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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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http://crooksandliars.com/2014/11/bob-mcculloch-lying-slimy-arrogant-tool
Bob McCulloch Is A Lying, Slimy, Arrogant Tool Who Gave A Masterful PR Performance
By Susie Madrak November 25, 2014 6:00 am -
Even inexperienced reporters should know what a crock this grand jury was.
1 hour ago by John Amato
That whole Ferguson grand jury charade last night was utter and illegal bullshit. You know why? Because the only purpose of a grand jury is to see if there's a prima facie case -- that is, does enough evidence on its face exist to bring charges? Of course it did.
What the corrupt, smug and arrogant St. Louis prosecutor did was appoint himself judge and held an illegal trial in the grand jury room. This was a public relations event to add a veneer of legality to letting Darren Wilson off the hook.
And what he did was present the "facts" of the case to a captive audience last night on national television. Oh, you see, it was the physical evidence! Blah blah blah.
But it wasn't the physical evidence. You know why? Because in a real trial (which is what would have happened if the grand jury did its job and indicted Darren Wilson), the adversarial judicial system would have allowed for rebuttals of every single piece of physical evidence -- hell, all the evidence.
So Bob McCulloch artfully created the illusion of a fair trial -- while doing exactly the opposite. Because there was no indictment, and no adversarial process. He stage-managed the whole very farce.
And he's done it before:
Nasheed cited McCulloch’s investigation into the actions of two undercover drug detectives who killed a suspect and his passenger in a car on the parking lot of the Jack in the Box restaurant in Berkeley in 2000.
Grand jury proceedings are secret. McCulloch, in telling the public what the grand jury had found, repeatedly insisted that “every witness” had testified that the two detectives fired to defend themselves after the suspect tried to run them over with his car.
The Post-Dispatch reviewed the previously secret grand jury tapes and found that McCulloch’s public statements were untrue.
Only three of the 13 detectives who testified said the suspect’s car had moved forward, in the direction of the two officers who shot him and his passenger. Two of those were the shooters themselves. The third was a detective who McCulloch later said he considered charging with perjury because his account was so at odds with the facts.
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Contrary to McCulloch’s public statements, the grand jury tapes showed that four other detectives testified that they never saw the suspect’s car travel toward the officers.
McCulloch never brought independent evidence before the grand jury to sort out who was right.
Nor did he request the testimony of a nationally noted collision expert who investigated the case for the Justice Department. He determined that the suspect’s car had always been in reverse — added proof that it did not move toward the detectives.
He's a very liar, the media seems to be too incompetent to figure out what's going on, and cops got the green light to keep killing people.
But all they'll talk about today is people rioting and setting fire. Well, when the people who are supposed to be stewards of law and order make their own rules, what |
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Tue Nov 25, 2014 10:16 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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| The video is from MSNBC the Lawrence O'Donnel interview with legal analyst Lisa Bloom. |
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Tue Nov 25, 2014 10:20 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/25/1347320/-The-questions-no-one-asked-St-Louis-prosecutor-Bob-McCulloch?detail=facebook
Daily Kos staff
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Tue Nov 25, 2014 at 05:33 AM PST.
The questions no one asked St. Louis prosecutor, Bob McCulloch
by
Mark Sumner
from NBC News
Following his long public hand washing and cheerful mocking of witnesses, St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch stood by for a few minutes of questioning. It was a frustratingly brief exchange, during which McCulloch was three times asked the one question that McCulloch had already said he could not answer: what was the actual vote count on the charges before the grand jury.
Thank you, "professional reporters" for wasting this unique opportunity to clear up a few matters.
But there are a few things they could have asked McCulloch. Things that needed to be said in front of a national audience...
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First, instead of asking McCulloch the vote breakdown, they might have asked him this:
Question: how many charges was the jury asked to consider, and how many would have needed to vote against any charge to keep it from becoming a "true bill" of indictment?
Answer: infinite, and four
McCulloch gave the jury no instruction on what charges they should consider. Many sources have said that the jury could have considered first degree murder, second degree murder or various levels of manslaughter. True enough. They might have also considered illegal discharge of a firearm. Or assault. Or... more or less anything.
On any charge considered, it would have taken nine votes to bring an indictment. We've been given the racial breakdown of the jury, which certainly suggests one answer to "how did they come to this conclusion," but it's what we'll never be told that's the real clue. With nine white jurors, it's easy to imagine that Wilson might have been protected by a handful of jurors who held onto a racist view of events. However, because of the way things were presented to the jury, confusion on any particular vote may have been generated by people pulling for a greater charge. We can't know, because the exact votes on any charge will never be released. And it's clear that, despite McCulloch's smirking protests about being "fair" this process was anything but normal.
