DUBLINERS TOO: What the lawyers said and did!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2013

Part 3—One lawyer cites Thurgood Marshall: On March 19, 2012, CNN’s Sunny Hostin committed a heinous act.

Introduced as a “CNN legal analyst” and a “former federal prosecutor,” she went on TV and repeated what the lawyers had said.

Referring to the killing of Trayvon Martin, she said the 911 tapes, which she had heard, told her that “this child was murdered in cold blood and there are several witnesses to that murder.”

Soon, Hostin was telling Brooke Baldwin what she thought she had heard:
HOSTIN (3/19/12): And the bottom line is, you hear a warning shot, Brooke, and then you hear a voice pleading and a cry. And then you hear another voice [sic] and you hear the pleading stop. So that— And you also have these other people saying that the man in the white shirt—which is what Zimmerman was wearing, we know that Trayvon Martin was wearing a red sweatshirt—that the man in the white shirt was on top of the other person. And so that tells me that he was on top of this boy, young boy, not even an adult, an unarmed young boy, takes a step back and shoots him in the chest.

You cannot avail yourself of a self-defense claim when you are the first aggressor, you start a fight, even if you're losing it. You cannot avail yourself of that.

And so in hearing all of these tapes, I’m convinced that I’ve heard a murder. That, and a murderer that is walking around our streets free without being arrested. And so I’m just—I’m horrified.
Hostin said she was horrified. If CNN was run by journalists, they would have been horrified too.

As it turned out, Hostin didn’t hear a warning shot on those 911 tapes. Only one shot was fired that night, though Hostin said she heard two.

This means that her detailed tale of “cold-blooded murder” (Baldwin’s term) was also bogus. Whatever he may have done that night, George Zimmerman didn’t fire a warning shot, then “take a step back” from “an unarmed young boy” and “shoot him in the chest.”

Hostin told a lurid tale; her lurid tale was wrong. But that wasn’t her only misstatement as she described the horror she was feeling.

Uh-oh! On the night in question, Trayvon Martin wasn’t wearing a red sweatshirt; it was Zimmerman who was dressed in red. Somehow, Hostin had gotten the clothing turned around in her head. But so what? This factual error had her convinced that, after firing that warning shot, Zimmerman had “taken a step back” and shot a young boy in the chest.

Hostin’s tale was lurid but wrong. Journalistically, her conduct was heinous. But one other thing is abundantly clear—this lurid, heinous, inaccurate story came to us straight from the lawyers. On March 17, the Orlando Sentinel quoted Natalie Jackson, one of the Martin family attorneys, telling this lurid, inaccurate tale about the two gunshots. That same day, the New York Times got very excited and passed the story on to its readers, with its reporter, Lizette Alvarez, directly saying that she had heard two shots.

Alvarez hadn’t heard two shots. But millions of people were being disinformed by a lurid, false tale which came from the lawyers.

Before long, Hostin was back with another false claim. She sourced it to the lawyers.

On March 20, Hostin told CNN’s Carol Costello that she had “the opportunity to speak with one of the Martin family attorneys this morning for about 30 minutes.” (Hostin described the attorney as a “she.”) Soon, Hostin was making another false statement:
HOSTIN (3/20/12): Let me also say this, that the family attorney told me that they are awaiting toxicology reports from Trayvon Martin's autopsy to dispel any notion that he was perhaps on drugs and that Zimmerman was allowed to leave the police department in the clothes that he was wearing that night, which means that any evidence that could have been gathered from his clothing is now lost. So that also is something that is somewhat troubling to this family.
In fact, Zimmerman’s clothing was kept by the Sanford police that night. But Hostin kept repeating this false claim, attributing it to the lawyers. This produced this assessment, later that day, from the pathetic Wolf Blitzer:
HOSTIN (3/20/12): As a former prosecutor, Wolf, you know, I've handled investigations and this is just odd that in a shooting death of an unarmed teenager that leads don't appear to have been followed. My understanding is that the girl that was speaking to Trayvon Martin on the phone for minutes during this altercation has not yet been interviewed by the police.

That is what the Martin family attorney told me. I thought that was remarkable. I think it's also remarkable that their attorney told me that George Zimmerman was not tested for drug and alcohol. That he was allowed to leave the police station, Wolf, with the very clothes on that he had that night. So any forensic evidence that may have been on his clothing to help or harm him, in fact, is just not there any longer.

