The news has been leaked to the New York Times: the Department of Justice has concluded its federal investigation into the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and it has reached substantially the same conclusions as the local grand jury that chose not to press charges against police officer Darren Wilson.
Let’s reiterate that. Eric Holder’s Justice Department has looked at the case and decided that the evidence indicates Officer Wilson was justified in shooting Michael Brown. - The Federalist Blog
Don't expect to see much news coverage of this decision, but like the Trayvon Martin case....but you can expect it to live on as a legally erroneous pop culture meme......
Baloney. The Federalist blog is being dishonest. All DOJ could do was investigate whether or not Brown's civil rights were violated, which is a more difficult thing to do. The DOJ did not say the shooting was justified. In my opinion Wilson probably murdered Brown. His story simply doesn't add up. This isn't over BTW. There has been an ethics complaint filed against prosecutor Bob McCulloch for his deliberate sabotage.
ReplyDeleteI see. From the NYT source used by the Federalist:
Delete"Federal investigators interviewed more than 200 people and analyzed cellphone audio and video, the law enforcement officials said. Officer Wilson’s gun, clothing and other evidence were analyzed at the F.B.I.’s laboratory in Quantico, Va. Though the local authorities and Mr. Brown’s family conducted autopsies, Mr. Holder ordered a separate autopsy, which was conducted by pathologists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s office at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the officials said.
The federal investigation did not uncover any facts that differed significantly from the evidence made public by the authorities in Missouri late last year, the law enforcement officials said. To bring federal civil rights charges, the Justice Department would have needed to prove that Officer Wilson had intended to violate Mr. Brown’s rights when he opened fire, and that he had done so willfully — meaning he knew that it was wrong to fire but did so anyway."
I don't agree that Brown was "murdered", the facts of the case were backed up by the preponderance of evidence. Much like many after the Trayvon Martin verdict...keep hoping that your desired outcome will come to fruition.
Multiple BLACK witnesses corroborated Wilson's version of the story. As did the forensics. The sad fact here is that Brown was a thug who robbed a convenience store, punched a cop in the face, and tried to take his weapon and that stories such as this never seem to end well unfortunately.
DeleteWho? We do know there was one witness who lied. Turns out she wasn't even there.
DeleteWitness 10 and witness 14. And as far as liars, you just might want to take a look at Mr. Brown's sidekick. That asshole was impeached as well.
DeleteI don't see that these witnesses corroborated Wilson's version of the story. IMO they corroborated that of his "sidekick"... or were from someone (Witness 10) who seems unsure what exactly happened (as far as Brown's hands being up goes).
DeleteWitness 10 (quote)... "He turned around and he did some type of movement. I never seen him put his hands up... I can't recall the movement he did" (if he unsure of the movement how can he be positive Brown didn't put his hands up?).
Witness 14 (quote)... "He was defenseless, hands up"...
Also, Witness 12 (quote)... "He probably had his hands up".
(Source for above quotes).
And remember Witness 40 lied and was never even there! (source).
Why is Dorian Johnson an "asshole" for relating his version of events as he recalls them? I think Dorian Johnson's version is likely the most accurate.
And how do you know Witness 10 and 14 were Black? As far as I know neither sex nor race was disclosed... although The Smoking Gun did find out who witness 40 was (a racist White woman).
Per the Washington Post - http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/22/report-at-least-seven-black-witnesses-have-corroborated-darren-wilsons-testimony-before-the-ferguson-grand-jury/
DeleteAnd this is devastating, too - http://thepunditpress.com/2014/08/22/autopsy-officer-wilson-would-have-had-to-be-over-12-feet-tall-to-corroborate-pro-brown-witnesses/
DeleteFrom the WP article Will (indirectly) linked to... The grand jury proceedings are unusual. Typically in a grand jury case, the lead investigator will provide an overview of his findings and perhaps one or two witnesses will testify.
DeleteHowever, McCulloch decided from the beginning that the grand jury in this case would sort through all the evidence. And, instead of telling grand jury members what charges they believe Wilson should face, prosecutors are involving the grand jury as co-investigators.
Why not conduct the GJ proceedings properly? BM rigged it so he got the outcome he wanted. Bottom line is DW did not need to shoot an unarmed person so many times. If the unarmed MB was moving toward him - why the hell didn't he move away? We're talking about someone who was already wounded! But DW was so scarred of an unarmed and wounded Black "thug" that he had to kill him?
George Zimmerman is another murderer with an absurd story that doesn't pass the laugh test.
ReplyDeleteI have zero doubt that you think that. The evidence presented, however....shows otherwise.
