Let me ask you a question Max. Is a prosecutor's job to prosecute an innocent man when the evidence doesn't support a prosecution?
If it's true that the officer shot this kid justifiably, and it appears that a grand jury of his peers believe that to be the case, then so be it. But, this is a HORRIBLE situation. Every single person, from the kid and his family, to the officer, law enforcement, protestors, Ferguson, and the country as a whole; we're all taking a massive L here. This whole unfortunate situation is no doubt a microcosm of the state of race relations in this country. Multiple factions: Entrenched in their beliefs and unwilling to express curiosity, empathy, or understanding towards the beliefs of those who they consider to be "them". So one faction will continue to feel victimized, another will feel justified, several others will continue to be angry and jaded, yet another will yell "Racism!" and hear the response of "Race-Card-ism", so forth and so on... All the while neglecting to hear "the other side" out. And we'll continue taking smaller L's along the way. That is until, the next massive one presents itself.
Because if this was a standard case without the media attention, the case would've never even went through to the grand jury in the first place. Wilson would've been cleared of self defense and that was it
Are you saying the prosecutor should have taken it straight to a trial instead of giving the grand jury an opportunity to weigh the evidence to see if probable cause even exists? Isn't the bar for the grand jury much much lower than that of a normal jury? So wouldn't they have every opportunity to throw SOME charge at the officer if the evidence didn't support him? Why do people think there should have been a trial just to appease the protestors who already considered him guilty? The evidence didn't point to there even being probable cause that he was guilty....yet, he should have to stand trial and risk prosecution to appease the crowd who doesn't have access to all the information presented (until this morning). This is ridiculous to me
Exactly, the vast majority of the times there is an officer involved shooting a "in policy shooting" I believe they call it, the prosecutor doesn't bring charges -- he sure as hell doesn't bring the case to grand jury. The prosecutor apparently went out of his way to 1) ensure that the evidence was heard and a decision was made by someone other than himself, and 2) to explain and release evidence after the fact. Face it. People wanted Wilson to be guilty. They wanted it to fit their narrative of injustice. "They didn't want justice, they wanted satisfaction." Read that somewhere this morning.
If there were 9 black people on the jury instead of 9 white people it would have gone to trial. I don't know if he was guilty of innocent. I don't think anyone really cares either. People will use it for whatever purpose they want.
Yes, but this was a weird grand jury proceeding. Normally a prosecutor convenes a grand jury because he wants to prosecute and he wants to get an indictment. The bar is very low and the defense doesn't get to counter anything. The prosecutor normally only presents the minimal evidence to sustain an indictment. In this case, the prosecutor put ALL information before the grand jury, including bad witness testimony that was proven false, and basically told them "Here, you make the call." The prosecutor is getting a lot of flack for doing this. I agree that it was stupid, but for a different reason. If the prosecutor didn't want to prosecute because he believed the man was innocent and that's what the evidence said, he should have said that. The grand jury issue made it worse in my opinion.
That's what the evidence presented to the Grand Jury says. The officer was aware of the robbery and the officer was aware of the description...5 minutes after a robbery in the immediate vicinity you spot a 6'4 giant...not hard to guess he could be a suspect...Apparently though, he didn't even try and arrest the guy by himself initially, he told him to get out of the street...apparently, you think it's okay for people to walk in the middle of the street, then punch an officer, then reach for his gun...but then he stopped -- so why did the officer continue? Because he just assaulted a police officer -- you don't think he should have been arrested for that? He then CHARGED at the officer as he pointed a gun and told him he would shoot....you don't think he should have shot? I'll ask again .... HOW GOD DAMN STUPID ARE YOU?
If this is the case (and I agree it probably is), the prosecutor should get some of the blame for what happened yesterday. He let the tensions build and simmer for months and created a situation where there would be a singular moment for it to all boil over - all in an attempt to protect himself. There was no need to create false hope for all the people hoping for a trial. There was no reason to make the announcement at night, when the possibility of violence is highest. It seems like everything was done in a way that maximized the potential for last night to happen. I think this is the best post in this thread. The specifics of the case and stupidity of some protestors has overwhelmed the real issues here that this whole situation exposed. Everyone is just talking past everyone else without any interest in the underlying issues.
