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F is for Fascism (Ferguson MO)

Junebug said:
Guess which one had a rap sheet that included bank robbery, theft, burglary, and felon in possession and which one had one that included driving while impaired and drug possession?

Putting that difference aside, what are the similarities in the underlying witness accounts of the events that would lead you to believe the cases were materially identical but for the races of the accuseds?
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Junebug said:
It's plainly relevant to show motive, intent, absence of mistake, etc. It's only inadmissible at a trial under rule 404 to the extent it is used to show bad character, but the rules of evidence don't apply at the grand jury phase, so we don't have to argue about rule 404. It's relevant and admissible.

So your basic position, if I understand it, is that if a white person is not indicted on a charge but a black person is indicted in that same charge, albeit for separate events that happened in separate places and weeks apart, that is prima facie evidence of discrimination, regardless of the underlying facts of the charge?

You sound like the "eyewitness" in Ferguson who testified that he knew Wilson shot Brown in the back because of where he was from.
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I wasn't even referring to the Rules of Evidence, but if you want to go there sure. The charges aren't probative to show motive, intent, or lack of mistake (unless you think a past burglary charge makes it more likely that you wouldn't be in fear for your life or have knowledge that the loud bangs going off were just the friendly police stopping by to check in on your house). Even if a judge thought there was some probative value as to showing motive or intent the judge would almost certainly keep the past convictions out under 403.


And yes that's pretty much my position. Uncovering dissimilarities between the crimes might lessen the weight of the evidence, but it's still evidence of discrimination.
 
Junebug said:
It's plainly relevant to show motive, intent, absence of mistake, etc. It's only inadmissible at a trial under rule 404 to the extent it is used to show bad character, but the rules of evidence don't apply at the grand jury phase, so we don't have to argue about rule 404. It's relevant and admissible.

So your basic position, if I understand it, is that if a white person is not indicted on a charge but a black person is indicted in that same charge, albeit for separate events that happened in separate places and weeks apart, that is prima facie evidence of discrimination, regardless of the underlying facts of the charge?

You sound like the "eyewitness" in Ferguson who testified that he knew Wilson shot Brown in the back because of where he was from.
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I don't get how any of that would make one situation less "self-defense" than the other.
 
Why the fuck are some people so driven to try to say that racism doesn't exist in American anymore? I just don't get it. Racism clearly still exists in America. That shouldn't even be debated by intelligent people.
 
Both of these people should go free. In my opinion, anyone executing a no-knock raid is asking to be shot and is committing an act that that should be considered in and of itself criminal as it makes a mockery of our system of justice.
 
knowell said:
Both of these people should go free. In my opinion, anyone executing a no-knock raid is asking to be shot and is committing an act that that should be considered in and of itself criminal as it makes a mockery of our system of justice.
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Yeah. I'm not sure how they expect somebody to act in response to several people breaking into their home.
 
Junebug said:
He's a career criminal. If he's caught with a gun again (not to mention the glass pipe), he's going away for a long, long time. That fact makes it more likely he tries to shoot his way out of the mess he's found himself in.

The white guy had some weed.

(By the way, the article was unclear on precisely what were past "charges" and what were past "convictions" as to both the black guy and the white guy. But it also said that the black guy had done time and had been charged with being a felon in possession. Thus, a reasonable assumption is that he had been convicted of at least one of the past charges, which made him a felon.)
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No. That fact makes it more likely the gun was a last resort to protect himself against intruders.
 
PhDeac said:
No. That fact makes it more likely the gun was a last resort to protect himself against intruders.
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We, as a society of humans, don't need any last resorts to protect ourselves against intruders. We need fitness equipment. We need to work out so the goons will be afraid of us.
 
Junebug said:
In your first paragraph, you seem to have missed (again) that the rules of evidence don't apply at the grand jury phase.

In your second paragraph, "Wolf! There's a wolf right over here!"
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I assumed my reference to a judge would have clued you in that I was talking about evidence at a trial. I didn't miss anything "again" since I wasn't referencing the rules of evidence to begin with.

