So by now I'm sure all of you know the names Michael Brown and Officer Darren Wilson.
For those who dont, first get out from under your damn rock, second heres a quick recap:
Michael Brown was an unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed by Officer Wilson. Wilson claims the killing was self defense.
Wilson was arrested, however the Grand Jury refused to return an indictment.
Now its worth nothing the rate of indictments is something like 99.9%, so failing to get one is extremely rare.
Unless of course you are dealing with the worlds most corrupt prosecutor.
Enter a name most of you likely dont know: Bob McCulloch, the Prosecutor in the Michael Brown case.
Key point here: As the Prosecutor he is SUPPOSED to want Officer Wilson put in jail for Brown's murder.
At least if he was doing his job. It turns out, he was more than happy not to do his job in this case.
Ok so first off a brief explanation of what the Grand Jury is and isnt.
A Grand Jury IS NOT supposed to decide guilt or innocence. The only thing a Grand Jury is supposed to do is decide if the prosecutors case sounds plausible (which does not mean that is was probable or what actually happened) . In fact the Defense doesnt even play a role at a Grand Jury, they dont even show up.
Which is the reason the indictment rate is so freaking high.
Basically a Grand Jury is like deciding to go to the doctors office because you think you might be sick. You see signs you think make it likely you are sick, and so you go see a doctor, without really considering the signs you arnt sick before going
Its only after the Indictment that the trial process most of us know from "Law and Order" or being called to jury duty begins. Thats when a trial jury is sworn in, both sides present their cases and guilt or innocence is determined.
To continue the previous comparison, the trial is would be akin to the doctor examining you to decide if you really are sick, or if their is another explanation for what you thought were your symptoms.
Oh one other thing, that may wind up being very important. The Consistutional protection against double jeopardy (that is being tried twice for the same crime) doesnt attach until your liberty is actually at risk, which its not in a Grand Jury because Grand Jury's arnt supposed to determine gulit or innocence.
So yea, this SHOULD have been a slam dunk indictment (which again IS NOT a conviction or sign of guilt). Dead guy was unarmed. Cop had a gun, shot the dead guy. DONE. Indictment reached lets go to trial.
But apparently McCulloch,just couldnt be fucked to do his job this time.
For starters he allowed Officer Wilson to testify to the Grand Jury for several hours. So basically the Defendant got to testify in part of the trial in which the defendant is supposed to play no role.
Actually McCulloch presented ALL the defenses evidence. Despite the fact that is expressly not what your supposed to do in front of the Grand Jury.
Futhermore, McCulloch didnt cross examine any of the defenses witnesses.....he did cross examine his OWN witnesses however.
Cross examination by the way is the really "fun" part of "law and order", where the DA basically gets the defenses witnesses to change their stories or admit they were lying ect.
Basically the whole point of cross examination is for the other side to challenge the statements made by the witness, partly to ensure they arnt LYING.
But to this jackass apparently the people he wanted to jury to distrust were his OWN witnesses, since they were the only ones he challenged.
Which is even more amazing since as it turns out one of the Defense's witnesses was in fact lying.
Specifically, witness #40, who as it turns out was the only witness who perfectly agreed with Officer Wilson's version of events.
In fact as it turns out, Witness #40 is a self admitted racist (did I mention Brown is black and the cop who shot him (Wilson) is white?) who has a history of mental disorders and has previously lied about witnessing other crimes.
In fact “This lady clearly wasn’t present when this occurred, She recounted a statement that was right out of the newspaper about Wilson’s actions, and right down the line with Wilson’s actions. Even though I’m sure she was nowhere near the place.”
By the way, the reason that sentence is italicized and in quotes......those arnt my words, those are the words of Bob McCulloch (AKA the prosecutor) a couple of days ago on the radio.
Alright but lets give him the benefit of the doubt, he found out Witness 40 was lying after the fact right?
Actually NO.
"There were people who came in and, yes, absolutely lied under oath, Some lied to the FBI. Even though they’re not under oath, that’s another potential offense — a federal offense. I thought it was much more important to present the entire picture.”
Yea, thats Bob McCulloch saying he knew at the time she was lying but thought it was more important for her to testify anyways.....without being challenged on her lies.
Oh by the way, lying under oath is called perjury. Its kinda a major crime. In fact we impeached a President for doing it.
Apparently that didn't really bother this prosecutor.
In fact as he himself said in the same interview I've been quoting:
"It's a legitimate issue. But in the situation — again, because of the manner in which we did it — we're not going to file perjury charges against anyone."
I like that justification by the way "because of the manner in which we did it" I.E. we needed the perjury to throw the case, so we wont actually go after anyone for doing this.
By the way if you think facilitating the commission of a crime (as McCulloch did) sounds like something that should be illegal.... it is.
In this particular case its called "Suborning Perjury" and is both a state and federal crime
OOPS..........................
Oh, thats not the end of McCullough's problems either.
See a Grand Jury, like most jury's is made up of normal regular people.
Which is fine and all except most normal regular people are basically stupid when it comes to knowing the ins and outs of the law.
Hence Jury Instructions. Now what Jury instructions are the explanations of the law given to the jury, designed to simply the law and explain the standard that needs to be meet to violate the relevant law.
