My Two Cents: The Mistrial In The Walter Scott Shooting Case

Last April, here in South Carolina, Walter Scott was pulled over in North Charleston because he had a broken taillight. A few minutes later, Officer Michael Slager shot Walter Scott in the back as the man was running away. Slager tried to claim it was self-defense but, thanks to the cell phone video of bystander Feidin Santana, Michael Slager was arrested for the killing, and subsequently fired. 

But, before he was fired, Michael Slager spoke with a senior officer who told him what to do and what to say in the coming days; the audio recording of that session begins with Slager asking, "What happens next?":

“Once they get you there, we’ll take you home. Take your crap off, take your vest off, kind of relax for two or three [days]. It’ll be real quick. They’re gonna tell you you’re gonna be out for a couple of days and you’ll come back and they’ll interview you then. They’re not going to ask you any kind of questions right now. They’ll take your weapon and we’ll go from there. The last one we had, they waited a couple of days for an official interview — to sit down and say what happens."

Seriously; a man, yes, a police officer, shoots and kills an unarmed man in the streets and he will not be interviewed for a few days? Think of this in reverse: had Walter Scott shot and killed Officer Slager would he be given a few days to think about his story before a police interview? Then Slager’s supervisor goes on:

"By the time you get home, it would probably be a good idea to kind of jot down your thoughts on what happened. You know, once the adrenaline quits pumping."

And Michael Slager, who has just killed a man, laughs:

“Oh yeah, it’s pumping.”

This week Michael Slager’s trial ended with a hung jury; one holdout could not make up his mind about whether or not Slager had the right to shoot Walter Scott.

One juror listened as the story unfolded ...

On April 4, 2015, Officer Michael Slager stopped Walter Scott for a broken brake light. Video from Slager's dashcam shows him approaching Scott's car, speaking to Scott, and then returning to his patrol car. 

Walter Scott then exited his car and began to run; Slager raced after him.

In a parking area the two men scuffled and Slager claims Scott "resisted arrest". Slager fired his Taser, hitting Scott who still managed to start running again.

When Walter Scott was nearly twenty feet away, Officer Slager took out his gun and fired eight rounds at him; Walter Scott was struck a total of five times.

Immediately after the shooting, Slager radioed a dispatcher, stating, "Shots fired and the subject is down. He grabbed my Taser.”

But, again, when Slager fired his gun, Scott was about twenty feet away and fleeing; but Slager still claimed he feared for his life because Scott had taken his Taser, and that he shot Scott because he "felt threatened" ... by a man running away from a broken taillight traffic stop.

Luckily, Feidin Santana had recorded a cellphone video of the incident. At first he kept the video to himself, out of fear of retribution, but he grew angered while reading Officer Slager’s account and realizing it was very different from what he’d seen.

Santana said that after a struggle in which Slager deployed his Taser, Scott was "just trying to get away from the Taser," and that before he started recording, he observed that Slager "had control of the situation"; Santana also maintains that Scott "never grabbed the Taser of the police. He never got the Taser."

Santana also claims that, after the shooting, after Scott was shot and had fallen to the ground, Slager approached him, repeatedly instructed him to place his hands behind his back, and handcuffed him, leaving him face down on the ground.

He never performed CPR; he never checked to see if Scott was alive; he left the man face down on the ground.

Santana’s video shows Slager going back to where the initial scuffle began and picking something—allegedly the taser—off the ground and carrying it over to Walter Scott’s body where he dropped it on the ground; at trial Slager says he did bring his taser over to Scott’s body because he was just “gathering” his gear.

One juror listened as that story unfolded ... and said he or she could not make a decision.

Look, I wasn’t there; I wasn’t on the jury; I don’t know all of the facts. But I do know that a man was gunned down in the street, an unarmed man, while running away from what would have amounted to a Fix-It ticket.

And I do know that that Slager shot Walter Scott five times as Scott ran away, when Slager, who’d spoken to Scott, apparently gotten his information, had his license plate number, could have just let him go and, perhaps, a warrant would have been issued for Scott’s arrest.

And I know, because Michael Slager admitted to it’ he said that the taser Walter Scott allegedly grabbed, was picked up off the ground and carried twenty feet to Scott’s body and set down beside the dead man.

Now, Slager might have been gathering his gear and he might have been strengthening his story that Scott had tried to grab the taser; and that might have worked were it not for the video.