[...]

BLITZER: Yes, it sounds, at least on the surface, that there's no investigation, no serious investigation by the Sanford Police Department.
“At least on the surface?” In reality, CNN’s evidence didn’t rise to that level. Blitzer was kidding himself, flattering his channel—and disinforming the public.

Hostin’s claims came from the lawyers, and those claims were wrong. Hostin made other errors this week; this includes her gullible, unquestioning reliance on the claims of Mary Cutcher, the lawyers’ favorite ear-witness.

Indeed, the fact that she kept calling Martin a “boy” (a “child”) was part of the lawyers’ basic scripting of the developing novel. In the interest of brevity, we will assume that our basic point has been made.

Alas! Anyone who follows this case will quickly discover a basic fact. Right from the start, the national reporting was drowning in misstatements of fact—and those misstatements almost always seem to track back to the lawyers.

The lurid false tale of the two gunshots was the most egregious of these misstatements; the initial report by the New York Times is one of the most heinous bits of “reporting” we have ever seen. But news orgs ran with the lawyers’ misstatements as a pleasing fable developed. This has tilted the way the events of that night have been reported and understood, right to this very day.

Potemkin “fact-checkers” have agreed not to notice this problem. So did the New York Times’ public editor turned public cheerleader, when she praised her great newspaper for its treatment of this case.

The lawyers sold a pile of fake facts. This leads us to an obvious question:

Why did the lawyers do that?

Alas! When Joyce wrote the fifteen stories found in Dubliners, he saw a “moral and intellectual paralysis” all through his native Dublin. When Camus imagined Oran in the grip of a plague, he explained why a range of citizens ignored its warning signs.

When it comes to the killing of Martin, a wide array of our own Dubliners have played active roles in the spreading of lurid, false tales.

Reporters have played a basic part in this process. So have the press corps’ alleged fact-checkers.

Angry citizens have played a key role in the story’s spread. So have the nation’s professors, those who have spoken and those who have not.
So have we pseudo-liberals, of course. We seem determined to prove that we’re ditto-heads too, just like the folk we once mocked.

That said, most of those false or bogus tales began with the family lawyers. Why did the lawyers advance those false claims?

Of one thing you can be quite sure—no one in the mainstream “press corps” will ever ask that question! Indeed, no one is ever going to mention the fact that the lawyers spread misinformation right from the start of this case.

In this instance, the “press corps” quickly accepted the lawyers as the authors of their Official Group Story. And when the “press corps” behaves that way, there is no looking back.

(In 1992, the “press corps” built its Whitewater scandal tales around the claims of a small group of Republican crackpots in Arkansas. In March 1999, the “press corps” took its cues from the RNC as it created an instant novel in which Candidate Gore was the world’s biggest liar, just like President Clinton before him.)

In this case, the lawyers told a lot of false tales. But why did the lawyers do that?

No one is going to ask them! But we may have gotten a hint from an interview with Jasmine Rand, one of the family lawyers, on July 15, two days after the verdict.

The interview was conducted by Greta Van Susteren, who would have done a better job if she had been less annoyed with something Rand said.

Van Susteren challenged Rand, on general principles, when Rand criticized the Zimmerman jury. (For fuller transcript, see our next post.) But the most intriguing exchange came in the wake of that challenge, when Rand referred to a precept which dates to the great Thurgood Marshall.

Rand described herself as “a social engineer.” What did she mean by that?:
VAN SUSTEREN (7/15/13): You're a lawyer, right?

RAND: Yes.

VAN SUSTEREN: And the whole point of the jury is that we assign the job to weigh the facts. We draft them. We make them sit there. Lot of times, they don't want to be there. We then present the evidence, and the judge then says, “Here's the evidence, here's the law,” instructs them on the law, and it's their duty—it's not mine, it's not yours, it's not anybody else's in the community, but it's the jury's duty to weigh them. And all of a sudden, suddenly, afterwards, you say they can't do their job?

RAND: I have a greater duty beyond being an attorney, and that's to be a social engineer. And when the law doesn't get it right, I believe that we have the right to peacefully and morally, conscientiously object to the decision of the jury.

That doesn't mean that we believe that it's going to be overturned, or that it will, or that we don't respect the decision that those six people made. But there are millions of people out there who don't agree with that decision. So it's not just the legal team.
Van Susteren made a telling point about those “millions of people;” see our next post. But we were struck by Rand’s remark about being a “social engineer.”

