[Daily Caller] CLARKE: "It's a miscarriage of justice. This neophyte prosecutor stood up there and made a political statement, Neil, and I say that because she chanting or voicing some of the chants from this angry mob. Her job is to tune that out. She said, 'I hear the voices.' She is not supposed to hear anything as she reviews this case that is not consistent with the rule of law and our system of justice.
Look, I'm an experienced and a veteran homicide detective. I've had -- I've participated in charging conferences. There's no way I have ever gotten a criminal charge within 24 hours after taking over all the reports and evidence to a prosecutor. A prosecutor who is thorough needs several days to sift through hundreds of pages of reports, they usually want to interview some of the witnesses themselves in person, and they have to sift through all of the evidence, piece by piece, and they have to wait for some of the forensic evidence to conclude to come back.
And that's why I say on a minimum, three to four days. She just got this case yesterday. This is political activism. She'll never prove this beyond a reasonable doubt and I'm not going to silently stand by and watch my brother officers offered up as human sacrifices, thrown like red meat to an angry mob, just to appease this angry mob."
#2
I'm not a lawyer, and I don't say that there's no culpability for something on the part of one or more of these officers, but I do know that deriving 'intent to murder' (2nd degree as charged) from a 'flyover' of the hard evidence would be foolish from a legal standpoint. They've taken the desired outcome and cherry-picked the data to support it. They were probably hoping to charge for 1st degree premeditated, but at least one cooler head prevailed.
The 'discovery' period might get real interesting for this State Attorney. She's already admitted that it is likely Gray died as a results of injuries sustained while riding in the back of the van without a seat belt. That kind of rules out the willful intent charge.
She's opened up the likely possibility that a good defense team for the officers will get the homicide charges she issued dropped.
Tough to go back and charge for 'lesser crimes' at that point.
Of course, if the jury finds the officers not guilty, the city will burn.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
05/02/2015 7:52 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Given the racial composition of the "perps" (3 & 3) it will be interesting to see how this goes down on that basis alone.
#4
Oh and the harder the city tries to prosecute them, the harder the payback from the police will be. I suspect they and their families will attract LOTS of police notice resulting in fines and police trouble. The police will simply say "We're just doing our jobs"
#5
LA cops redux. If they can drag it past the 2016 election they might avoid 'double jeopardy' with federal charges on the same crime, just named something different.
#6
The LE I spoke with were most animated when talking about the ‘illegal detention’ charge. They said it basically sent an immediate message that it’s OK to run from cops.
[Times of Israel] Likely Republican presidential candidate says Muslim extremists want to 'destroy Western civilization'
Jeb Bush, a likely Republican US presidential candidate, said Thursday that Islam has been hijacked by "barbarians" who seek to "destroy Western civilization."
At an event at the National Review Institute in Washington, Bush was asked whether he thought Islam was a religion of peace.
"I'm sure for some of the practitioners, but it's been hijacked by people who have a [sic] ideology that wants to destroy Western civilization, and they're barbarians. And so that part, which is the part that we need to confront head-on, is clearly not a religion of peace," he was quoted by The Guardian as saying.
"And I think it's -- you're not offending the sensibilities of people that are peaceful in the adherence to their faith when you say what I just said," he went on.
Bush, whose brother -- former US president George W. Bush -- launched the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has criticized US President Barack Obama's foreign policy, calling it "catastrophic," and has slammed the president's reluctance to explicitly say that the fight against terrorism was a fight with radical Islam.
"It's not some isolated thing. It is a threat on Western civilization, and take them at their word -- they want to destroy Western civilization," Bush told the Tribune-Review in an interview in April.
Bush said that under Obama, America's strategy was "to isolate and not be fully engaged, because of the fatigue Americans legitimately feel about long-term engagements, in the Middle East particularly."
"One of the first things we have to do is to get back into the game and develop coalitions to take these terrorist groups out," he said.
"Our enemies need to fear us, a little bit, just enough for them to deter the actions that create insecurity," Bush said at a GOP conference in April. He said restoring alliances "that will create less likelihood of America's boots on the ground has to be the priority, the first priority of the next president."
