Dependable Erection

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Lessons in modern American history - pt.6

This one's for Locomotive Breath:

A whole bunch of people who you've never heard of.

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posted by Barry at 7:14 PM Digg this

9 Comments:

  • Found this link of one of your previously linked-to pages.

    Then there's the Peyton Strickland -- I don't know what to call it. "Fiasco" isn't strong enough. I want to say "Murder." I know the guy was a robber, but still, the shooting was just wrong.

    By Blogger Joseph H. Vilas, at 8:56 PM  

  • You seem to have missed the phrase "one of the most". You can post all you want and it won't invalidate that statement.

    In every single example you cite in #6 the police quickly realize they've made a mistake and proceed no further. These examples might be relevant if the crooked cops and a crooked DA had continued to try and prosecute people they knew were innocent.

    By the same token, had Inv. Jones been allowed to drop the case on 3/15 then we wouldn't be here. Instead, Inv. Gottlieb took it over becase he saw a great opportunity to get himself some Dukies. It could have been stopped by Nifong when the DNA came back negative and he had his "You know, we're fucked" moment. It could have been stopped so many places along the line. But it was kept going.

    Mistakes happen. Friend of mine had an older brother who was shot through the door while executing a search warrant.

    http://www.odmp.org/officer.php?oid=6876

    They were at the wrong address. Sometimes it's the cops that are killed.

    You seem to be unable to distinguish between a short-term mistake and a cold-blooded year-long attempt to frame three innocent men for a crime that never occurred.

    Your attempts at misdirection are pretty sad. The spotlight is on Durham and will stay there until things are sorted out. It's obvious Durm won't do it themselves. Too bad it has to be outsiders who force them to take an honest look at the ugly image in the mirror.

    By Blogger Locomotive Breath, at 8:01 AM  

  • You mean a right wing, anti-government blog called The Secessionist is not a sufficiently credible source for documenting abuses of state power?

    I'm shocked, shocked i tells ya.

    By Blogger Barry, at 9:02 AM  

  • LB: You know, we were in the middle of starting an independent investigation, when we had to scotch the thing because of the threat of the lawsuit from the players.

    Won't do it ourselves, my ass...

    By Blogger Unknown, at 11:23 AM  

  • And by the way, I DIDN'T vote for Nifong, and I'm still getting sued.

    By Blogger Unknown, at 11:24 AM  

  • The first investigation, the Baker/Chalmers report, was a farce. This was Durm's first chance to investigate. They blew it.

    http://www.newsobserver.com/579/story/574085.html

    Then go back and look at the political formuation of the panel that was supposed to do the independent investigation.

    Independent investigation? My ass indeed.

    If Durm was interested in getting to the bottom of things they would be there already. They've had multiple chances. Yet it's been CYA CYA CYA.

    The threat was from the insurance company that didn't want to be exposed to any further liability from what the investigation discovered. Both they and Durm weren't bright enough to realize that the situation had gone way past the limit of that liability. If I were the insurance company, I'd pay off to the policy limit and walk away. Good luck to Durm getting insurance in the future.

    If Durm was being honest with itself, it should have done the investigation and let the chips fall where they may.

    If the extent of your effort to prevent abuses of the legal system was to not vote for Mike Nifong then maybe next time you will be more inclined to speak up. Perhaps your tax bill will be an annual reminder to not ignore evil in front of your nose.

    By Blogger Locomotive Breath, at 2:24 PM  

  • #1 - Yes, the Chalmers/Baker investigation was flawed. Quite simply, Baker's fault was in trusting Chalmers to do the report, when Chalmers' flaw is and has always been, since he was hired in the process botched by Marcia Conner, in being a "cop's cop," and defending the department and its officers over all other concerns. I hold a lot of trust in the people who were assigned to the investigative commission. I wish it had gone forward.

    #2 - You propagate nothing but evil yourself by implying that, as a Durham citizen with no additional stake in the case, I had an obligation to prejudge the case without access to mountains of information except through the media. I will fiercely defend my decision to reserve judgment on the case while substantial evidence remained unavailable or underexposed to the public eye, and strongly encourage others to do likewise. All of the exculpatory evidence was being produced by the defense attorneys, and if we believed everything Joe Cheshire told us, Michael Peterson would still be living at the end of Cedar St. and not locked up for life.

    My assumption was that Nifong either had good reason to do what he was doing, or he was being unbelievably stupid and clumsy about going about it, which would eventually lead to the implosion of his career and villainization. Was I wrong? I thought that this was one case where prosecutorial misconduct had no chance of standing up in court, because there was too much media attention and the defense attorneys brought too much power to the table for it to happen. Was I wrong?

    You, on the other hand, are nothing but a nameless alias who seems to have little to offer here but decontextualized invective. What's you're real name, Jethro Tull? You want to call me complicit in the face of evil, I'd tell you to come down here to Durham and say it to my face, but I won't even make the demand that high. Come say it on my blog -- I've got a fresh post about lacrosse up for you. And have the balls (or ovaries -- whichever is appropriate) to share, if not your full name, some indication of just who the hell you are.

    By Blogger Unknown, at 2:50 PM  

  • All you had to see was the false prosecution of Moezeldin Elmostafa to understand what was going on in Durm. That alone was enough to remove any benefit of the doubt that Mike Nifong might have enjoyed. (Where's that in the "history" lesson this blog is purporting to give us?)

    As if you could not have figured that out from Nifong's grandstanding in the first place. Don't be complaining about the defense attorneys having to respond to his self-described "million dollar" publiciity blitz.

