Friday, November 28, 2014

1415 A Murder in Ferguson, Missouri

Let’s get a few little things out of the way first.


--Peaceful protests do no harm but often little good.


--The only beneficiaries of a riot are the rebuilding companies and the bill collectors.


--Then, there’s the old lawyer joke: “Given the will, any district attorney can indict a ham sandwich.”


--Michael Brown, 18, was not the kind of guy you’d ask to watch your handbag when you had to use the restroom in the diner.


--Darren Wilson, 28, probably could be trusted to watch the handbag.  But at a traffic stop, you’d want to make sure the dash cam in his patrol car was running and in focus.


--Prosecutor Robert McCulloch has held that job since 1991 and is the son of a St. Louis police officer killed in the line of duty.  McCulloch is known locally as “the policeman’s best friend.”


--McCullough also is president of a group called “Backstoppers.”  It makes contributions to police, fire, EMS workers killed or injured in the line of duty.  According to published reports, Backstoppers benefitted from the sale of “Support Darren Wilson” t-shirts with proceeds going to his defense.  Backstoppers denies this.


Too bad Wilson isn’t a ham sandwich.  Because if he were, he’d be where he belongs which is behind bars.


It’s been said in some quarters that McCullough is what happens when you elect the village idiot.  This of course is untrue.  McCullough is tainted, but his errors of omission in this case were not bumbling or bungling. They were clever. They were devious.


Did the grand jury ever hear that Brown was not only an unsavory thug who may have beaten the owner of a small convenience store while stealing smokes, but was unarmed?  Apparently not.


They got a collective belly full of the unsavory thug and robber part, alright.  But not the unarmed part.  They may have known that anyway because the evil media covered it pretty thoroughly considering the story is about an 18 year old dead black kid.  But they never heard it out of an official mouth.


McCullough lobbed his hamwich of conflicting witness testimony on the table and said, in effect, “sort this stuff out for yourselves ladies and gentlemen. Get back to me when you have a decision.”


A typically enthusiastic prosecutor would have let the jurors know he wanted to put gunslinger Wilson on trial for pulling the trigger 12 -- count ‘em 12 -- times.


He would have thundered and rumbled and instilled his enthusiasm in the grand jurors who surely would have voted for an indictment.


Question: You ever buy a bag of white rice and find some stray grains of brown or black rice in it?  It happens.  This is not just about rice.  It’s also is a graphic description of the Ferguson police department. And of a grand jury that needed seven votes among the ten members to hand up a decision.  The grand jury was seven white people and three black.


Not everyone always votes on color lines. But such is the separation of majority blacks and minority whites in this town that it can almost be guaranteed in a case like this.


Do you think McCullough is going to convene a second grand jury?  And before you bleat about double jeopardy, that applies only if there’s a guilty verdict in a formal charge or an un-coerced confession which is the same thing as a conviction if it happens before or during a trial.


No indictment means no charge which means no trial and no verdict, hence no double jeopardy. But the prosecutor has to want a second bite. Are you willing to hold your breath until this one does?


In any event, with Michael the evil Giant out of the way, you don’t have to be as careful of where you leave your purse … if you can find a place to set it down amid the physical and emotional ruin that once was Ferguson, Missouri.
---


And now, the Wessays™ Guide to things you can say if you agree with the grand jury decision and don’t want to be … um … mistaken for a racist:


- “A crime is a crime and the color doesn’t matter.”  --Talk show guest.


- “(Michael Brown) looked like a demon.”  -- Police officer Darren Wilson.


- “We need to tackle criminal justice reform.”
-- Barack Obama.


- “This (riot) was … a strategic plan…” -- Rush
Limbaugh.


- (The autopsy report showed) “...Michael Brown had marijuana in his system when he died.” --Newsmax.com.


- “...this isn’t  a metaphor for police brutality or race repression or anything else, and never was. Aided and abetted by a compliant national media, the Ferguson protestors (sic) spun a dishonest or misinformed version of what happened.” -- Politico quoted by the National Review.


-“The riotous situation in Ferguson… has been hijacked by the media and diluted the real issue…”
--Former NYC Police Commissioner Bernard Kerick on the Steve Malzberg radio show, quoted by Newsmax.


-”That was one gutsy grand jury.” -- NYPost Editorial 11/25/14.


-”If Brown had surrendered, he’d be alive today.” -- too many sources to single out one.”


I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2014

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