every witness before trial. They usually stick with public interviews and/or police interviews and go from there.

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

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:27 PM) You don't think that calling witnesses and asking if they previously lied is prejudicial? 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.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:23 PM) With no evaluation of any of them, even before their presentations apparently, which is about as poor of a job of a prosecutor doing as I could ever imagine. God Balta, you are so out of your element on this one. Seriously. You're arguing against yourself here. You want a pro-prosecutor to exclude things like hearsay evidence that SUPPORTS the charges you wanted him to bring.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:24 PM) 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. 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.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:22 PM) Isn't that normally not allowed in a regular trial? Is it allowed in a grand jury? 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.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:17 PM) So out of the 60 "witnesses" presented to the grand jury, "Most" of them didn't actually see the event, but the prosecutor presented them to the grand jury anyway? Another indication that he wanted all potential facts out there for the grand jury to decide.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:14 PM) 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". He's probably referring to the witnesses who are relying on what they heard someone else say. Which is hearsay.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:14 PM) 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". You put way too much stock in cross examination. Did you see Wilson's interview with George Steffonalapeoperopoligas? He comes off incredibly well. You're not going to phase him.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 01:08 PM) 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?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 12:57 PM) 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.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 12:34 PM) Do you think the common perception of being pulled over for a "DWB" or "Driving While Black" has no basis in reality? 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.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 11:43 AM) I am skeptical that you read a 14,000 word article in the 8 minutes it took you to respond. Even if you did eventually finish it, it seems pretty clear you didn't go in with an open mind to try to understand a different point of view. Oh well. I got to the "poor violations" part and felt compelled to respond immediately.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 11:47 AM) Possibly, but I'm speaking as a trend nationally. Yes. For example, black people are actually less likely than white people to use drugs but face prosecution and incarceration for drug use at much higher levels. 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.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 11:35 AM) So did you bother to read the whole article or just enough to come up with a reason to ignore it? No I read it. It's not a shock to me that in poor areas with more crime there are more cops policing the area, making more arrests, handing out tickets, etc. That's how police police. You know the best way to curb that cycle? Get people in the community to stop committing crimes, necessitating cops. You know what's not the answer? Blaming cops for being racist.

http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/11/23/steph...orcing-tax-laws Good point, George!

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 10:46 AM) Going to link this Radley Balko (libertarian, long-time scholar at Cato, has written about police militarization and abuse for years) article about how municipalities and police forces in St. Louis County profit from the poor and particularly black poor again, because it should really give everyone an understanding of where this distrust comes from. These people are living in a Kafka novel. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-wat...s-from-poverty/ Oh, so she broke the law and got tickets like everyone else does. How terrible! I'd agree with a more general "municipalities profit from people" argument. I've been saying that for years.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/n...-jury-fairness/

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 09:58 AM) Thank you for now agreeing that there should have been a case made by an unaffiliated special prosecutor. That's what should have happened and it's nice to see you now agree that this process was faulty. I said that a while ago, so... But I also don't think if that happened anything would have changed. Charges should not have been brought and I don't see how he would have been found guilty at a trial.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 09:57 AM) Yes there was, it was the prosecution team. It's not meant to be a real trial or a "mock trial." Grand jurors aren't supposed to be sorting through witness credibility and evidence reliability. That's for a full jury or bench trial to do. Inundating grand jurors with 70 hours of testimony and countless documents over 3 months while providing zero prosecutorial guidance or painting a coherent picture is pretty much guaranteed to return no indictment. They're supposed to be given facts and determine if probable cause exists for the charge. That necessitates some credibility analysis and comparing evidence A and B together. We all know he could have gotten an indictment if he wanted, or he could have charged him if he wanted. Just because he didn't and he wanted that conclusion to be validated by a grand jury with all the evidence he had, doesn't mean it was some corrupt process. And let's face it: no matter what happened here - he brought charges, he got an indictment, or it goes to trial and Wilson wins, you all would STILL be pissed off about it. You're just latching on to this GJ thing to further your conspiracy theory that Wilson, a cold blooded murderer, shot a saintly, innocent, unarmed black kid, and the powers at be are protecting him to further their racist aims. It's another example of the "epidemic" you believe is happening across the country of white cops killing black kids because racism.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 09:55 AM) And so since most of the witnesses who say they saw the final shot do not describe Brown as charging at him while the officer does, you're going to find the officer's testimony equally uncredible, right? Supposedly there were several witnesses that backed up Wilsons claim on this point. I haven't seen the GJ testimony from them though.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 26, 2014 -> 09:48 AM) Which is the exact opposite of what a Grand Jury is supposed to do. There was no one to cross examine any of the witnesses. You guys say that they changed their story and yet they were still presented to the grand jury. In the case of an actual trial, these sorts of witnesses would be judged as unreliable and likely not even put on the stand because they wouldn't stand up to cross examination. But, a prosecutor attempting to do a decent job would put together a story of what details actually made sense, appeared in most people's stories, and could have actually been seen by those witnesses. A majority of witnesses who could have seen the fatal shots disagreed with the statement that he was charging towards him, several describe it as him turning around after being grazed by a bullet, stumbling, and moving his arms out. One used the phrase "he started to stagger forward" and "couldn't hardly stand up". But there's no evaluation of that, instead we have the officer's version of him growing larger and turning into the Hulk. Crazy or incorrect statements in other witness testimony are enough to invalidate their stories, yet crazy, statements about adrenaline-fueled memories from the police officer are taken as fact. See above. There was also no defense attorney cross examining the same witnesses and poking a hole in a lot of their versions.