Here’s a brief OpEd piece I wrote on the trial. Please feel free to comment on Huffington too if you wish 🙂 — if you can figure out how to log in… I can’t stop thinking about the case; there’s so much to say, so many different aspects from the legal issues at trial, to all of the individual people involved, to the larger social issues…
Here’s another perspective that focuses on the legal history of officer acquittals. On a not unrelated note, here’s an interesting article about race and the death penalty. Thanks to Capital Defense Weekly for both links.
The trial was a farce.
The prior records of the victims is not written on their chests in 200 point ariel. There is no way that this should have been allowed into the trial. This judge should be disciplined and tossed off the bench for allowing testimony about the victims past. There is not the slightest reason how something these cops could not know at the time influenced their behavior…. regardless of what their past was. And it was not a violent one regardless.
Allowing this testimony is essentially saying a cop can hold prejudicial views racial profile blacks and minorities and then bring anything about the victim or arrestee as justification for their behavior.
How about the past history of the cops and how little experience they had in their jobs?
Second, the cops followed these fellas several blocks to their car which gave them ample time to pull out their badges and do a frisk. But what they did was wait till they were in a car where they could not “escape”… they were sitting ducks.
Third, these cops, if they felt that there was a crime, illegakl weapons, had ample time to call for uniformed officers or to take their badges out. If they are so concerned about people with concealed weapons they proved that THEY are the ones with concealed weapons and the fear of violence is real. They were completely incompetent.
There is no way that shooting 51 shots at unarmed men who were not involved in any criminal activity should not be sanctioned for something. It was not murder 1, but it was reckless endangerment.
I would like to learn about The Judge’s past now and see what that reveals about HIS state of mind.
The police practices are not protecting people but terrorizing them and the justice department is not doing anything to change this.
What a effing disgrace, but predictable in this racist police force and system which is all about protecting wealth and property and oppressing the poor and disenfranchised.