Van Susteren thought the remark was ominous. In this case, perhaps it was! But it dates to the early days of civil rights lawyering, to Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall, each of whom has been quoted saying this:

“A lawyer’s either a social engineer or he’s a parasite on society.”

Marshall grew up within a mile of the place where we sit placidly typing. His elementary school shares a zip code with our sprawling campus.

At a very dangerous time, Marshall showed the way lawyers can use the law and the Constitution to further the cause of racial justice. Perhaps most famously, he was chief counsel in Brown v. Board of Education, which helped change American life.

Very few people will challenge Marshall’s work as a “social engineer.” In a similar vein, a post from Low Moral Ground, which we’ll excerpt below, includes a description of Rand’s career which makes us want to admire her.

Having said that, let us also say this: Marshall and Houston climbed the mountain in the pursuit of social justice. Marshall used the term “social engineer” to describe his own legal work.

Tirelessly, Marshall sought social justice, just as Rand surely believes she is doing. But did Marshall ever invent a pile of fake facts in his work as an engineer?

Did Marshall ever invent false facts to make a police department seem racist? Did he ever invent fake facts to get a man charged with murder?

In this case, the lawyers did those things, with the “press corps” cast as stenographers. Whatever may explain their motives, their conduct was extremely bad, and it has had wide-ranging consequences:

Terrified parents have terrorized children about the ways they might be killed, just for buying some candy. The jurors are forced to hide from the public, even as Rand continues to offer bogus accounts of the facts of the case in the course of criticizing their judgment. (The verdict was “a tragedy,” she has said.)

Reports have appeared of beatings offered in retribution for the Zimmerman verdict. If someone ends up getting killed—and obviously, that could happen—does Rand want to go on TV made repeat all the fake facts she has stated just since the verdict was given?

Right from the start, citizens have been made very fearful, and very angry, on the basis of tons of fake facts. In his work as an engineer, when did Marshall do that?

By his own description, Marshall was a social engineer. But Marshall wasn’t a liar and he wasn’t an hysteric. You can decide which description best explains the lawyers’ misstatements in this case—misstatements the “press corps” simply adopted as they decided to let the lawyers craft their latest group novel.

Hysteric or liar? You be the judge. Marshall and Houston were neither.

Tomorrow: Dubliners inflamed

Friday: The towering silence

We agree with this assessment: Brett Wilkins writes Moral Low Ground, “an anti-corporate, anti-war social justice site featuring news you won't see in the corporate mainstream media.”

We recommend Wilkins’ reaction to the flap about “social engineering.” As he closes, he praises Rand for her commitment to racial justice. But he offers some good sound advice:
WILKINS (7/16/13): Social engineering may be beneficial, even essential, for achieving racial justice in America. But engineering the truth is anathema to justice. Moral Low Ground applauds Jasmine Rand for not only acknowledging a legal responsibility that transcends any individual case, but also for dedicating her life’s work to using the law as an instrument for social change. From mass incarceration to discrimination and disparities in policing and arrests, wealth and income, lending, housing, health care, education, employment, and the application of capital punishment, black (and brown) Americans still face towering obstacles to equality. But Rand must also take care not to resort to the sort of hyperbole–the claims that George Zimmerman was a “racist” who “hunted,” “stalked,” “murdered,” even “lynched” and, ludicrously, “assassinated” Trayvon Martin– which does a disservice to the greater cause of social justice to which she has dedicated her legal career.
“Hyperbole” is a pleasant term for what the lawyers did. It’s hard to avoid the thought that they may have been lying early on, with the “press corps” typing their claims.

Thurgood Marshall struggled and won. Tell us when this giant lied or peddled a stream of fake facts.

37 comments:

  1. Were the Martin family lawyers motivated by a desire to do social engineering or motivated by money? It has been reported that the Martin family got a settlement of over a million dollars from the Homeowners Assn. If the settlement amount was $1.5 million and the lawyers got 35%, the lawyers would have gotten $525,000. As the ironic line from Tom Lehrer's song, The Old Dope Peddler goes, "Doing well by doing good."

    Motivations cannot be proved. However, if the Martin family lawyers were trying to improve society, I think they didn't succeed. On the contrary, I think their efforts increased racial animosity in both directions.

    Martin Luther King improved race relations, and not for money. His efforts led to his assassination. OTOH the Martin family lawyers poisoned race relations and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars thereby. George Zimmerman remains at risk of assassination, but there are no death threats made against the Martin family lawyers.