#2
I have a lot of respect for what Bush II did. He did try to correct the wrong of leaving Saddam in power after Gulf War I.
He did many things that were right. But we lost the peace and in large part we can thank Obama pulling out for that. Early withdrawal cost it.
think of what might have been. But it's lost now.
Jeb Bush is not going to get anywhere unless he can speak plainly. Trying to talk tough without defining the problem is just more of the same sh*t we've had shovelled on us for 15 years now.
The problem is Islamist fascism and it is implemented by Sharia. If he's serious he'll say he wants to ban Sharia in the US - and support secular Muslims instead. Cut off support to the Saudis and their evil doctrine.
#3
anon1, I agree with you up to a point. That point is the amount of respect for W. His daddy suffered from a case of noblesse oblige and passed it on to his son.
Neither Bush defined the problem or followed through on the proper solutions. Oblahblah of course butchered the situation that he was handed.
Bush did do many things right but he also did a couple of big ones wrong. Not identifying the enemy and not ramping up the country (remember "go shopping") were the two biggest but there were others too.
#5
I agree Alan C, Bush Junior didn't define the problem. It was from that original sin that all our woes since have sprung.
He it was that coined the euphemism "war on terror" and all the wrong stupid strategy of dealing with Islamist fascism as if it were a policing problem instead of an ideological war.
They were frightened by the prospect of alienating 1.2 billion muslims and having a full scale religious war. But they forgot that secular Muslims have been fighting Islamists for decades and would not have joined sides with the Islamofascists - if he were careful to always be standing surrounded by prominent secular Muslims at each and every media op and to clearly state it at every opportunity.
#13
Don't think so Ship; Walker is the best option so far. Unless he steps on his dick he is the GOP choice. All the rest are has beens or damaged or RINOs.
[Dawn] THE annual spring offensive of the Afghan Taliban tends to ratchet up diplomatic tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistain.
This year, with the Pak-Afghan relationship seemingly on the mend, it had been hoped that what was expected to be the toughest fighting season yet for the Afghan National Security Forces would not turn into a spat between Pakistain and Afghanistan.
However, it's easy to be generous with someone else's money... with the official Afghan Taliban declaration of the start of the spring offensive little more than a week old, those hopes have already been dented.
After the Afghan interior ministry's spokesperson alleged that snuffies from Pakistain had crossed over into Afghanistan to join the spring offensive, the spokesperson for the Foreign Office struck back, denying the Afghan interior ministry official's accusations and suggesting that the best course for both countries was closer cooperation and coordination. Therein lies the crux of the recent problem.
When Pakistain launched operations in North Wazoo and the Tirah region, the military here expected that anti-Pakistain snuffies would try and escape to Afghanistan and hoped that the Afghan state would either cut them off on the border or capture them inside Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, ...back at the wreckage, Captain Poindexter wished he had a cup of coffee. Even instant would do... the Afghan government expected that Pakistain would do more along the Pak-Afghan border to prevent the Afghan Taliban's spring offensive being reinforced by Pakistain-based holy warriors, some of whom, having being eased out of their sanctuaries here, were always likely to join the fight in Afghanistan.
Neither the Afghan government's nor the Pak state's expectations have been responded to adequately by the other side, so now both countries are turning to an old and familiar blame game.
The best response is indeed closer cooperation and coordination, especially on border management, but the old issue of trust appears to be thwarting that.
There is also the much bigger issue of reconciliation inside Afghanistan that appears to be going nowhere -- an impasse that is beginning to show in terms of the undiplomatic accusations Pakistain and Afghanistan are once again beginning to indulge in.
From the Afghan perspective, President Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. 's unprecedented outreach to Islamabad has not yielded the desired cooperation in terms of leveraging Pak influence over the Afghan Taliban to nudge them towards the negotiating table.
From the Pak perspective, despite Operation Zarb-e-Azb ..the Pak offensive against Qaeda in Pakistain and the Pak Taliban in North Wazoo. The name refers to the sword of the Prophet (PTUI!)... , Operation Khyber-II and the Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. school massacre, the Afghan state has not responded as urgently to Pakistain's security concerns in its hour of need as it could have. Trust, as ever, appears to be the one commodity in short supply on both sides.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Wazoo
