Should the eyewitnesses (re Michael Brown shot) & Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo. be polygraphed?

8/19/2014 | Laissez-Faire Capitalist

[Laissez-faire capitalist]

Secondly, should a special prosecutor be appointed by the governor of Missouri to look into the shooting of Michael Brown?:

If the Missouri prosecutor (who might be the head of the investigation probing the shooting of Michael Brown) has a mother, father, brother, uncle and cousin who all worked for the St. Louis police department (Ferguson, Missouri is a suburb of St. Louis, Mo.) - his father was reported to have been killed and the suspect was a black individual - should he be replaced by a special prosecutor appointed by the governor of Missouri (Jay Nixon)?

Third, where is the shell casing for the bullet that was told to have been discharged in the struggle for Darren Wilson's gun? Was gun powder residue on Michael Brown's clothing? Is "Josie's" account on the Dana Loesch radio show hearsay?

Fourth, are Michael Brown's hand prints on the gun?

Fifth, is there a bullet hole in officer Darren Wilson's car if there was indeed a struggle for officer Darren Wilson's gun and a bullet was discharged?

Sixth, how many bullet casings were recovered?

Seventh, should the police (across the country) take the same stance if the situation is reversed and release info that may or may not look like it exonerates a suspect, or should they take the position that they will take the same stance with unsub perps (and police officers) and never release information piece meal for either side?

[kenmcg]

Polygraph results are inadmissable in court. The eye witness with Brown, should be busted in connection with the strong armed robbery of the cigars.

[longtermmemmory]

Polygraphs are just a tool for intimidation not a real scientific inquiry. (see police are allowed to lie during interrogations)

Mentioning a polygraph during a trial is grounds for a mistrial. Parks and Crump have made multiple appearances on CNN FNC and MSNC fanning the race card flames and attempting to influence the potential jury. Crump was on the Kelly file saying the autopsy he ordered was ambiguous enough to PRESUME GUILT and demanded an arrest.

Remember these lawyers are ambulance chasers who settle cases not try them. They are license in FL not MO. I do not wish to give their website the hits.

[Boogieman]

You’re asking a lot of questions that nobody here is going to be in a position to answer.

[Political Junkie Too]

In the case of the San Ramon pawn shop robbery, the actual theft had not yet occurred when the robber was shot by the store owner. The four boys walked into the store with tire irons to smash and grab, but the grab had not happened yet when he was shot.

How can one label it a "felony" murder when the theft had not yet taken place? Does the robber have to have the property in hand in order for it to be valued to see if it meets the felony threshold? Does it matter if he had grabbed a $100 watch vs. a $1,000 necklace?

-PJ

[Laissez-faire capitalist]

It has been reported that a police report said that Wilson was responding to a police dispatch of a suspect in a robbery.

But later in the day, it has been reported that police chief Jackson said that Wilson did not know that the teen was a suspect in the robbery.

[Conscience of a Conservative]

A polygraph would most likely not be conclusive. For one thing, polygraphs are pretty unreliable and relatively easy to beat. More importantly, though, the most that a polygraph shows is that a person is intentionally lying. If an eyewitness genuinely believes that he saw what he says he saw, then a polygraph will prove nothing, even if the witness’s recollection is wrong (as it often is).

[cripplecreek]

So why should there be a special prosecutor?

[jocon307]

Lie detectors are not admissible in court, and I imagine no witness would agree to take one and I doubt it could be compelled.

They are supposed to tell the story as they believe it truthfully to be, and then it is for the jury (or judge) to decide if they are truthful.

[Defiant]

As I said you can't force someone to do a polygraph, and it's not admissible if someone does it voluntarily. Wilson will never give one, his union won't allow it for one, and he would have to fear that the feds will skew the results. Johnson won't give one because he would have to be questioned about crimes he did commit, and because he is almost definitely lying about much, if not all, of what happened in the confrontation. Those are the two main witnesses.

I posted so people would not get caught up in useless exercises.

[Ingtar]

The accomplice had the cigars, and confessed.

[longtermmemmory]

no they are pretty much uniformly inadmissible. They are easy to manipulate, easy to create a false reliance.

The older tests could be manipulated with a simple thumbtack between the toes. It is akin to the false memory creation of psych interviewers.

[Laissez-faire capitalist]

That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be asked, as the media is sure going to keep asking questions - be it the GOP-e leaning media or the Dem-e leaning media (neither of which I care for).

[KeyLargo]

[Defiant]

The general rule is that if a homicide takes place during the commission of a felony, the participants in that felony are responsible for the homicide as felony murder, usually a lesser form of murder, with lower prison terms. Often, the question becomes whether they were still in the process of committing the felony. In the situation you postulate, the question is whether the felony had started already. There are 50 states each with their own history of determining the answers to these questions, so the case law is all over the place. You'd have to look at the state law first.

To answer your question of how it can be labeled a felony before the theft, you have to know what felony the prosecutors charged under, then look at any case law that says when that felony has occurred. If the felony was "entering a store with intent to rob", or "conspiracy" or something like that, it may have begun the minute they entered the store, or before they entered.

[Laissez-faire capitalist]

I don’t agree with what Crumps said on the Kelly file, if what you post is true. Don’t agree with him at all - if true. A link to his comments would be great, btw.

But... I am not going to broad-brush strike “these” lawyers, either, and say that they are ambulance chasers.

Don’t give the website any hits. Just post the info and quote what they have said. That would suffice as proof to bolster what you say, right?

[Defiant]

And your point?

I believe this has been explained a couple days ago. Wilson heard a dispatch about a theft, but did not know that Brown was a suspect when he told him to get out of the street. There was someone saying that he saw the cigars in Brown's hand and realized that he may have been the guy mentioned in the dispatch. We will find out at some point when the investigation is complete.

[Laissez-faire capitalist]

Because perhaps then it would go a long way to removing any potential hints of doubt as to who is prosecuting this and thus minimize reports by the MSM concerning this.

Why not?

It’s constitutional, as we both want, and the governor of Missouri might be the one to give an out-of-the-forest perspective on this with an appointment of a special prosecutor.

[longtermmemmory]

actually the ONLY reason to ask anyone for a polygraph is to manipulate a specific result. NOBODY should consent to such bogus science. It is no different than Phrenology.

[Laissez-faire capitalist]

And Josie’s comments on the Dana Show are inadmissible in court, too.

The prosecutor should have gag-ordered this from the get-go.

[Political Junkie Too]

So if Brown and Johnson robbed a store and then fled the police thinking that the police were there to arrest them (even if the police didn't yet know about the robbery and stopped them for other suspicious behavior), wouldn't the fleeing from the police still be a part of the robbery?

-PJ