Posted on 11/29/2014 9:50:31 AM PST by SeekAndFind
There were no surprises to come out of Ferguson, Mo., last week. Neither the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, nor the riot that decision engendered was unexpected by anyone with even a modest familiarity with the matter. And just as predictable has been the left’s attempt to undermine the former and thereby justify the latter. They are to be excused in their rioting, we are told, for the grand jury’s decision is illegitimate.
To cite but one example of this, we turn to the New Yorker, where people of a leftist persuasion turn for guidance on how to think about current events. In a Nov. 25 post at the magazine’s website [1], legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin criticizes St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch for what Toobin sees as a failure to follow the “customary rules” of his profession. “If McCulloch’s lawyers had simply pared down the evidence to that which incriminated Wilson,” Toobin writes, “they would have easily obtained an indictment.”
Perhaps so, but an indictment in the case would have led to a trial that McCulloch knew, as Toobin himself should know, would result in Darren Wilson’s acquittal. Reasonable doubt was everywhere in the case, and prosecutors are ethically bound to proceed to trial only if they are confident of their ability to convince twelve jurors that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It wasn’t going to happen.
So, unless the Justice Department brings civil rights charges against Darren Wilson – still a possibility despite little chance of success – he will not face the public criminal trial that Jeffrey Toobin and so many others wished to see. And even a civil trial arising from a wrongful death claim against Wilson and the city of Ferguson is far from a certainty. Yes, there will be a lawsuit, of course, but it will likely be resolved through a settlement rather than a trial. If a trial were to take place, both sides would have much to lose. If a jury finds for the plaintiffs, the city faces the possibility of a multimillion-dollar judgment, and even if it prevailed, the city might face further rioting and disruptive protests. But lawyers representing Michael Brown’s family have risks to weigh as well. In a civil trial, Brown’s juvenile record would almost certainly be introduced. If it revealed serious violations of the law, a jury might be less sympathetic to his family request for damages. And is there anyone who believes he has no juvenile record?
But even as Michael Brown’s death recedes from the front pages, there are still aspects of the case that require examination, not least of which are the tactics employed by Darren Wilson in the moments leading up to the shooting. Though I’m in agreement with the grand jury’s decision in declining to charge Wilson in Brown’s death, it doesn’t mean I agree the shooting was unavoidable. If we imagine a counterfactual scenario and back up, step by step, from the moment the first shot was fired, we can come up with a way in which Michael Brown might have been arrested without the use of deadly force. This is not intended as a criticism of Darren Wilson, but rather as a reminder to police officers who may someday find themselves in a similar situation.
Among my first thoughts on hearing of the Michael Brown shooting was to wonder if the officer was working alone. An article in Police magazine [2] points out that of 536 police officers killed from 2000 to 2009, only about a third were working alone, suggesting that it’s somehow safer to work without a partner. I’m certain that a deeper exploration beyond the raw numbers would show this to be untrue, but let’s examine the issue as it relates to the Darren Wilson-Michael Brown confrontation.
We are told that Wilson was unaware of Brown’s involvement in the convenience store robbery until he had already initiated contact with Brown and his companion, Dorian Johnson. Had Wilson had a partner, there would have been an extra set of ears in the car to monitor the radio traffic, perhaps allowing the officers to learn in advance of the initial contact that they were dealing with robbery suspects rather than simple traffic violators.
But putting that aside, even if our two hypothetical officers had not been apprised of the robbery, they might have taken an extra moment to discuss how they would handle a pedestrian stop of two men, one of whom weighed 300 lbs. And Michael Brown might have been more hesitant to challenge two officers than he was to take on Darren Wilson alone.
Now take a partner officer out of our scenario. How might an officer riding alone have handled the encounter differently? Wilson told the grand jury that his request to Brown and Johnson to get out of the street was met with expletive-laden defiance. Wilson then radioed for backup, as indeed he should have. But rather than wait for that backup to arrive, he reversed his car and pulled within a few feet of Brown and Johnson, thus giving Brown the opportunity to attack him. The more prudent course would have been to keep the two men under observation from the relative safety of the police car until other officers arrived, then initiate a stop. Had Brown and Johnson attempted to run away, the officers could have set up a containment perimeter and found them through a systematic search. And even if Brown and Johnson eluded the search, how many people living on Canfield Drive are 6-3 and 300 lbs.?
Again, none of this is to imply that the grand jury reached the wrong decision in declining to charge Darren Wilson. But he made the choice to put himself in a vulnerable position while confronting two men, one of whom outweighed him by 90 lbs. Wilson told George Stephanopoulos his conscience was clear, but I can’t imagine he doesn’t harbor some regret at having placed himself in so precarious a position.
Of course, since we’re indulging in counterfactuals, we can imagine that Michael Brown didn’t rob the store, didn’t walk down the middle of the street, got out of the street when told to, didn’t punch Officer Wilson and try to take his gun, didn’t turn around as he ran away, and did lie on the ground when ordered to.
Change any one of those decisions Brown made and he’d be alive today.
Also read:
Use Bigger Bullets
Yes it is.