You think it made it worse? Imagine what would have happened had he made a unilateral decision and didn't press charges? Also, which bad witnesses did he put on the stand -- the ones who corroborated the officer or those that supported Brown? There is physical evidence. That doesn't lie. If the evidence proves he was moving towards him. Proves he wasn't shot in the back. Proves Brown's hands WEREN'T up "in the universal sign of surrender," then why should the officer have been indicted??
I think it would have been better honestly. I agree with Major, letting this boil for so long helped create last night. If he had just declined to prosecute, yes there would have been problems as well, but I don't think the heat would have risen to this level. The ones who claimed that Brown was shot in the back. The prosecutor knew those witnesses were lying/didn't see what they claimed to see/however you want to describe it, yet he still let the grand jury hear from them. I don't think he should have been indicted based on what I've heard. My point is that if the prosecutor didn't want to prosecute this man because he was innocent, he should have said that! LOL
This is my point. If the evidence so clearly supported the officer's position and the prosecutor believed him to be innocent, taking this to the grand jury and letting this situation boil over this long was just cowardice on his part. He should have either declined to prosecute or stood out of the way to let someone else who had the guts to own the decision investigate.
I'm not sure the whole grand jury thing made stuff worse. Can you imagine how bad the violence would have gotten if he (or someone else) had singularly decided not to prosecute, especially while still in the throws of the original riots? I think diffusing the responsibility to a jury, and waiting until the violence had subsided, especially on the eve of winter/thanksgiving might have actually been a way to quell violence.
Perhaps. But how can you know either way? I don't think it was unreasonable to think it would have been safer to let people get home so that there wasn't more people/cars in the street. I'm not saying it was the right decision, I'm saying I have a hard time imagining that it would have been much better in the day. But again, it's all speculation based on hindsight. Wouldn't this help Brown? These witnesses wouldn't have been allowed to stand trial, they would have been discredited so fast with evidence that the jury would have found him not guilty before lunch of the first day. I don't see how it's a bad thing that all of this evidence was presented. They went above and beyond to make it a transparent process -- even though the GJ is SUPPOSED to be secretive to protect the witnesses and jurors from any outside pressures. I think if he would have said that, there would have been MUCH more anger. I just don't see how it's a bad thing that he allowed a grand jury to make the decision based upon all the evidence.
Except this set a flashpoint up. It let people organize for months, it let more perceived insults to the family occur, it let the media stir people up, it let the death of others at the hands of police start to taint the situation, etc. This prosecutor did an unprecedented thing with the grand jury. He basically used them as a shield.
We are closing the office at noon today -- I've been here an hour and a half and haven't done anything but read the news and comment on CF haha....time to step away, enjoyed the discussion, will return later.
Well no, it wouldn't have helped Brown. They were lying and the evidence and other witnesses proved it. All it did was put people in front of the grand jury that muddied the waters. Prosecutors have no obligation to put liars in front of a grand jury and let them sort it out. It's a bad thing because it has never been done this way and the fact that it was done this way is giving the crowd that things this is a miscarriage of justice ammunition to ignore the evidence and focus on a rigged game. I hear the Brown family attorney say last night "If you are saying the way this grand jury was handled is the "fair way" to handle it, then are you saying that every other person indicted by grand juries prior this when they were done differently were treated unfairly?" Or some version of that. He has a point. If dumping every witness and every single piece of evidence in front of the grand jury and saying "make of it what you will" is the "fair way" to handle this process, then there are a lot of people who have an argument they've been treated unfairly by the system.
I really don't think there is much in the way of historical evidence that people can point to when arguing about the best way a non-indictment could have been presented. To me it appears to just be a bunch of Monday morning quarterback-ing with everyone having their own "hunch" about how it should have been handled.
He should've just announced at like 7:00am. Announcing last night after declaring a decision hours earlier is the height of stupidity.