I'm not aware of Aesop's fable in which there is actually a wolf every time the boy calls.
 
In many they didn't. In others they did.

Why wouldn't they follow that one when going into the home of someone they believe to be dangerous (and had enough evidence to that effect that a judge agreed)?
 
Why would they do any of the ridiculous stuff we've been talking about on this thread?
 
In an awful lot of cases it's because they go to work every day scared they aren't coming home. Garner I can't explain, the officer should have been charged with something and I've said as much on this thread. But the fear is a powerful thing. It's why the comparison to an occupying force is so apt - on both ends. It's also why I say this is a community-centric issue more than anything else, and the problem won't truly be fixed until we address the socioeconomic issues that have caused some of our communities to reach the point that they have.

It's also why I can say confidently that they did say who they were and that they had a warrant.
 
The Smoking Gun with a damming profile of one of the Ferguson grand jury witnesses who corroborated Wilson's story.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/unmasking-Ferguson-witness-40-496236

DECEMBER 15--The grand jury witness who testified that she saw Michael Brown pummel a cop before charging at him “like a football player, head down,” is a troubled, bipolar Missouri woman with a criminal past who has a history of making racist remarks and once insinuated herself into another high-profile St. Louis criminal case with claims that police eventually dismissed as a “complete fabrication,” The Smoking Gun has learned.

...

While the “hands-up” account of Dorian Johnson is often cited by those who demanded Wilson’s indictment, “Witness 40”’s testimony about seeing Brown batter Wilson and then rush the cop like a defensive end has repeatedly been pointed to by Wilson supporters as directly corroborative of the officer’s version of the August 9 confrontation. The “Witness 40” testimony, as Fox News sees it, is proof that the 18-year-old Brown’s killing was justified, and that the Ferguson grand jury got it right.
However, unlike Johnson, “Witness 40”--a 45-year-old St. Louis resident named Sandra McElroy--was nowhere near Canfield Drive on the Saturday afternoon Brown was shot to death.

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Sandra McElroy did not provide police with a contemporaneous account of the Brown-Wilson confrontation, which she claimed to have watched unfold in front of her as she stood on a nearby sidewalk smoking a cigarette.
Instead, McElroy (seen at left) waited four weeks after the shooting to contact cops. By the time she gave St. Louis police a statement on September 11, a general outline of Wilson’s version of the shooting had already appeared in the press. McElroy’s account of the confrontation dovetailed with Wilson’s reported recollection of the incident.
In the weeks after Brown’s shooting--but before she contacted police--McElroy used her Facebook account to comment on the case. On August 15, she “liked’ a Facebook comment reporting that Johnson had admitted that he and Brown stole cigars before the confrontation with Wilson. On August 17, a Facebook commenter wrote that Johnson and others should be arrested for inciting riots and giving false statements to police in connection with their claims that Brown had his hands up when shot by Wilson. “The report and autopsy are in so YES they were false,” McElroy wrote of the “hands-up” claims. This appears to be an odd comment from someone who claims to have been present during the shooting. In response to the posting of a news report about a rally in support of Wilson, McElroy wrote on August 17, “Prayers, support God Bless Officer Wilson.”
After meeting with St. Louis police, McElroy continued monitoring the case and posting online. Commenting on a September 12 Riverfront Times story reporting that Ferguson city officials had yet to meet with Brown’s family, McElroy wrote, “But haven’t you heard the news, There great great great grandpa may or may not have been owned by one of our great great great grandpas 200 yrs ago. (Sarcasm).” On September 13, McElroy went on a pro-Wilson Facebook page and posted a graphic that included a photo of Brown lying dead in the street. A type overlay read, “Michael Brown already received justice. So please, stop asking for it.”

...


McElroy’s tale was met with skepticism by the investigators, who reminded her that it was a crime to lie to federal agents. When questioned about inconsistencies in her story, McElroy was resolute about her vivid, blow-by-blow description of the deadly Brown-Wilson confrontation. “I know what I seen,” she said. “I know you don’t believe me.”

