Thursday, November 27, 2014

More Turkey For Thanksgiving

Karoli at Crooks and Liars makes this catch of Lawrence O'Donnell's analysis of the Darren Wilson grand jury proceedings, and those proceedings were nothing short of shocking.




This is how the Grand Jury arrived at their verdict. Early on in the proceedings, Assistant District Attorney Alizadeh handed out copies of a law that was ruled unconstitutional in 1985. In essence it set the bar for use of excessive force lower than is permissible. Simply put, ADA Alizadeh told the jury that it was permissible to shoot a fleeing suspect.

Tennessee v. Garner made the statute Alizadeh distributed to the Grand Jury unconstitutional, but that didn't stop her from distributing it to grand jurors at the outset in order to set their minds in a place where Darren Wilson was justified in what he did.

Then, at the very end of the proceedings on November 21st, Alizadeh "corrected" the record. Sort of.

For the entire proceeding, jurors weighed the evidence in light of a law that was deemed unconstitutional almost 30 years ago. Then they corrected the record at the very end, but by then it was too late.

Alizadeh only tells the grand jurors that the law they've been using for over two months in order to assess the legality of Darren Wilson's shooting of Michael Brown isn't the law on the final day of the proceedings.

And she passes off using a law ruled unconstitutional in 1985 as a mistake.

A law that just happened to exonerate Darren Wilson of any wrongdoing using his version of events, a law that said a fleeing suspect can still be shot without penalty, ruled unconstitutional nearly 30 years ago.

But I'm supposed to trust the system.

OK.  Sure.

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