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    1. That last clause is a bit disgusting, David. It sounds almost wishful. Please reflect on that.

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    2. Is the report true? Why would the homeowners' association and their insurance company pay?

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    3. I don't think David is calling for such threats but rather pointing out that another person has been put a risk by what they did to earn their fees.

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    4. I read on another site that they would not have been able to sue the HOA without the arrest. In other words, when they were pushing for the arrest - that all they wanted was the arrest - it was really in order to facilitate civil suits. The City of Sanford was also in line to be sued and now it will be harder to sue the City - or impossible - as the policework has been validated as appropriate by the trial. Best thing for the Martin family and lawyers would have been if the case had somehow not gone to trial at all, I suppose.

      If the "journalists" are not going to ask the Martin family and ttheir lawyers questions about the school suspensions and leaving Trayvon alone with a 12 year old in a strange place for an entire day, obviously then they should stop interviewing the Martin family and the lawyers. - Karen

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  2. Ditto heads, not a good commentary on the state of Liberals. We are no better than the opposition when we make judgments based on the wrong "facts" after not taking the time to ascertain the truth.

    Cue the sock puppets ... or send in the sock puppets. Your choice.

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    1. The sock puppets believe they are social engineers too.

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    2. I am a social engineer on the society train. WHOOT-WHOOT!

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  3. FYI for those of you concerned about Bob's repetition, ever train a dog to sit?

    Sometimes constant repeating is the only way to get through to some in the print and broadcast media as they seem to have the mental acuity of house pets.

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    1. If you think Somerby is doing this to "get through" to the media, I have some really special swampland in Florida you might be interested in buying.

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  4. "We agree with this assessment."

    So do we.

    And also, we have thought it was clear from the beginning that this was the POV from which Somerby's critique emerged: the well-founded fear that this press malfeasance "does a disservice to the greater cause of social justice."

    So will the point-missers, media-apologists and race-hustlers now still dare come to sarcastically complain about the "charming" people attracted by Somerby's writing and opinions?

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  5. Bob,
    I just came to your site the other day and have been reading old posts. You had one about Kitty Genovese case and NY Times reporting ("I didn't want to get involved.") I have a different take than you do. The "I didn't want to get involved" thinking is what was validated by the NY Times reporting of the day and its what we've accepted/lived by ever since. There is terrible violence and awful people out there. If you get involved, you could get hurt or killed; if you don't get involved, you'll be safe.

    Regarding social engineering, I'm going to have to research Thurgood Marshall and whether he was scrupulously honest and (thank God for the internet) I'll have to go to some unconventional sites, maybe even the ones that get blocked by the hospital internet. I cannot accept anything mainstream as even "likely" honest. Thats too bad but there it is: people I've been told were/are good people might really be very bad people. My brother reads history books and has always told me Winston Churchill was a very bad man, despite people like Christ Matthews et al glorifying Churchill. (I think Churchill was made an honorary US citizen back when I was a kid.) So, if Marshall really was not a good person, he won't be the first one misrepresented to me for my entire life until/unless someone gives me or I find facts for myself.

    Thanks for doing all these analyses. I have a lot of reading to do. I appreciate that you analyze facts minutely. The 2000 election and the way Gore was treated in order to put George W. Bush (of all people!) in the WH bothered me, too. The worst was the press calling Gore a liar about a joke he told - that his mom sang him to sleep with "Look for the union label." Gore's life wasn't on the line so it didn't get me as upset as the Zimmerman case but it was appalling.

    Thanks again - Karen


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    1. Karen,

      I think you misread Bob Somerby if you think he's even hinted at the idea that Thurgood Marshall was not a moral giant.

      As for Winston Churchill, here's an internet iconoclast in a lengthy post on that subject.

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    2. You're doing great work in these threads, CMike.

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    4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    5. Point taken, CMike, point taken.

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  6. CMike,
    Theodore Roosevelt is another historical figure that my brother says was a dangerous person and a bad actor in history. Just from memory, something about Roosevelt secretly intruding between Russia and Japan with the intent of dividing up the Pacific with Japan and the result.