DeleteCI: Remember, that is the same guy who was kicked off a blog for calling the blog host a "murderer" for taking a hunting trip.. He flings the word all over with no regard whatsoever to its meaning. As here, as there is no evidence of any murder by George Zimmerman, and the qualified individuals who have actual authority in these matters, and the most knowledge, have resoundingly rejected any such claims.
DeleteHowever, armchair attorneys who get all their facts from the fictional ravings of on-line editorials (or from other armchair attorneys who have law degrees but no experience or standing in such matters), and who have no respect for the law or legal authority, are free to disagree. And gnash in the outer darkness, and get laughed at.
"Remember, that is the same guy who was kicked off a blog for calling the blog host a "murderer" for taking a hunting trip".
DeleteI've never seen CI comment on that blog, so I doubt he could remember something he never read (unless he reads but does not comment there). That is if what you are describing actually happened, which it did not. In any case, I admitted I was being intentionally hyperbolic. I don't have a lot of respect for hunters... At least the ones that hunt around where I live. I live next to a nature preserve and am constantly encountering the bodies of dead animals discarded by hunters. It is disrespectful to life IMO. If you're going to kill an animal - take responsibility for it! Don't leave it behind so others can't enjoy the area due to rotting corpses littering up the place. BTW, I did state that my hyperbolic use of the word "murder" did not apply to that blog host. You must have read that, so do not understand why you continue to misrepresent me.
As for Zimmerman being a murderer, I do realize he was not convicted. I only state my opinion. Although I do strongly believe he is. I hope that clears things up... Although perhaps I should say I wish it would, as it likely will not.
Juries are made up of ordinary people, BTW. There is no such thing as a professional jourist. A jurist is as capable of being wrong as anyone. Lawyers are qualified in matters of the law (and here, as with all cases we had lawyers arguing both sides). Are the lawyers who argued on the losing side no longer qualified? You only say those who decided were qualified (when they were not) because you agree with the decision. If you had respect for the law you'd admit this, instead of gnashing about ordinary citizens who get selected for jury duty being "qualified" when they never studied the law.
DeleteWell, it's good to see you lauding Holder's DoJ. There wasn't much they could do, though. The case was so muddied up by the cops and the prosecutor, there was no way to see it through. I think they did it to save the cops life, so I kind of understand it. Whatever happened that night, though, this ex-cop is going to have to start his life over somewhere as someone else looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, and the real lessons here remain lost to all but those folks back in places like Ferguson and some nervous guy with a new name out there who should never have been working in that neighborhood in the first place.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
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DeleteYes, Thanks to libtards like yourself, decent people have to hide because they did something so despicable as defend themselves against an LBJ created thug so dumb and arrogant as to think they can take down an armed police officer with their bare hands.
DeleteWhy don't you people write letters to your democrat masters instead pleading with them to stop paying whores to pop kids out loike pieces of toast into zero opportunity, drug and crime infested environments with no father in the home? Then you might be doing something constructive.
Then write letters to obama, holder, sharpton and jackson, asking those assholes when they are going to come out in a major way and apologize for jumping to the conclusion that this police officer was at fault ?
Then write letters to Mike Brown's DEADBEAT mother and father and ask them to apologize to Darren Wilson for creating such a monster?
Then you'll be on your way to doing something constructive.
Oh, so you think LBJ created that, huh? It had nothing at all to do with black people migrating out of the racist, backwards, conservative South run by white thugs, into old big Northern Cities, cities then abandoned by whites to the burbs and industry to the Third F'n world?
DeleteYou're backwards.
JMJ
If one must mention "thugs", one can mention the union thugs which forced the industry Jersey mentions to leave the Rust Belt to go to the Third World, or even the South.
DeleteGreedy, lazy, indolent bastards who think that it is sustainable to work on the asssembly line drunk, doing a bad job making the worst cars in the country, and be paid more than $60 an hour for it.
And the race riots (which took place prior to the job exodus and at a time when black unemployment in Detroit was only around 3%) didn't help, either.
DeleteDetroit's left wing, non-white mayor, explicitly asked whites to leave.
DeleteThere's a real racist thug.
Detroit's left wing, non-white mayor, explicitly asked whites to leave.
DeleteThere's a real racist thug.
Dmarks, agreed. Unions have become cancers to the American way, Teachers, UAW, Fire and Police. And yeah - need to know what effect democrats have on an economy?, just look at all the places they've been in charge of for many decades. In the end blame the voters.
DeleteBack when the workforce was 1/3rd unionized, this country had the fastest growing middle-class in history, meanwhile the GI Bill elevated millions, a brand-spankin' new interstate highway system was laid throughout the country, schools sprang up all over the place.
