Oh really? https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/secure-resources-and-funding-and-begin-construction-death-star-2016/wlfKzFkN
That has 34,435 signatories, and all of the United States is eligible to sign that. The threshold for a White House response for a nation-wide petition displayed prominently on a high-traffic domain is 25,000 signatures. plus, it references a popular cultural meme, and is humorous, just like that drive to change the anthem to Ignition. Thanks for proving my point?
Your point being that 2.3% of the St. Louis metro area thought that the prosecutor was biased and signed a petition to have someone else try to have the county waste money in a futile effort to put an innocent man in prison.....thus they should have done that.
The petition is but the tip of an iceberg. I'm sure there are more than 34,000 people who want to build the Death Star. Of course there are other points on why the prosecutor could have been biased that you aren't addressing at the moment.
It's nothing but grasping at straws by those who didn't get their way. The point that you are ignoring completely is that there wasn't anywhere near enough evidence against Wilson to where any rational person would think that a conviction of any crime was even possible. In fact, I've yet to hear anyone suggest that because they'd be laughed out of whatever building they were in if they did. This nonsense about a prosecutor being biased because of something completely different that happened to his father is merely an attempt to muddy the water.
? I've said several times my qualm was with the process and not the outcome. If you think that's "grasping at straws" then so be it, but if you don't think process matters at all, well that's on you. If you think legal process is "nonsense", well, we don't have much to discuss.
Northside Storm, your hypocrisy on fairness and and legal precedent is disturbing Here are the scenarios of what should've happened, what happened, and what you believe was fair What should've happened under normal circumstances Prosecutor looks over evidence, rules Darren Wilson's shooting as justified police self defense, Wilson walks free some time in August. No grand jury, no evidence released to the public. What actually happened Prosecutor looks over evidence, decides the evidence does not justify a indictment or charge, pressured by the community and the media for greater transparency, organizes a unusual grand jury where he gives little input on his own and let the 12 people decide on indictment based on every piece of evidence. The evidence is also released to the public after the fact. Wilson walks free after 3 months of media frenzy and hiding. What you think should've happened Prosecutor looks over the evidence, decides there's no grounds to continue prosecution, but should still organize a grand jury where he should go against his own judgement to convince 12 people to indict Wilson, and go on to try to prosecute a case where he as zero confidence in prosecuting in a trial. now you are saying is the third option, is somehow. fair and impartial even though it has no legal precedent, and unconstitutional act of charging and indicting a innocent man and putting him through a trial that the prosecutor doesn't believe is warranted based on the evidence. And with all the whining about of the improper grand jury, you still fail to admit that what actually happened was more unfair to Wilson than anyone else in the case because he should have walked free in August if things were done according to legal precedent and "proper" procedure.
If your point is that people will sign anything given the right circumstances. The current circumstances has caused mass riots over an obvious non-indictment of an innocent man, you think those same people rioting won't sign a petition if they think it will help their cause...
Okay, so really you're just hung up on the minutiae then? You agree that the grand jury came to the right decision and that justice was served, you just don't like the way that it was served?
Current and past circumstances, an important distinction to make. Anyways, you and Bobby seem to think 70k signatures can be poohpoohed away, because anybody can get 70k signatures. I'm glad we've all come out of this with a more balanced view of petition-signing!
If you think it's minutiae that an entire community, legal experts, even the governor called for a different set of standards and a different prosecutor, and that these proceedings seem to be violating the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution---proceedings that were dangerous from the past, and could be dangerous in the future---well then there's nothing to discuss is there? If you think it's fun to add legal uncertainty and stoke tensions for no reason, why not, eh? Seems like a great principle to adopt.
Let me ask you this, if this "improper" grand jury produced an indictment, do you think the outrage would still be the same over how improper this proceeding was? Also let me ask you this, if with a special prosecutor, the case was dismissed in August as justified self defense, do you think the outrage would still be the same.
70k randoms isn't "an entire community", legal experts can be found to support literally any position, and the governor is an idiot who is trying to cover his own ass after his actions directly led to the town of Furguson being burned by the lynch mob that formed out on the streets. I think that your opinion of these proceedings is not an educated one and that they don't violate the spirit or letter of the Constitution. As such, there probably isn't much to discuss. I feel like you are looking for conflict where none exists. The fact that you think the moronic lynch mob out in the streets would have been pacified with different procedure leading up to the same obvious conclusion is adorably naive at best. They were very stupid, emotional people who were worked up by race baiters and lying "eyewitnesses" who tried to suggest that Brown was treated unfairly when it was the furthest thing from the truth.
Given McCullough's past, and the way he delivered the outcome, I certainly think things could have gone better, and tensions would not have been as high.
So, everybody is an idiot---except for yourself and the zero people and facts you've cited? I've done a lot of work bringing you facts and information---facts and information you haven't addressed at all (most notably the past misrepresentation). In future, I'll remember that I can just call your perspective uneducated, and everybody you cite an idiot, or somebody that could be found to represent your position, though I suppose that's tough when you cite nobody who can.
When it comes to this case, there are quite a few idiots, yes. This is a cut and dry case of self defense, yet it turned into an incident that caused a town to be burned because of idiots. You've worked to muddy the water because you know that you don't have a leg to stand on when talking about the merits of this actual case. You want to b**** about how things happened yet you claim to not disagree with the results. It's picking your battles well, but complaining that you think that a biased prosecutor led a grand jury that came up with a completely fair and just outcome isn't something that most people are going to care about. If the actions of the prosecutor made no difference in the outcome, who cares about him allegedly being biased because of something that happened to his farther or because there was an allegation that he misrepresented information in another case once upon a time? What difference does it make? If I start suggesting that a grand jury being secret violates the constitution then you should feel free to call that uneducated.....because it would be. If I suggest that a lynch mob could be pacified by a procedural change that would have no change in the outcome of a case, you could call that naive and foolish if you wanted to. I wouldn't argue, you'd be right.
You are a complete dumba$$ if you think that the outcome would have been at all different had the prosecution cherry picked evidence in order to obtain an indictment. Wilson is walking no matter what, and Ferguson is burning no matter what. You can't possibly be dumb enough to believe that either of those two outcomes was avoidable, can you? Oh wait...