    And please tell me about the "spin" of the bank camera showing Seligman not at 610 N. Buchanan when the crime was supposed to be occuring. And please tell me about the "spin" of records put out by the cell phone company showing him on the phone during a supposed brutal rape. And please tell me about the defense producing all the exculpatory DNA evidence when it was the SBI who produced that.

    My assumption was that Nifong either had good reason to do what he was doing, or he was being unbelievably stupid and clumsy about going about it, which would eventually lead to the implosion of his career and villainization. Was I wrong? I thought that this was one case where prosecutorial misconduct had no chance of standing up in court, because there was too much media attention and the defense attorneys brought too much power to the table for it to happen. Was I wrong?

    Your assumptions were very very wrong.

    It was only by a hair's breadth that Meehan was nailed on December 15. Nifong let him testify on short notice because he assumed that the defense lawyers would be unprepared to properly examine him. I was there in the courtroom. I saw it. Where were you?

    It was the revelation that Meehan and Nifong had agreed to withold DNA evidence that prompted the NC Bar to make public the complaint against Nifong. To do this while a case was still in litigation was completely unheard of. The bar did this with a one vote margin. Had they not done so then Nifong would not have had to recuse himself.

    Take away any of that and Mike Nifong gets his "Durham solution". At worst he would have gotten a hung jury. In that case your "unbelievably stupid" DA would still be there today. Or were you happy to let innocent people twist in the wind because they're the kind of people you don't like or because they could somehow "afford" the millions of dollars of legal fees.

    Yes, you so badly want to attack me personally. Sorry, but you're going to have to address what I say rather than who I am. I'm a fairly frequent visitor to Durm because I work on a voluntary community service project there. Given the self-evident corruption in Durm, you'll pardon me if I don't want to be known by name there.

    And you are about to find that you do, in fact, have a stake in the case. Every citizen has a stake in the misbehavior of public officials, even if they didn't vote for them.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:14 PM  

  • (Barry -- I'm very sorry about all this. I did tell LB to come to my blog, in an attempt to get it off of here. But I can't let this go.)

    LB: Regarding your identity, frankly I have little interest in attacking you personally. What I do have an interest in is some yutz hiding behind an inane pop culture reference attacking me personally. Rather, since you accuse me of being negligent in my duties as a citizen, I was politely inquiring just who the fuck you think you are. Asking where you were from was simple: I was going to pull a cheap rhetorical trick, and point out evil being propagated by your elected officials. It's happening, I promise you. WHY ARE YOU NOT AT THE COURTHOUSE *RIGHT NOW* DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

    And aside from that, now that I know that you were in the courtroom, I'd kindly ask you to answer, with a simple yes or no, if you have any stake in the civil case or are associated with someone who does. You don't have to say how, but if you're going to come in here taking potshots from the shadows, I think that's a damned reasonable request.

    I also wonder about your reading ability. I already acknowledged my responsibilities as a citizen, but noted that the ended there. If you'd bothered to click the links I provided, you might have found out that I've already accepted the necessity of a just settlement, involving restitution of legal fees, a reasonable compensatory award, and agreeing to some internal oversight and reform. You might also find that I've already repeatedly criticized Nifong for his excessive public statements, and called for him to request a special prosecutor from the state AG's office.

    And can there be anything more absurd than this "narrow escape" narrative? As I understand it (and I have no doubt you'll correct me), that December hearing was what uncovered the suppressed exculpatory evidence. Let's assume that never happened. Nifong has to go to trial for a sexual assault, an EXTREMELY difficult accusation to prove, because there are rarely witnesses. Indeed, DNA evidence is about the only thing that can lock it up for sure. Here's what it looks like: no DNA, the fellow stripper calling Mangum's story a crock, her driver saying he's slept with her, faulty lineups, a dozen witnesses for the defense, none for the state, your aforementioned ATMs, taxis, and cell calls, and enough improper public statements by the DA before the trial to get the whole thing tossed regardless. Any defense attorney that can't get a quick acquittal out of that needs to hang it up.

    Which brings us around to the most important point: what you seem to be advocating, and simultaneously accusing me of failing to do during the case, is deeply troubling and horribly misguided. I wasn't in the courtroom with you -- should all 210,000+ of us have been in there with you? Should we all have been following every jot and tittle of the case, deciding what was true and what was not, taking notes, constructing timelines? No -- 12 of us should have been doing that. In all of this, advocates for the players have begun to pretend that either we decide judicial matters by popular vote, or more dangerously, that we ought to. What we have is an adversarial judicial system, where it is in every way the D.A.'s job to, within the bounds of ethical regulations (key point there), do his best to stick it to the accused, weak case or not. And no, it's NOT my job or my responsibility as a citizen, unless called for jury duty, to review any particular case for irregularities. That is, in a nutshell, the job of the defense attorneys. It IS my job to ensure that each side receives fair representation and has a fair hearing in a court of law. To somehow take from this case that every case ought to be tried in the media, with ordinary citizens jumping in filing amicus curiae briefings is beyond deranged -- it goes against the most fundamental principles of our judicial system, which quite frankly I'm not ready to throw out over this.

    The lesson we ought to take here is not somehow that Durham is a corrupt cesspool. I won't deny we've got problems, but I don't see them as anything above average for any place else I've lived. The best lesson we can take is that North Carolina's elected prosecutors don't currently have enough oversight and review procedures, given that prosecutorial abuse has now been documented in multiple cases across the state. A decade ago, we in Durham stripped the DA's office of the capacity to schedule hearings. It's time we do more.

    By Blogger Unknown, at 8:03 PM  

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