Giving the grand jury no instruction is equivalent to throwing them into the deep end of the pool with no swimming lessons. They had to work it out for themselves. It's not unusual for the prosecutor to not suggest a specific charge, but it's almost unprecedented for the prosecutor to dump all the evidence on the jury and leave them to figure it out for themselves. Almost, unprecedented, but not quite...
Question: how many police officers have been indicted in shooting incidents since Bob McCulloch became prosecutor way back in 1991?
Answer: none
McCulloch is the son of a police officer who was shot in the line of duty. In his twenty-four years as prosecutor, he has never recommended charges against any police officer. How did that happen? It happened in large part because these cases are not handled like other cases.
Question: Had this been a completely different sort of incident, one in which an officer had been killed, would you have instructed the jury in the same way?
Answer: oh, hell no.
In the majority of incidents—make that every other type of incident— McCulloch actively speaks with the jury, directing them in what to look for, discussing possible charges, clearing up issues, actively seeking an indictment. He didn't do that in this case.
In this case, the grand jury was given a mountain of evidence, and next to no help in how they should deal with it. It's exactly how McCulloch would not handle any other case. This "hands off" attitude wasn't just unusual, it's precisely a negation of what a prosecutor is asked to do. McCulloch didn't prosecute. This case was given very special treatment, treatment designed to promote the sort of confusion that leads to "no true bill."
The whole presentation to the grand jury was engineered not only to generate this outcome, but to do so in a way that uses the grand jury process to shield the true nature of what happened. It's a system that McCulloch knows well.
Another very good question that I forgot until it came up in comments: how is it that what the grand jury was told about Wilson's knowledge of the incident at the store involving cigars is completely at odds with the public testimony of the Ferguson police chief two days after the incident? How is it that Wilson having "made" Brown as a suspect in a robbery, called for backup, but that call is not recorded in any of the released transcripts of police communications? That whole section of McCulloch's statement, covering Wilson's extremely unusual testimony before the grand jury, is completely at odds with everything we were told for the last four months. |
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Tue Nov 25, 2014 10:29 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/fanciful-and-not-credible-cnn-legal-analyst-destroys-darren-wilsons-testimony/
‘Fanciful and not credible’: CNN legal analyst destroys Darren Wilson’s testimony
David Edwards
25 Nov 2014 at 11:00 ET
CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin ripped St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch for asking Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson “softball” questions during the cross examination of his testimony, which she called “fanciful and not credible.”
On Monday, McCulloch had released all of the evidence provided to the grand jury that eventually decided not to indict Wilson for shooting unarmed teen Michael Brown. The evidence included Wilson’s testimony to the grand jury that Brown looked “like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.”
“When I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan,” Wilson said. “That’s just how big he felt and how small I felt just from grasping his arm.”
But Hostin said the claim that Brown attacked Wilson inside of the police car, and tried to fire his service weapon did not make sense to her.
“It appeared to be… very fanciful,” Hostin said. “When a prosecutor has a prospective target, a suspect, a defendant — a prospective defendant — inside of the grand jury, that’s the prosecutor’s chance to cross-examine that person. These prosecutors treated Darren Wilson with such kid gloves.”
“Their questions were all softballs, he wasn’t challenged, he wasn’t pressed,” she continued. “It was just unbelievable to me the way they treated him in front of that grand jury.”
Hostin pointed out that Wilson was never required to provide a statement to the police, meaning he had a month to think about his testimony, and prosecutors had nothing to compare it to.
“He talks about Michael Brown reaching into his waistband,” the CNN analyst noted. “Yet when one of the grand jurors asked him whether or not Michael Brown had a gun, he says, ‘I didn’t really think about that.’”
“He talks about this aggression from the very beginning, which seems odd,” Hostin pointed out. “He talks about being hit so forcefully two time he thought the next hit would be fatal. Yet you look at his injuries, they don’t seem to be consistent with someone 6-foot-6, 300 pounds punching you with full force.”
“There are just so many discrepancies with his testimony.”
CNN contributor Mark O’Mara, who represented George Zimmerman after he shot Trayvon Martin, argued that the forensic evidence was more important than discrepancies in Wilson’s testimony.
“The most compelling evidence, that Mike Brown was running away, and at one point, turned around and came back 25 feet,” O’Mara remarked. “Whether that was a charge, whether it was a maneuver, whether it was a walk, whether it was a run is open for conjecture… that’s why Mike Brown is dead.”
Hostin noted that none of the witnesses could corroborate Wilson’s testimony that he warned Brown twice to lay down on the ground.
“The other witnesses that came forward said that they didn’t hear him say that,” she said. “So again, I found his testimony to have not been tested by the prosecutor, which is highly unusual. He wasn’t cross-examined, he was treated with kid gloves in front of the grand jury. And I found his testimony to be fanciful and not credible.”