DeleteWhat does conservatism have to offer America? Nothing. Nothing but fear and selfishness and unpleasantness.
"Agreed." :|
JMJ
The same era, Jersey, when Jim Crow reigned and there were a lot of other wrongs. Along with unions bullying workers (a thuggish "unpleasantness" you like. But you of course cherry pick, not realizing that unions robbing workers and blacks being denied equal rights are all problems of the super powerful State. Something liberals revel in. Conservatives a little less so, and libertarians want to get to the root of.
DeleteActually, that is the era the brought an end to Jim Crow.
DeleteProgress, dmarks, progress.
JMJ
Jersey: I was thinking of the 1950s. If you mean the 1960s, that's the era when the Left brought us the Vietnam War.
DeleteAs for progress, the decline in unionization is indeed progress. Fewer workers robbed by thugs forcing them to pay campaign contributions.
And who was the architect of Jim Crow but the "progressive", Woodrow Wilson (segregated the federal work force and the army).
DeleteIs dmarks referring to Coleman Young? If so, I read that he confronted White people about their racism and that he "sought equality and fairness for blacks in government and in business". I couldn't find any quotes in which he "explicitly asked whites to leave".
DeleteAs for Wilson, he was for progress for Whites. But the Democrats progressed under Johnson and expanded rights for African Americans. Such is the history of the Democratic Party. The Republicans, on the other had, regressed with Nixon's Southern Strategy (a strategy they are still following today).
Unionization represents democracy in the workplace. If we were progressing on that front unionization would be up, not down. The regressives are winning that war. Sadly.
Dervish, coerced unionization by means of intimidation and perfidy are the very opposite of democracy.
DeleteProtecting the right of private employers to offer reasonable, free market wages and benefits....and protecting the private employees choice to accept, bargain or take his labor elsewhere....IS the definition of market democracy.
C.I.: Welcome to having to state the obvious all the time. It will get stale quickly.
Deletedmarks, why not just face the fact that the country was actually better off, regardless of times, when taxes were more progressive, workers had more representation, and the government invested heavily in education, home ownership, and infrastructure?
DeleteYou cons have no idea how dumb liberals think you are. If for once you could just admit just one fact just once, then maybe they'd take you seriously again.
JMJ
What "facts"? Government spending domestically is out of control now. And forced unionization diminishes workers' voices, and is not "representation" .
DeleteNever mind.
DeleteJMJ
Your vague generalizations will come back and bite you, Jersey....
DeleteThe federal government investing heavily in education? Well, if we look at higher education ... and no that is not cherry-picking as it is the first thing I looked for, you will see that this actually peaked during the Reagan years, not the 1960s.
On matters like this, there is indeed a problem, to quote two words from one of your sentences, with "dumb liberals" who get stars in their eyes about the golden era of the 1950s and 1960s.
Also, if you rolled back the clock to the 1960s, you would undo [PBS] the reduction in black poverty and growth in the black middle class that has happened since then. You'd reverse a lot of progress to go back to your paradise years, Jersey.
Yes, so areas in which there is no "fact" to face about the country being better off in that era.
This one claim of yours deserves particular attention: "home ownership,", which the government spent so much on back in the 1960s and not recently. The opposite is true. The government has spent hundreds of billions in recent years subsidizing private home ownership, through the corrupt and unnecessary Fannie, Freddie, and other organizations. The amount spent on this is astronomical, and many magnitudes larger than what the government spent on this sector in the 1960s.
I'm glad workers have more representation now, though,. That is an area of undeniable improvement. With more and more states instituting "right to work", workers can join with unions if it meets their interest, or not, as per their choice and interest. As it should be.
That would be so bad if unions didn't routinely force people to join and pay dues... thus vastly inflating their power and wealth. And because workers lose the choice of quitting the union, the union... by this time mostly a political lobby fundraising scheme.. isn't very accountable to the workers at all.
ReplyDeleteThat would be so bad if unions didn't routinely force people to join and pay dues... thus vastly inflating their power and wealth. And because workers lose the choice of quitting the union, the union... by this time mostly a political lobby fundraising scheme.. isn't very accountable to the workers at all.
ReplyDeleteJersey's got his history screwed up.
ReplyDeleteBlack people migrated north and did quite well for themselves... Until government decided to 'help' them with the war on poverty in the late 60's. From there you can trace the decline.
So, tell us again how slavery did this?
Correct - http://paranoiacstoogetalk.blogspot.com/2013/11/depending-upon.html
DeleteSilver: Don''t forget the unions strongly encouraging flight of American industrial jobs.
DeleteActually, blaming the war on poverty is incorrect...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.w-dervish.blogspot.com/2013/11/libertarian-bs-about-great-society.html