Oscar grant’s death should serve as a wake up call to everyone to stand up for what is right, fair and decent!!!!

WITHOUT JUSTICE, THERE CAN BE NO PEACE

I end with a quote from the great Martin Luther King, Jr. :

“Injustice anywhere Is a threat to justice everywhere”

I know better, and I know where that kind of power leads, and I know why its wrong, but its still there, you know?

Yes, I know. Despite knowing better, I think the same things, for example, whenever John Lennon’s murderer comes for parole every two fucking years. :/

They nullified in the case of former Marine Sgt. and former police officer in my city Jose Nazario, the first former military person to be prosecuted in civilian court (federal) for war crimes. They basically said, “not guilty” and we support our military and can’t question what they do. The case was filed too quickly and wasn’t strong. There were no bodies found so no remote possibility of presenting the case as involving humans at all.

He’s trying to get his job back and is in background now. The NCIS wants to sit in on his polygraph so whether or not that discourages him from proceeding, I don’t know.

I believe in jury nullification personally, but it’s disgusting when nullification is allowed to happen in such a blatantly lopsided manner.

Personally I blame the voi dire process for garbage like that. Its next to impossible to get an educated or critical jury in this country, and a lot of judges and prosecutors set up perjury traps for potential nullifiers. The end result is that we get juries packed with people who are either too stupid to get out of jury duty, who have nothing better to do with their time, or who like the idea of getting to judge their fellows.

“Now it’s up to the prosecution to do their job, and to the question of whether or not a jury will execute a white police officer for killing a black man who posed no threat whatsoever. Here’s to hoping.

Sorry for the confusion. The fact that a lot of the stories I’ve read have expressed outrage over the fact that the cop in question faces no chance of suffering the same fate he inflicted probably had something to do with my misreading too, as does the fact that in most jurisdictions killing a cop for any reason is automatically a capital offense and virtually nowhere is the opposite true. So yeah, full disclosure of my biases and all that. At this point I just hope they don’t give Mehserle administrative segregation or protective custody if he’s convicted.

The jury was truly worried that a conviction (and possibly prison sentence) against Deputy Ivory Webb would chill recruitment into law enforcement and that anarchy would take over the streets as a result.

And in other cases (one in particular related to medical marijuana comes to mind), juries who have refused to convict on these sorts of grounds, grounds that go beyond simply “ruling on the facts of the case,” entire juries have been held in contempt and even jailed. Gee, I wonder why the judge didn’t do so this time, even though juries are not technically supposed to weigh in on the justness or applicability of the law? I believe in jury nullification personally, but it’s disgusting when nullification is allowed to happen in such a blatantly lopsided manner.

The jury will make an announcement probably through the foreperson that if they convicted him of murder, no one would want to go into law enforcement.

Because it would be a huge loss to our law enforcement to not have those folks who worry that in an attempt to commit an act of violence against someone in custody for no reason they might pull the wrong weapon and kill said guy on accident. Of course, the sad thing is that you’re probably right.

I quoted that from a jury member in the Elio Carrion attempted murder case. The deputy in that case was videotaped shooting Carrion, while Carrion was obeying his verbal commands. The jury was truly worried that a conviction (and possibly prison sentence) against Deputy Ivory Webb would chill recruitment into law enforcement and that anarchy would take over the streets as a result. The feds won’t commit to announcing if they will file civil rights charges in this case (they won’t) and the civil case just got a tentative trial date. Webb was fired and the sheriff said he didn’t think he would want his job but that was before Webb said he would be interested on the Today show. I saw Webb while walking near the administrative headquarters for our city and county LE agencies. I wondered if he was applying for jobs at either one or both.

I saw one shooting death trial and after that one, I’m even more doubtful that a murder conviction is even possible. In that case, the evidence for first degree was actually quite strong (no video but videos aren’t really effective at getting convictions at all) but the jury went with involuntary manslaughter on some weak defensive argument. They just so wanted to believe no LE officer would commit first degree murder. It had to be an accident.