Except in this case, McCulloch refused to accuse Wilson of a specific crime (ala, murder 2, manslaughter, ect) and left the specific crime up to the jury, and gave them only a broad guideline of what might constitute an illegal killing........in 1985.
Alright, so in 1985 a case called Tennessee vs Gardner changed the standards where a police officer could use force, and greatly reduced the officers ability to use deadly force
Specifically in the pre Gardner days it was fine for a police officer to shoot a fleeing suspect, now a days not so much.
Which is kinda critical in this case. See pre Gardner, all Wilson would have to do to not commit a crime would be to have Brown resist arrest and run, and he could shoot him......even in the back (as people are claiming happened). Now Brown would have to be presenting a deadly threat to Wilson in order for Wilson to kill him and not commit a crime.
As you can see thats a VERY big difference. And the version the Grand Jury got was the earlier pre Gardner version (which is no longer the law)
And its not like McCulloch moved heaven and earth to correct that "accident" either.
Heres the transcript on the LAST day of the Grand Jury. The Jury had received the flawed instruction on day one
“Real quick, can I interrupt about something?” interjected Alizadeh. “Previously, in the very beginning of this process, I printed out a statute for you that was, the statute in Missouri for the use of force to affect an arrest.
“So if you all want to get those out. What we have discovered, and we have been going along with this, doing our research, is that the statute in the State of Missouri does not comply with the case law.
“....And so the statute for the use of force to affect an arrest in the state of Missouri does not comply with Missouri Supreme Court, I'm sorry United States Supreme Court cases...."
“So the statute I gave you, if you want to fold that in half just so that you know don't necessarily rely on that because there is a portion of that that doesn't comply with the law".…
"I don't want you to get confused and don’t rely on that copy or that print-out of the statute that I've given you a long time ago.”
A grand juror asks, “So we’re to disregard this?”
Alizadehanswers: “It is not entirely incorrect or inaccurate, but there is something in it that’s not correct, ignore it totally.”
When a grand juror asks more questions,
Whirley chimes in, “We don’t want to get into a law class.”
Now in that quote Alizadeh is Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Kathi Alizadeh, basically McCulloch's assistant.
And its not like she cleared things up any. She didnt even tell the jury which part of the statue wasnt legal, just that the whole law is unreliable (which isnt true, it really is just the change I outlined above)
Oh and the "Whirley" who chimed in and ended the questioning of what exactly is wrong with the statue was the JUDGE.
Yea thats right, the judge stopped the Grand Jury from understanding the law.
So yea, it seem that, instead of doing his job Bob McCulloch decided instead to commit a crime, and botch the jury instructions to prevent a trial.
Or as he put it “My job is not to get an indictment, my job is to seek the truth, and seek justice and do what is right and what’s appropriate in there"
Except that actually IS his job, and per our system of justice the first step in determining truth and seeking justice for the victim IS to get an indictment if possible. Not to litigate the whole process in a forum not designed to to do that.
He had a similar horrible excuse for suborning perjury
“If I didn’t put those witnesses on, then we’d be discussing now why I didn’t put those witnesses on, even though their statements were not accurate."
Look I know their are some really fucking stupid people out there, but I think 98% of the country would need no explanation of why you dont put someone you know is lying on the stand.
So I highly doubt, no matter the outcome of the trial their would have been any conversation.
But now that we know what McCulloch did, there's still the very important question as to WHY.
And I think I have an answer: Bob McCulloch has no testicles.
Ok, so by all available evidence it appears McCulloch didnt want to indict Wilson and intentionally threw the case to ensure Wilson couldnt be found guilty because McCulloch doesnt believe he is.
Thing is, there is actually a legal and common way to do that, its called prosecutorial discretion.
Basically what that means is that at all times the prosecutor reserves the right not to prosecute.
Of course in a high profile case like this one, that kind of decision comes with a HUGE backlash, no matter if the prosecutor wants to indict or not.
It seems rather than face this backlash McNonuts....err McCulloch basically tried to fake a trial, to con the rank and file into *thinking* Wilson was found innocent, therefore it wasnt McCulloch's fault he wasnt convicted. This way the process appeared legitimate (it wasnt) giving McCulloch the way out he needed, and done at a time in the process he has basically total control of what happens, ensuring his chosen outcome.
And he might have actually gotten away with it too, except I think he got just a bit too carried away when he promised to release all the evidence he gave to the Grand Jury to the public.....presumably thinking to add more fake legitimacy to public perception.
But it was that released evidence that led people to discover Witness 40 lied, and the Jury instructions were possibly intentionally unclear.
Which resulted in the interview he did that I've been quoting from, where he tried to explain it all away as not a big deal, only to basically admit to a crime live on the radio.
But hey on the upside, maybe he can share a jail cell with Darren Wilson.
Cause yea, remember back when I was explaining a Grand Jury, and I mentioned Double Jeopardy doesnt attach until a trial jury is sworn in?
So yea, turns out the very guy McCulloch was trying to get off can still be rearrested and recharged at any time with no constitutional protection. And given what McCulloch is admitting to in terms of rigging the last one it seems thats only going to be a matter of time. (And my guess is no matter Wilsons actual guilt or innocence, this whole mess really wont have helped his case or reputation at all)
So yea, for failing to protect the guy he did all this to try to protect, it seems McCulloch may not only be the worlds most crooked prosecutor, but the worlds dumbest one as well.
