Posted on 08/20/2014 10:18:53 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
On Wednesday, amid continued protests demanding “Justice for Michael Brown” prosecutors will bring evidence before a grand jury as they determine whether to indict Brown’s killer, Officer Darren Wilson. The power to indict rests with local prosecutors and pliant grand juries, and as Jonathan Cohn has pointed out, a prosecutor will usually refrain from indicting altogether if the accused faces a low likelihood of conviction. In this case, a combination of entrenched racial and occupational biases, and most importantly the oddities of Missouri law, all but ensures that a conviction is off the table.
We may never know what actually happened during the violent encounter between teenager Michael Brown and policeman Darren Wilson. But legal judgments rarely happen with perfect knowledge and absolute certainty. In their place, we rely on presumptions and standards that guide our thinking and discipline our judgments. In general, we presume innocence. But when we know that a killing has occurred and can definitively identify who committed the act, our presumptions are supposed to shift. Now we are supposed to presume guilt, and it is the shooter who must prove that his actions were justified. Unless the shooter is a policeman. And unless the victim is a black male. And unless the shooting happens in Missouri.
In any clash of witness testimony, police officers begin at huge advantage. Although the courts insist that juries give policemen no extra credence because of their badges as an “essential demand of fairness,” that’s not how jurors actually think or behave. Large percentages of potential jurors readily admit to giving police testimony extra weight, and many more likely act on this implicit bias. And in this case, the favoring of police testimony is compounded by another more pernicious bias: racial prejudice. Extensive research shows that Americans are far more likely to believe that African Americans—and especially young black men—have committed crimes and display violent behavior. It therefore won’t take very much to convince a jury that Officer Wilson was acting out of self-defense.
But these cultural biases are only part of the story of why a conviction will be near-impossible. The central reason is Missouri state law. Throughout history, claims of self-defense and compelling police activity have served as justifications for the use of deadly force. Most people intuitively understand that self-preservation is a basic right and that police must sometimes use violence to protect society and apprehend criminals. But generally, we expect situations of justified violence and legal killing to be the rare exception, and most people would probably imagine that policemen and citizens raising claims of justifiable homicide must meet a substantive burden of proof. But in Missouri, these justifications barely require any evidence at all.
In other states, claims of self-defense need to be proven as more likely than not, or in legal speak, to a “preponderance of the evidence.” It’s still the state’s obligation to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the defendant actually killed the victim. But once that’s established, the prosecution doesn’t also have to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the killing wasn’t justified. That’s because justifications—like self-defense—require the accused to make an active case, called an “affirmative defense,” that the circumstances were exceptional. The logic here is simple: As a rule, homicide is a crime and justification is reserved for extraordinary cases. Once the state has proven that a defendant did in fact kill someone, it should be the accused’s obligation to prove his or her actions were justified.
Not in Missouri. Instead, as long as there is a modicum of evidence and reasonable plausibility in support of a self-defense claim, a court must accept the claim and acquit the accused. The prosecution must not only prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime, but also disprove a defendant’s claim of self-defense to the same high standard. Under Missouri law, all a citizen claiming self-defense or a police officer claiming to have fired while pursuing a dangerous criminal need do is “inject the issue of justification.” In other words, he only needs to produce some evidence (his own testimony counts) supporting the claim. Once he does so, “any reasonable doubt on the issue requires a finding for the defendant.” In Missouri, the burden doesn’t budge an inch, even after we know that the defendant has killed the victim. It doesn’t matter that there is certainty that Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown. As long as there is still the slightest possibility that Wilson acted in his own defense, Missouri law favors Wilson.
Within reason, legal protections for, and presumptions in favor of, policemen acting in the line of duty make sense. Society has chosen to give these men and women guns, after all. And if we expect these officers to put their lives on the line, we owe them some measure of trust and due deference. But trust cannot become a license to kill. We have a word for a situation where killing is the default, where violence is so expected that the burden is no longer on a killer to prove his actions are justified. That word is war. It has no place in suburban St. Louis.
Jackson was actually ordained, Mehodist IIRC, in 2008 or so. It is relatively recent. He changed after the ordination, much less rabble rousing. I believe he did attend a seminary.
Sharpton was ordained when he was 10 years old (a child preacher) and as far as I know hasn’t seen the inside of a seminary.
Here is what happened. Seeing that Sergeant Wilson had injured his eye whilst jumping from his cop car, young Michael Brown (aka The Gentle Giant) was rushing to render first aid.
The injured officer, not being a New Republic subscriber and thus a racist, mistook the young hero's intentions, and in a fit of anti-black pique emptied his automatic service assault revolverer into the hapless college student. It should be pointed out that Sergeant Wilson was a white man, descended from European invaders of Africa and the New World and that many of these Europeans owned slaves.
These misrepresentations of an African-American young man's intentions have happened before. For example, Trayvon Martin, seeing the whitish descendant of slave owners George Zimmerman attempting to commit suicide by bashing his head against a concrete sidewalk, heedless of personal risk rushed to his aid. He threw himself upon the depressed man who obviously had some white blood, but whose Hispanic forebears had oppressed Native Americans, and tried to prevent him from harm. The deranged man then shot the young Samaritan with an automatic assault revolverer and then drank his Arizona Iced Tea and ate his Skittles.
If you doubt my version of events, honkey, I refers you to Mr. Eric Holder and Mr. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr, both of who be jiggy wit it!
I don’t know how you can be more clueless than this author. A black man shot by a white police officer is far more likely to result in a criminal charge, trial, and conviction than the other way around. A white man shot and killed by either a white police officer or a black police officer will result in an internal police investigation, a review by the prosecutor, and a finding of justified shooting.
This guy has no idea what he is talking about.
LOL! What part of the words 'reasonable doubt' does Schwartz not get?
“I’ve often wondered about Reverend Jackson and Reverend Sharpton. Did they go to divinity school? Are they ordained ministers in any known religious denomination? Where are their churches?”
NO, they both found their “callings” in a Cracker Jack box! Or they did it by mail order from that place in Fresno. (Sorry Jim, but I have a friend who got one from Fresno in order to marry some people). I think it was “The Church of the Gooey Death, Baptismal Car Wash, and Discount House of Sin”).
The Reverend Jesse attended the Chicago Theological Seminary dropping out in 1966, to focus full-time on the civil rights movement. He was ordained in 1968, and was awarded his Master of Divinity Degree in 2000. His baby daddy, who was not married to baby momma, was Noah Robinson, Michelle's Uncle. The Rev. Jesse's Half-bro, Noah, Jr., ran the notorious al-rukyn street gang and IIRC, is doing hard time as we speak. See:
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/23/us/life-term-for-jesse-jackson-s-half-brother.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverend_Jesse_Jackson
In regard to both these here Revs, one can only take the Christian view as expressed in (II Cor. 4:2),and in (II Thes. 2:10), and perhaps more pointedly in Philippians 1:15.
They just have to find a judge who will rule any evidence about Michael Brown robbing the convenience store and any evidence about Darren Wilson’s injuries irrelevant...and dismiss all witness testimonies except for Dorain’s and Tiffany’s (a black woman who claims to have seen most of what happened from a short distance away).
Do Dorian do ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xhlofyvIXE
He be talkin', Wilson be walkin'!
Nah. They both were ordained by The Church of the Almighty Dollar.
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