But my understanding is that in most states a prosecutor has no legal obligation to submit a balanced review of the evidence to the grand jury. He's prohibited from presenting evidence he knows or reasonably suspects is false.
But unlike during the trial, he is not obligated to present excuplatory evidence.
No, I'm not really comfortable with this, but then the grand jury hearing isn't intended to be a "pre-trial," which is what the Wilson hearing turned into.
BTW, the prosecutor could also have legally not presented any evidence to the jury that would fit the "narrative." But instead apparently he gave it all to them.
Reminds me of that scene in “Demolition Man” where the future cops located Simon Phoenix with surveillance cams and began celebrating that they had solved the crime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bOQitInC84
Best solution is to establish a policy that maximum deadly force will be used anytime a person stopped by legitimate authority attempts to rebel or attack the arresting officer.
The numbers of the rebellious will reduce and law enforcement will return to normalcy.
Stupid “what if” article. Wilson did his job, Brown got himself rightly killed. End of story.
Fortunately for the innocent people of Ferguson, the cop did everything the way it actually happened. This hard-working store owner will be the Gentle Giant's last victim. Ever. Death penalty for petty theft and simple assault? I'm okay with that when it is a natural consequence of thuggish actions.
That’s some mighty fine armchair quarterbacking there, Mr Dunphy.
One simple solution would have been to have two cops in the cruiser.
A video recording of events probably would have stopped this matter from going past stage one.
Black cops in black neighborhoods, and then it wouldn’t matter, so far as the rabble rousers go. Even though it would be black vs establishment, it would still be black on black, and that’s not an important issue.
Another solution is for cops to quit serving racially hostile areas where they are obviously not appreciated nor wanted. Let inner city plantations solve their own problems. The federal government supports them. Let the federal government provide everything for them.
Yes it is.
But my understanding is that in most states a prosecutor has no legal obligation to submit a balanced review of the evidence to the grand jury. He's prohibited from presenting evidence he knows or reasonably suspects is false.
But unlike during the trial, he is not obligated to present excuplatory evidence.
No, I'm not really comfortable with this, but then the grand jury hearing isn't intended to be a "pre-trial," which is what the Wilson hearing turned into.
BTW, the prosecutor could also have legally not presented any evidence to the jury that would fit the "narrative." But instead apparently he gave it all to them.
IOW, the protestors are absolutely correct. Had the prosecutor wanted to obtain an indictment he absolutely could have. So he obviously didn't want to. You can consider this an example of the blatant racism embedded in the American legal system, or an example of a person doing his ethical best under very trying circumstances. Take your pick.
I agree, the operative words being “common sense”. The parameters are different for a cop than for the rest of us though (ie, they run towards trouble when the rest of us would run away from it).
Even simpler than that. The deceased knew he’d just committed a crime. When the officer merely asked him and his wingman to get out of the road, he could have - and should have - beat feet to the sidewalk and quietly disappeared to go make blunts of his ill-gotten Swisher Sweets. Act innocent and respectful, tell the nice officer, “Yes sir, thank you sir. I’ll be on my way now, sir. Have a good day and stay safe.” Officer Wilson did not know of the robbery and that he was facing the perp. Take that “lucky” break and get outta Dodge. Nobody shoots. Nobody dies.
The writer is armchair policing.
So he went above and beyond, presenting the evidence to a grand jury to see if they agreed with him that there was no probable cause to hold the officer for trial. This is a different use of the grand jury than normal, a fact that seems to escape the attention of the race baiters who simply wanted an indictment. He wasn't using the grand jury to get an indictment, but to ask whether his view that there should be no indictment was correct. Instead of pushing a point of view, he kept the presentation of evidence neutral, and showed both sides. And they agreed with him. Problem? If so, the solution is to rely on what the prosecutor believed all along, that there should be no indictment.
Toobin's "best by" date has long since expired. He is an affirmative action hack.
I wish this reporter would demonstrate his methods of subduing 300 pound drug addled gang members attacking him on tv. Popcorn time!
According to Juan Williams on Fox, the officer when he feared for his life should have just run and driven away ...
A white friend of mine about 25 years ago in Brooklyn was shot in the arm by a cop for not complying and it had absolutely nothing to do with racism. He was pulled over because they thought he was driving a stolen car and they told him to put his hands on the dashboard and being the wise ass he was he jumped out of the car yelling “What the F is this?” and BANG! He was damn lucky and incredibly he won $100k in a lawsuit even though HE was 100% at fault. This kind of stuff happens because idiots like him have no respect for the cops so when the cops pull them over or ask them to do something they pull attitude, what crap like these Furgeson “protests” that are fully sanctioned by the Obama cabal do is they promote even more disrespect for the cops which is going to get more blacks killed.
I don’t have nearly the same faith in videos as many fokks, but I think they can be more useful than not.
People see what they want to see. To this day there are folks that insist a video of a plane smashing into the WTC clearly doesn’t show a plane.
The fallback position in these arguments is always, “they didn’t have to *kill* him!” Like the cop or citizen is supposed to risk or worse, submit to, injury or even death just to keep from killing some feral thug.
Let me guess, with one of those Hollywood-style expert snipers who always hit what they’re aiming at...
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