    I don't know about Thurgood Marshall. I'm not religious but that Biblical admonition against doing evil in order to do good is probably the only principled way for me, personally. People who think they are doing "social justice" - well, I don't know about that if they are sacrificing the interests of innocent people. -Karen

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  7. Karen -- I wonder what history books your brother reads. Many of us consider Winston Churchill to be the greatest figure of the 20th century. E.g., see http://www.yourvalleyvoice.com/news/article_85d01560-9ce7-11e0-b8fb-001cc4c002e0.html or http://blog.londonconnection.com/2010/12/01/winston-churchill-the-greatest-man-of-the-20th-century/

    Maybe your brother's history books were written by partisans who believes that conservatives are automatically bad people.

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  8. Bad person is pretty strong, but it is well-documented that he was pretty much an arrogant bully, probably Asperger's. He was often brilliant and a great writer and may well have saved us from Hitler, but he was also a total pain in the ass to everyone around him, and his generals, including even Eisenhower, had to waste a hell of a lot of time trying to head off his often dangerously half-baked ideas.

    I get that from this book, which is all in all respectful of Churchill.
    Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874-1945

    by Carlo D'Este

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    1. Years ago I read a fascinating book, Churchill's Black Dog, Kafka's Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind by psychiatrist Anthony Storr. The first chapter was about Churchill. The author believed that Churchill suffered from clinical depression. His depressive episodes were called "black dogs." Dr. Storr believed that Churchill's amazing energy and accomplishments were his way of holding depression at bay. Storr said that when Churchill retired and had no more challenges, he fell apart.

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  9. Put munitiions in Lusitania so Germans would bomb it (hoping to get US into WWII); let Britain be bombed in WWII to get the US into that war; poison gas in Iraq after WWI; firebombing Dresden -- massive killing of civilians, deliberate war crimes.

    My brother is the history reader. He's a retired dairy farmer and doesn't use the internet.

    For me, I become more and more skeptical of everything from establishment/mainstream sources, especially about "greatness."

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    1. I'm unimpressed with the Churchill bashers. It's easy to criticize particular actions. But, Churchill, more than any other individual, saved much of the world from being run by fascists.

      Cherry-picking the bad things a leader did is no way to judge someone, especially in wartime. War is Hell. What would you think of an American President if all you knew was that he's responsible for over 600,000 American deaths, that he ignored the Constitution and imprisoned reporters for criticizing his policies?

      Yes, I'm talking about Abraham Lincoln.

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    2. Well, since you bring up Lincoln, I am not a fan of Lincoln either. IOW, I'm not buying that slavery would be going on today in the Southern States if the Civil War hadn't happened. 600,000 dead out of a population of a little over 30,000,000 would be the equivalent of 6 million dead today. Does the 600,000 count those who eventually died from their wounds in an age before antibiotics? To accept it is to believe in violence but mainstream thinking goes beyond that and glorifies the horror, IMO, in the usual effort to demonize rational thinking and control people.

      Just my opinion but if I don't live and think by the value of the individual, individual rights and not sacrificing innocent people to a "cause" because leaders are great men/women (who love to wartime leaders; several have said that in my memory, I believe both Bushes said things like that and Clinton had a yearning, too) --- well, no. I like the concept of a "common good" but its non-violent.

      I also see no reason to believe we (here in US) would have been taken over by fascists if not for Winston Churchill. I think thats extreme thinking. The Soviet Union was a gigantic slave empire and it didn't conquer the US and its gone, been gone 20+ years now. Gee, gassing the Iraqis after WWI is "cherry picking" and firebombing Dresden civilians is "cherry picking," what is a war crime? Those were millions of innocent civilians killed deliberately, not "collateral damage."

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    3. Feel the same about the leaders who took us into Vietnam and killed 58,000+ Americans and between 2 and 3 million Vietnamese. In my own lifetime and they would say it was for a great cause, too.

      The people who want to sacrifice Zimmerman aren't just willfully ignorant of the facts. They know the facts - the ones on TV or in the news media elsewhere know the facts. They think its "worth it" for some cause. - Karen

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  10. Poo Poo Platter (We Changed the Headline)

    Well I hate to break in late on the Lusitania, but I will never forget the Maine.

    1) "That same day, the New York Times got very excited and passed the story on to its readers, with its reporter, Lizette Alvarez, directly saying that she had heard two shots."

    Bob Somerby. This post. July 31, 2013

    2) "According to Alvarez’s report, she herself hadn’t actually heard the 911 tapes which the police had played “for the family.” On what basis did Alvarez say that two shots are “heard” on those tapes?"