And I know that Walter Scott is not an innocent; he shouldn’t have run; he shouldn’t have fought with the officer; but he was not a threat when he was gunned down ... he was unarmed and running away.

But in America, in some places, with some police officers, that warrants shooting a man in the back five times.

Prosecutors say they will a new trial for Slager, and the Scott family expressed confidence that he would ultimately be convicted.

Slager’s lawyer had no comment.

“God is my strength, and I know without a doubt that he is a just God. Injustice will not prevail.”—Judy Scott, Walter Scott’s mother.

And hopefully a retrial will have all jurors listening to the facts.

NYT

NCRM

The First Two Days Of Kathryn Knott's Trial For Gay Bashing Were Brutal ... For Her

Y’all remember Kathryn Knott, the ALLEGED gay bashing daughter of a local police chief who is accused of using offensive slurs and physically assaulting a gay couple in Philadelphia in September 2014. Her two accomplices, Philip Williams and Kevin Harrigan, took a plea deal, but Know wanted her day in court and she’s getting it.

“You dirty fucking faggot. Is that your fucking boyfriend? Fucking faggot, fucking faggot, fucking faggot.”

That’s how Assistant D.A. Allison Ruth opened her case against Knott, recalling what witnesses say Kathryn Knott said to Andrew Haught and Zachary Hesse while they walked down a street.

And that was before she ALLEGEDLY physically assaulted Haught. Knott is charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and conspiracy.

Though Knott wasn’t responsible for the worst of the punches, Ruth said, she did “run toward the fight” and “she threw punches.”

Those punches ultimately resulted in one of the victims, Andrew Haught, having his eye socket broken and his jaw shattered. Then Ruth played the video showing the attack, followed by sharing a series of tweets grabbed from Knott’s now defunct Twitter page:

@krisssstenxoxo the ppl we were just dancing with just turned and mafe [sic] out with eatch [sic] other #gay #ew

jazz flute is for little fairy boys

My cab driver starting shouting some jihad shit so I starting singing America the beautiful #merrica.

@g0_nads he’s gonna rip me today for my hair..just wait. #dyke

this camo song is gay like all the other brad paisley songs

Then it was Knott’s attorney, Louis Busico’s turn, and he started off with a bang, putting his foot in his mouth by saying:

“At no point in time will one of the [prosecution’s] independent witnesses say she touched a soul.”

Oops; because later that same day an eyewitness actually said, on the stand and under oath, that Kathryn Knott did punch one of the victims and, afterwards, her friends all cheered. But Buscio also claimed that the “vile language” came not from Knott bit from her two cohorts in the attack. He then said she should not be made to pay for the actions of others — though why it's acceptable, if you believe Buscio or Knott, that she simply stood there with her friends and watched two men being beaten in the street and did nothing — and ended by calling her a “a wonderful human being.”

On Day Two it got even worse for Kathryn Knott. A bloody shirt was shown on the stand. One juror actually had to leave the courtroom after seeing photos showing the victims' injuries. And one of the victims testified.

Andrew Haught told jurors his face was broken in several places, and identified Knott as one of the attackers, saying,

"The girls especially were really intense, which I was really surprised about."

He went on to say his jaw had to be wired shut for eight weeks as a result of the attack, in which he says, Kathryn Knott participated.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, an eyewitness, Michelle Moore testified that she saw the fight and stayed until police arrived:

"One [of the men] was on the ground with blood. I thought he was dead. The other was stumbling around like he was looking for something."

Knott’s attorneys then took Moore to task over discrepancies about the color of Knott’s dress that night. Moore testified that a [blonde] woman was punching a man on the ground. … It looked like she had a whitish and black dress."

Buscio says Haught had previously had testified that Knott was wearing a white dress.

That’s some discrepancy, though how it negates the fact that both Haught and Moore say Kathryn Knott was personally involved in the fight makes little sense. I mean, Andrew was being beaten by these three gay bashers and he’s expected to remember the dress exactly?

The trial continues this week and that “wonderful person” might be in for a rude awakening and some jail time.

LGBTQ Nation

6 ABC News

Pedophiles, And Their Protectors, On Trial

Last week I posted about the defrocked priest, Edward Avery, who changed his plea in a child molestation trial to guilty and said the Catholic Church knew he raped boys and did nothing about it; original post HERE.

