To Indict Or Not To Indict - You Be The Jury

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I have thought about getting a dash cam for my car. If I lived in a large city and had a nicer car, I almost certainly would do so.

The autopsy results matched the officer's story. I see no reason to indict.

Apparently this is very common in Russia, hence all the Russian car crash and other crazy stuff you can see out of the dash car vids on the internet.

androbot, the autopsy report match other models of what happened as well. Sure, it's a point in Wilsons favour that the autopsy didn't *disagree* with him, but not a strong one.

I think the most convincing autopsy evidence is the close range of the first shots. This backs up the officer's account that Brown leaned into his car. So I think this puts Brown in the position of aggressor. Once you become aggressive towards a police officer you better expect them to respond with force.

Well, the witness reports I've read so far - the ones that claim Brown was surrendering when the fatal shot was fired - also claim that there was a scuffle in the car, resulting in a gunshot. It's not disputed by anyone that that particular part happened - the witness reports claim it, the autopsy confirms it. The question is about what happened later, and whether there is enough evidence to warrant a prosecution. At the moment, I think he should have been indicted, but on a charge of involuntary manslaughter rather than murder. Then, of course, it would be for the other jury to decide on whether he's guilty of that.

Okay, so the firearm evidence report says all 12 rounds were discharged from the pistol. We know that 7 of them hit Brown. Witness reports suggest that the shots fired when Brown was facing Wilson all hit their target, which lends support to the idea that Wilson was firing at Brown when Brown was running away...

Which really does not look good for Wilson. Did they collect any rounds from the scene, that would suggest this happened?

I'm updating on this evidence - Wilson should have been indicted, though not for 1st or 2nd degree murder. Either voluntary or involuntary manslaughter, given that it appears he was being reckless with his weapon.

Anyone have anything that would suggest otherwise?

That's a joke, right? The officer was behind the wheel of a police vehicle when the incident started and, as I understand it, could easily have returned to the vehicle at any time after he exited the vehicle. The suspect was on foot. Driving a safe distance away, for starters, was very much an option. Shooting the suspect was far from "the only possible thing he could do".

But lets pretend for a second that this wasn't the case. The first shot was fired. I don't know if it hit Brown or not - I'm not certain that there exists a shot-by-shot account of this. Was proceeding to fire the second shot the only possible thing Officer Wilson could have done at that point, especially if the first shot hit Brown? Was proceeding to fire the third shot the only possible thing Wilson could do at that point? The fourth? The fifth? The sixth? The seventh? The eighth? Clearly some of these shots hit Brown. Was the only option after each and every time the gun was fired to fire again? Was the only option to keep shooting Brown until he was dead, even if before he died he was incapacitated and no longer posed a threat to the officer?



Tragically (apparently) an actual trial would have occurred to ascertain Officer Wilson's guilt or innocence.



Yeah, but the idea is to get the witnesses in front of a jury, question the credibility and accuracy of each of them and allow a jury to evaluate it. Not just say we won't bother because one side has succeeded in creating doubt in the minds of some people who do not have all the facts.



Everything you say is predicated on the idea that if Brown was charging Wilson, Wilson had no choice but to shoot (at least 8 times as I understand it). That seems far, far from certain. It ignores alternative actions that Wilson could have reasonably taken - drive away, subdue Brown with non-lethal weapons, shoot to incapacitate instead of shooting to kill - it ignores the distances involved, and it ignores any real evaluation or testimony about the level of threat presented to Wilson by Brown, how police training and policy dictates that Wilson should have responded in such a situation, and really just ignores what was going through Wilson's mind, why he supposedly felt he had no choice but to shoot. While its supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty", it was never intended to be "innocent until proven guilty with no opportunity to try and prove guilt", which is what we have here. Its easy to say "oh gee, any defense attorney can raise reasonable doubt in this situation", but we've got no idea how this case might look with evidence presented by a capable, motivated prosecutor - Mr. McCullogh seems to have lacked either capability or motivation to secure an indictment in this case.



Again, not at all. You've presumed that the witnesses supporting the Brown side of this story must be lying, and the witnesses supporting Wilson could not possibly be lying. Its entirely possible that at trial the prosecution could pro-Wilson witnesses could be exposed as liars and the pro-Brown witnesses established as quite credible. None of these witnesses has been subjected to any sort of under-oath cross examination.