    Bob Somerby July 23, 2013

    3) "Had Alvarez actually heard the 911 tapes at the time this report was written? As of yesterday, we still assumed that she had not. As of today, we aren’t sure."

    Bob Somerby July 24, 2013

    4) "In our view Alvarez'z reporting has been sensible and fair."

    Bob Somerby July 1, 2013


    We know Alvarez said she hadn't heard the tapes (2). Even though we said she said she said she hadn't heard the tapes we are confused whther she did or not (3) perhaps because we know she said she heard two shots (1). To be sensible and fair she must have been an earwitness to the shooting herself! (4)

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  11. Another interracial homicide with a self-defense plea. In this case, the shooter is black and the victim is white.

    http://www.capitalgazette.com/news/for_the_record/new-jersey-police-officer-indicted-with-first-degree-murder-in/article_7c6441b3-0cdd-5b05-a91b-1fc440340fb2.html

    I'm thinking that shooting the victim 3 times will make it difficult for a self-defense plea to work.

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    1. Good find David in Cal. Perfect fit for a Trayvon-Zimmerman thread.

      Let's see. The black guy was the shooter. He was an off duty cop in a car with his family chased and allegedly run off the road by the white victim who was suffering from road rage.

      What does this tell us about American justice? In this case, police immediately charged the shooter with the same offenses it took a national outcry, several weeks, and a special prosecutor to bring against the White Hispanic Zimmerman. The black defendant was held in jail for several days. Obviously his
      wife did not bring him fresh clothes and take him home to his bed that night so he could get sleep before taking the police investigators on a walk through after he got off work the next day.

      I look forward to your following this case. Let us know when you find out what the victim bought at the convenience store and what the results of the lab tests of the victim and his passenger's blood show.

      Meanwhile I will file it as another case where people who had no business getting out of their cars with guns prove that nothing good comes of such acts.

      rick

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    2. rick -- Please re-read the report. You got the races backwards. The incident began when Walker "the black guy" cut in front of Harvey "the white guy" and forced him onto the shoulder.

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    3. No, Davbid in Cal. I read the article correctly. The indident began with the police officer allegedly cutting off the other driver, forcing that driver to avoid a collision by swerving to the shoulder. He then followed the officer in a rage, almost colliding with him and forcing the officer, his wife, and children off the road, according to the officer. The white guy's car was way in front. He got out and doubled back to the officers car. In fear of his life and for his family, the officer identified himself as a policeman then blasted the creepy cracker to a place where he met his maker. It was God's will.

      What???? You're not taking the side of the guy with the gun this time? You're saying a thug following your family, forcing them off the road, stopping and doubling back is not life threatening? You're saying you don't believe this officer this time like you did Detective Serino? Could it be because the guy with the bullet in him is.....

      rick

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  12. Poo Poo Platter (We Changed the Headline)

    So the big pile of poo on this posting's platter is the dire consequences of lawyer lies. Let's list them. No, let's let Bob do that for us (note that I have added numbers to his words for later reference):

    "In this case, the lawyers did those things... their conduct was extremely bad, and it has had wide-ranging consequences:

    1)Terrified parents have terrorized children about the ways they might be killed, just for buying some candy. 2) The jurors are forced to hide from the public, ....3)Reports have appeared of beatings offered in retribution for the Zimmerman verdict. If someone ends up getting killed—and obviously, that could happen—"

    1) Bob has heaped up three examples of parents talking of their reactions to this case with their children. In none of them would I say "terrified' was the proper adjective to use by anyone other than a crank more hysterical than any parent he describes. In none of them are children described as terrified to buy candy, though some are upset about the prospect of being viewed as suspects for "walking about." Of course Bob further describes one goofy mother's tale as sadism.

    2) Where's Waldo? Where are the reports of hiding jurors? I can't link to any. I can link to three TV appearances and a public letter. They have, as is their right, remainined anonymous. Zimmerman is in hiding, but there have been sightings of him at a faster pace than Elvis after he left the big building.

    3) Reports, Bob? Plural? Were there two, three, or four? Only one? And you do know that one report from one witness was like the witnesses who heard "two gunshots in Sanford" or heard "the boy on the bottom" scream." It was discounted as wrong by police based on what other witnesses and the victim said they heard.

    Bob, we think your work is best described in the words you use to describe the work of Ms. Alvarez. Sensible. Fair. But at times heinous.

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