Well, the trial of a couple of his, um, cohorts, began this week and jurors are getting an earful about the priest-turned-pedophile and another priest who allegedly bragged about having sex with three boys in one week.

Bragged.

Monsignor William Lynn
Pedophile protector

Monsignor William Lynn is on trial for child endangerment and conspiracy, and holds the distinction of being the first Roman Catholic Church official in the U.S. charged for his handling of priest-abuse complaints. Prosecutors say he helped the church bury them in secret files, far from the prying eyes of investigators, civil attorneys and concerned Catholics.

That's sick enough, but even more disgusting, and more damning--in every sense of the word--are the internal church memos, read aloud by a police detective, about a priest who allegedly "joked about how hard it was to have sex with three boys in one week."

And these "people" were protected by the Catholic Church.

How fun that must have been, for the Monsignor and his rag-tag group of pedophiles to joke about raping boys, and to laugh about the priest who said he had a "rotation process" of boys spending time sleeping with him.

Disgusting.

And even more disgusting are the ddefense lawyers who are arguing that Lynn tried to address the problem as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, but was blocked by the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and others in the Philadelphia archdiocese.

Hmmm, let's see, the Cardinal blocks you from addressing the problem of pedophiles raping boys in your midst, so what to do, what to do? How about calling the police? How about speaking up? Howe about doing any other thing than closing your mouth and keeping those secrets?

Monday's testimony also included a twenty-year-old complaint about a different priest who allegedly molested boys at a church-owned camp in the 60s. It seems that, back then, some counselors had complained that the priest was on the prowl at night, molesting them in their tents, and said the priest's actions were a well-known secret among the counselors for several years.

And yet, that priest remained in the ministry, working at three archdiocesan high schools and serving as assistant superintendent of Catholic schools through 2004; he molested boys as far back as the 60s and was allowed to work around boys for the next forty years.

Even sicker? In 1992, the priest was confronted after a man complained to the archdiocese, and he finally admitted his "sin"--notice how they don't call it a crime--of masturbation. Not rape, masturbation. And the church let it go, because the priest said he did nothing wrong, other than choke his chicken.

He remained in the Catholic school system until 2004, when a church panel finally reviewed the complaints against him, and decided the forty-year-old allegations were credible. It was then that priest admitted to molesting three boys, and explained earlier denials on the fact he had confessed and moved past it.

Moved past raping children. How lovely.

His punishment? The archdiocese restricted his ministry.

How many more allegations have to surface before Catholics demand action from their church leaders? How many more rape victims must come forward before good Catholics do something?

How many?

source

Casey Anthony: The Devil's Advocate?

Well, this is the watercooler story, eh?

Unless, it's the story of my sudden switch to speaking like a Canadian.

But I thought I'd give a little of my bits'n'pieces on Miss Anthony and the Trial Of The Month!!!!!

First off, she was found not guilty of murder, manslaughter, child abuse. She was found guilty of being an unrepentant liar. Most murderers are liars, but I digress.

I think the prosecution had trouble because they came up with too many theories about how Casey did it, if she had help, why she did it and where she did it. There were too many stories, too many ideas, too many possibilities, so how was the jury supposed to pick just one?

Reasonable doubt.

If you tell em she killed her kid because she was a party monster, and then tell me she killed her kid accidentally because Caylee drowned in a pool, and then tell me that maybe Caylee died from chloroform, well, that's too many theories.

They should have picked just one.

And for all you out there ranting and raving about the verdicts, well, you weren't in the courtroom every day, as were the jurors. You didn't sit through witness after witness after witness, and hear every single question and answer, and see every detail of every piece of evidence. The jurors dd that, and they didn't believe she killed her child, either accidentally or with pre-meditation.

That said.........

Please to explain how a mother can have a child just disappear for a month and not do a goddamned thing about it, be found not guilty of Aggravated Child Abuse? She neglected her child for over a month. She lied about the whereabouts and who had Caylee.

How is that not child abuse? What kind of mother misplaces her child, or lets her child wander off, or lets someone take her child, and then she goes out and drinks and parties and tattoos?

As I said on Facebook, like OJ, Casey Anthony will soon begin her "Search For The Real Killers Tour" but, unlike OJ who looked on the golf course, Casey Anthony will be looking at nightclubs and bars that offer 2-for-1 tequila shots.

She may not have killed her child, but she's guilty of abuse and neglect and being an unrepentant liar. And she'll live with that for the rest of her miserable life.