I think the entire investigation and grand jury proceeding would have been handled completely differently. For one thing, none of it would have happened against a back drop of extreme racial tension that the incident itself has spawned.


If someone wrote up a summary of what the agreed-to facts are in this case and the evidence relating to those aspects of it that are disputed, but did not mention the name or skin color of any of the involved parties, I rather suspect that many people would look at the entire thing differently than they currently do. One side hears "white cop shoots unarmed black man" and thinks the black man must be a thug and had it coming. The other side hears the same thing and immediately concludes police brutality. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Otherwise known as argumentum ad temperantiam.

It's the officer's duty to enforce the law. Arresting someone that assaulted an officer is the law. He did his job there. Saying it was wrong for him to do that is victim blaming.

The last shot is the one that stopped Brown from charging (after Wilson confronted Brown and told him to obey him). Hence, all shots up to then were ineffective in stopping the threat. Nothing else Wilson had would have stopped Brown from closing the distance and resuming to assault Wilson.

I find it hilarious how everyone is suddenly an expert on self-defense and police procedures. It's hilarious when talking heads in the news repeat the same ignorant statements.

ABC News' interview with Wilson:

2 in the car. 2 missed and hit a building. 7 hit Brown.

I have no idea why you came to that sole conclusion. He could have missed 3* shots when Brown was charging, whilst hitting with 7. He could have fired as Brown was running away, yes (though you'd have to read up on the law regarding whether shooting a fleeing violent felon is justified or not; that depends).

*he ejected one round in the car that failed to fire

Last edited by Dillogic on 26 Nov 2014, 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Part 2 of the interview:

Yes, based on what I know, Wilson should have been trying to *arrest* Brown, not kill him. He had back up on the way. It seems like it would have been a simple matter to keep sight of Brown until backup arrived, then arrested him without the use of deadly force.



So a person who has just received multiple gunshot wounds is really a threat to physically overcome a police officer, who, in addition to being able to retreat to a safe distance in his vehicle (which should always be preferable to ending someone's life unnecessarily) is equipped with an array of non-lethal weapons?



Police procedure should never, ever be justification for outrageous behavior on the part of the police. Is it police procedure to kill people unnecessarily? Is it police procedure to use piss-poor judgement? Is all police behavior excusable if its found in some police manual, even though its the police themselves who write police procedure?

What's hilarious is in the aftermath of excessive force incidents, all of the self-proclaimed experts manage to come out and exaggerate and overstate the severity of the situation and inflate it and over-dramatize it into an life-or-death "him or me" situation where someone of course just had to die, and better the 'thug' than the white guy / cop.

He could have protected himself by driving away and arresting Brown later once backup had arrived. I've never seen anyone offer anything to contradict this self-apparent fact.

From the ABC interview of Wilson: "At that time I gave myself another mental check: Can I shoot this guy? You know, legally, can I?" Really? You claim you feared for your life but this statement implies that you wouldn't have shot if you didn't feel legally justified, and thus allowed yourself to die? You had time to conduct a legal analysis of the situation, and yet had no time to a) retreat b) diffuse the situation before someone had to die c) think it through between the first shot and the twelfth? Really? It doesn't add up. You asked yourself "can I shoot this guy"? What does that mean, that you *wanted* to shoot him? Because maybe you chose your words poorly in the interview but it sure sounds that way.

OK, I read the first page and a bit of witness accounts, and most of them seem to back Wilson up.

However, it seems Brown was walking towards him rather than running (and Wilson seems to have admitted as much). I would therefore have to strongly disagree with LNH's analysis, which seems as cherry picked as the people listening to Brown's friend who says he was kneeling on the floor when he told the other guy to run for his life.

Retreating to his vehicle was not an option as he had already been beaten up in his vehicle, but maybe he could have used the mace or tried to run for it.

If his "tunnel vision" account is accurate then perhaps manslaughter - he wasn't in control as he should have been. I don't know enough about the law to make definitive calls. It doesn't seem there is much evidence to convict for murder so those charges would seem quite pointless.