National Bar Association Lawyers Release Statement Indicating Ferguson Prosecutor Corruption

a reply to: Greven

so 8 or fewer jurors felt there was cause to indict on each charge.

Yes, some number greater than 3 decided that no crime had been committed. The jury decided. That is what I said. We don't know how the jurors voted but we know what the jury decided.

For example, there was an audio recording that documents 10 of the 12 shots fired by Wilson at Brown.

Was the recording authenticated? If so, are you sure that it was not presented to the jury?

a reply to: Phage
What the jury decided was that they did not indict on the charges presented to them. Little more than that can be inferred.

The recording was authenticated on date and time by the service that handles the streaming. The person doing the recording was very near to the location of the shooting. It also closely matches what Wilson testified happened.

The timing clashes with his description of events based on knowledge of the crime scene and his other testimony, and this was not remarked on by the prosecutor so far as I have been able to find.

a reply to: Greven

What the jury decided was that they did not indict on the charges presented to them. Little more than that can be inferred.

No need to infer. If the jury decided that the evidence indicated a crime the jury would have voted to for an indictment.

The timing clashes with his description of events based on knowledge of the crime scene and his other testimony, and this was not remarked on by the prosecutor so far as I have been able to find.

Did the prosecutor "remark" on other evidence?

a reply to: Phage
I disagree with your characterization of this. The jury did not indict. That's it. You are stretching things to even include a decision on whether or not a crime occurred.

Yes, they certainly made remarks with regard to some evidence. It would be unusual if they did not. If you just skim through the jury testimony, you can see many. They also commented on witness testimony, sometimes noting discrepancies and other times clarifying the testimony. They also pursued things that seem as if it was Brown who was before the grand jury, rather than Wilson:

Prosecutors Repeatedly Stressed Brown's Pot Use (can't seem to link this, BBCode doesn't like it)
www.stltoday.com...

Early in the investigation, Dorian Johnson, Brown’s friend who was with him when he died, told detectives about the conversation Brown had had with the worker about waxing.
...
The detective testified that the medical examiner’s office told him the level in Brown’s system “could have potentially caused a loss in perception of space and time and there was also the possibility that there could have been hallucinations.”
...
Those comments, in light of Johnson’s statement, caused investigators to suspect that the workers may have sold Brown a wax form of marijuana, a detective told the grand jury.
...
St. Louis County police brought the construction workers in for questioning and advised them of their rights. Neither admitted to giving Brown the substance.

But prosecutors still pursued the waxing angle.
...
In the coming weeks, jurors would hear 44 other references to waxing, from prosecutors and other expert witnesses, whose testimony never seemed to provide a clear answer as to whether it had played a role.
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On the final day of testimony, Nov. 21, prosecutors again brought up waxing, acknowledging through questioning of a homicide detective that police had found no evidence that Brown had gotten wax from the workers.

You know, little things. It is an odd thing that you would ask this, if you had read any of the transcripts at all.

a reply to: Greven

It is an odd thing that you would ask this, if you had read any of the transcripts at all.

I have been. Gradually. Concentrating on testimony at this point. I seen plenty of request for clarification. Not so much remarking, but there is plenty to read yet.

That's why I asked. But that particular example doesn't exactly seem to be remarking. Repetition, yes. Do you know of a searchable version of the transcripts?

a reply to: Phage
Here's a specific instance since you seem to want one that I remember specifically from reading through the transcripts:
Grand Jury Volume 23
A is the witness and Q is the prosecutor; from page 35-36:

A: I saw one of the wrists had a little bit of a bruise that I'm not sure what it was caused by. Looks like he had something around the wrist that caused a linear abrasion of some kind. I didn't think very significant.

Q: Is that something you can tell whether that bruise occurred contemporaneously with all of these injuries or is this looking like an old bruise. I know most doctors say it is difficult to date a bruise. Did it look like something that happened contemporaneously with all the injuries?

A: It could have, but it could have been there for a day before or something, not a week before.

A searchable version of the transcripts is here:
Evidence released by McCulloch

originally posted by: Shamrock6
a reply to: Komodo

You miss the point. Witnesses are not infallible. Witness statements are not gospel in an investigation. They often conflict. They're sometimes made up entirely. So when a witness says "yep dude was on his knees with his hands up and the cop executed him" and then changes his story once, twice, three times, no his story doesn't have a ton of credibility anymore. Especially if the physical evidence doesn't match the initial statement at all, but the statement changes to match the evidence.

yes...i understand that .. so why even make witnesses

and they will go to jail for perjury

a reply to: Komodo

Enh. With perjury you have to be able to prove they had intent to deceive the court, and weren't just "confused."Perjury is fairly difficult charge to prove.

Witnesses still help paint the overall picture of a scene. That's why they're still used. But they're rarely 100% accurate all the way down the line, whether intentionally so or not.