When asked what she was doing in Ferguson--which is about 30 miles north of her home--McElroy explained that she was planning to “pop in” on a former high school classmate she had not seen in 26 years. Saddled with an incorrect address and no cell phone, McElroy claimed that she pulled over to smoke a cigarette and seek directions from a black man standing under a tree. In short order, the violent confrontation between Brown and Wilson purportedly played out in front of McElroy.
Despite an abundance of red flags, state prosecutors put McElroy in front of the Ferguson grand jury the day after her meeting with the federal officials. After the 12-member panel listened to a tape of her interview conducted at the FBI office, McElroy appeared and, under oath, regaled the jurors with her eyewitness claims

....









The McElroy bankruptcy filings were standard Chapter 13 fare, until the filing of aremarkable 2005 motion by the couple’s attorney.
The lawyer, Tracy Brown, sought court permission to withdraw from the bankruptcy case due to Sandra McElroy’s behavior. Brown advised the court that McElroy had frequently called her office and berated a secretary. McElroy, Brown wrote, “repeatedly used profanity when speaking with Counsel’s secretary,” adding that the diatribes “escalated to the use of racial slurs.”
Brown’s withdrawal motion was immediately approved by the federal judge handling the McElroy bankruptcy.
An examination of McElroy’s YouTube page, which she apparently shares with one of her daughters, reveals other evidence of racial animus. Next to a clip about the disappearance of a white woman who had a baby with a black man is the comment, “see what happens when you bed down with a monkey have ape babies and party with them.” A clip about the sentencing of two black women for murder is captioned, “put them monkeys in a cage.”

...


McElroy’s devotion to the truth--lacking during her appearances before the Ferguson grand jury--was also absent in early-2007 when she fabricated a bizarre story in the wake of the rescue of Shawn Hornbeck, a St. Louis boy who had been held captive for more than four years by Michael Devlin, a resident of Kirkwood, a city just outside St. Louis.
McElroy, who also lived in Kirkwood, told KMOV-TV that she had known Devlin (seen at left) for 20 years. She also claimed to have gone to the police months after the child’s October 2002 disappearance to report that she had seen Devlin with Hornbeck. The police, McElroy said, checked out her tip and determined that the boy with Devlin was not Hornbeck.
In the face of McElroy’s allegations, the Kirkwood Police Department fired back at her. Cops reported that they investigated her claim and determined that “we have no record of any contact with Mrs. McElroy in regards to Shawn Hornbeck.” The police statement concluded, “We have found that this story is a complete fabrication.”






...


When Sandra McElroy returned to the Ferguson grand jury on November 3, she brought a spiral notebook purportedly containing her handwritten journal entriesfor some dates in August, including the Saturday Michael Brown was shot.
Before testifying about the content of her notebook scribblings, McElroy admitted that she had not driven to Ferguson in search of an African-American pal she had last seen in 1988. Instead, McElroy offered a substitute explanation that was, remarkably, an even bigger lie.
McElroy, again under oath, explained to grand jurors that she was something of an amateur urban anthropologist. Every couple of weeks, McElroy testified, she likes to “go into all the African-American neighborhoods.” During these weekend sojourns--apparently conducted when her ex has the kids--McElroy said she will “go in and have coffee and I will strike up a conversation with an African-American and I will try to talk to them because I’m trying to understand more.”
As she testified, McElroy admitted that her sworn account of the Brown-Wilson confrontation was likely peppered with details of the incident she had read online. But she remained adamant about having been on Canfield Drive and seeing Brown “going after the officer like a football player” before being shot to death.
McElroy’s last two journal entries for August 9 read like an after-the-fact summary of the account she gave to federal investigators on October 22 and the Ferguson grand jury the following afternoon. It is so obvious that the notebook entries were not contemporaneous creations that investigators should have checked to see if the ink had dried.
The opening entry in McElroy’s journal on the day Brown died declared, “Well Im gonna take my random drive to Florisant. Need to understand the Black race better so I stop calling Blacks Niggers and Start calling them People.” A commendable goal, indeed.
 
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