Watch the video below from CNN, broadcast Nov. 25, 2014. |
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Tue Nov 25, 2014 11:11 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/st-louis-prosecutor-mcculloch-roasted-online-for-indicting-everybody-but-darren-wilson/
St. Louis prosecutor McCulloch roasted online for indicting everybody but Darren Wilson
Arturo Garcia
24 Nov 2014 at 22:48 ET
St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch (D) was criticized as much on Monday night for the decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson as for his 20-minute statement leading up to it.
Instead of immediately announcing that Wilson would not be prosecuted for shooting and killing 18-year-old Michael Brown this past August, McCulloch opened by blaming social media and the media in general for supposedly pushing a distorted narrative of the shooting.
The Huffington Post called McCulloch’s statement “bizarre,” while CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin described it as an “extended whine” that was “completely inappropriate.”
Five Thirty Eight reported that the grand jury’s decision was a statistical rarity; out of 162,000 federal cases in 2010, grand juries opted not to indict in just 11 instances.
McCulloch was also blasted online even before he finished his remarks: |
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Tue Nov 25, 2014 11:17 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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| McCulloch claimed the AG investigation paralleled his and implied they agreed. The AG responded by making a statement their investigation was independent. |
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Wed Nov 26, 2014 8:37 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/11/28/prosecutor-who-let-darren-wilson-slide-is-charging-a-black-cop-for-hitting-a-suspects-hand/
Author: Jameson Parker November 28, 2014 1:40 pm
A lot has been said about the shoddy way St. Louis prosecutor Bob McCullough handled his obligations to see justice done in the case of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shooting unarmed teenager Michael Brown. Many reporters and law experts have noted how McCulloch had, from the very beginning, seemed almost eager to let Darren Wilson off the hook.
That intuition seemed confirmed during McCulloch’s announcement that the grand jury – typically just a formality before going to trial – had found no reason to charge Darren Wilson of any crime. During his statement, McCulloch spent a great deal of time attacking Michael Brown (the victim), attacking the media for covering the case in a way that didn’t presume Wilson’s innocence, and discrediting any witness who had made a statement contrary to Wilson’s own account of what happened. It was a dog and pony show, and everyone from the National Bar Association to Nancy Grace knew it.
Defenders of McCulloch cite the fact that, right or wrong, police officers are almost impossible to indict or convict. Their jobs put them in situations where they need to make quick judgments and they are given wide leeway in performing in that capacity. Darren Wilson, so the thinking goes, should be given the same benefit of the doubt that any other cop would get, despite the national attention.
Except that McCulloch just agreed to go forward with the criminal charges against another cop, this one black, who is accused of hitting a suspect on the hand with his baton during an arrest. CBS News reports:
A 13-year veteran of the St. Louis County Police Department is charged with felony assault after striking a MetroLink passenger on the hand with his expandable baton following an argument.
The county Prosecuting Attorney’s Office on Friday charged 44-year-old Dawon Gore of Ferguson with second-degree assault. He was jailed on a $3,500, cash-only bond.
While it appears that if the charges are accurate, Gore does deserve to be held accountable for his assault on a suspect, his crime seems leagues below that of which Wilson stands accused. An officer hitting a commuter on the hand is abuse, but murdering an unarmed kid in broad daylight is on another level. Gore will get to have his day in court, while Wilson goes from highly publicized interviews with all the major networks pretending he is the victim in all of this.
It highlights the frustrating lack of justice being given to the friends and family of Michael Brown. The circumstances surrounding Brown’s death are still very muddled. The grand jury evidence gives us little in the way of answers. There are witnesses who stand by statements that contradict Wilson’s account. There is good reason to believe at least some of what Wilson said happened, may not have happened. There is a ton of circumstantial evidence that cries out to be further analyzed.
Vox writer Ezra Klein summed it up brilliantly:
But on Monday night, St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch released the evidence given to the grand jury, including the interview police did with Wilson in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. And so we got to read, for the first time, Wilson’s full, immediate account of his altercation with Brown.
And it is unbelievable.
I mean that in the literal sense of the term: “difficult or impossible to believe.” But I want to be clear here. I’m not saying Wilson is lying. I’m not saying his testimony is false. I am saying that the events, as he describes them, are simply bizarre. His story is difficult to believe.
So many questions. None of them answered. All of these things deserve to be scrutinized in a court, with Wilson faced with a jury of his peers. He may be innocent, but to not even bother to find out is criminal in and of itself. If a man getting hit on the hand is afforded the full power of this nation’s laws, surely a dead teenager does as well. |
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Fri Nov 28, 2014 11:33 pm |
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