6 Baltimore officers charged; Freddie Gray's death ruled homicide

[Darrell KSR]

http://bit.ly/1EVH38O

[suncat05]

Not sure the DA of Baltimore has anywhere near enough evidence to convict.

[CitizenBBN]

Not sure the DA of Baltimore has anywhere near enough evidence to convict.

From the little bit I have seen there isn't much case so far. For negligence and thus manslaughter maybe, but nothing that indicates a homicide charge. given the charge of false imprisonment for a call on whether a knife was legal or not it seems she's reaching.

[blueboss]

She lit the fuse.


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[CitizenBBN]

She lit the fuse.


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Yep. when they aren't convicted they'll wish all they had was the riots they saw last week. She'd better put manslaughter on the list of options or she may not get anything, and all heck will break loose.

[suncat05]

I agree with CBBN, although I'm not sure there is much more here than a departmental policy violation.

[Darrell KSR]

From the little bit I have seen there isn't much case so far. For negligence and thus manslaughter maybe, but nothing that indicates a homicide charge. given the charge of false imprisonment for a call on whether a knife was legal or not it seems she's reaching.

I won't profess to follow it much, but I don't recall anything this skimpy before. Certainly looks like a political string being pulled at best.

Put another way--if Joe Q. Citizen were being charged with a homicide based on that (I started to say flimsy, but in reality, it's non-existent) evidence, there would be a public outrage.

At best, it looks to me like a civil case. At best. Did they have a duty to properly restrain him; did they breach that duty causing his death, etc.?

[jazyd]

If Alan Dewshwitz, the Harvard Law prof, says there isn't a case and he is as liberal as it gets, then there isn't one.
Her biggest campaign contributor is the lawyer for the family. Her husband is the city alderman for the district the young man lived in. Too many 'strings' on this one.
Certainly isn't racial, half the cops are black

[suncat05]

There's a lot of questions to be asked here, and most of those questions don't have anything to do with the deceased. JMHO.

[suncat05]

Just saw an article that said that she acted on the initial police report. What the heck? No investigation by her state police investigator, no call for a Grand Jury, no follow-up reports by detectives or the coroner...........hmmmmm........I think I smell some failure to allow due process, and I don't know how many civil rights violations.........AGAINST HER! I'm just sayin'...... :533:

[CitizenBBN]

suncat I see years of lawsuits and such over this, including some suits against her and the city by these officers and the police union.

This sure looks a lot like Chicago, where the ruling party is so interconnected they border on incest, and here we see a prosecutor that is closely linked to the family taking actions way out of step with normal procedure.

I have this feeling they plan on coming out with these "charges", then slowly backpeddling as they "investigate" and "build their case", and hope they can let this thing lose steam politically and not cause another riot when they let everyone off with far less penalty.

A dangerous game to say the least. It's tricky when the people you've spent 60 years subjugating get all uppity based on the very lies you used to subjugate them. You can't tell them they aren't victims when you've been training them to reflexively think that way for 4+ generations. So you have to go "get" whoever victimized them, otherwise they a) wont' vote for you, and even worse b) may wake up and realize they've been sold a bill of goods to keep them dependent and voting for the same oligarchy.

[suncat05]

Yes, I agree, this looks EXACTLY like Chicago. I also fully agree with each of your other statements too.

Honestly, at worst, all I really see here is a failure to follow departmental prisoner transport policy, but I'm not sure that can be upheld either, as the stated policy was a new policy, and it was only implemented the day before this happened. The policy before was optional, depending on the attitude of the prisoner. The new policy, which as I said, was just enacted the day before this incident, may very well not have been known about by any of the officers involved. That said, it's not likely that you can discipline any officers with any severity over something they did not know about. Ignorance of THE LAW is one thing, but an internal departmental policy is something else completely different.
Not making any excuses here for anyone, just saying that you can't work within the framework of departmental policy if you do not know the rules. And the rules change all the time, depending on who in your agency has the authority to administer policy changes. Also, there could be several reasons why any of these officers did not know about the change in policy: 1)an officer was out of work due to being ill; 2)away at training; 3) on vacation; 4)coming off of days off; 5)change of shifts. There could be other reasons as well, so there are several valid reasons why they could not have known about that change in policy. JMO.

[Genuine Realist]

There are manslaughter theories, particularly involuntary manslaughter, that are in the ballpark. Murder 2 is quite a stretch.

We shall see. That's why we have trials.

[Doc]

This whole thing was in part an attention grab. Sure, a person died so I don't mean to minimize that but the attention of Ferguson only meant that Baltimore wanted their moment in the limelight as well. If Ferguson can riot, so can we. Now it seems like a competition to see who can riot the most and who can FORCE the most "punishment" unto the police.

[dan_bgblue]

All 6 indicted by a grand jury (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/05/21/officers-indicted-in-death-freddie-gray/?intcmp=latestnews)

[suncat05]

The burden of proof in this case is enormous. And I am still not sure there is much more than violation of departmental regulations. JMO.

[Darrell KSR]

Grand jury indictment is a long way from a criminal trial.

It does put the D.A.'s office in an awkward position. From what little I know, there's little evidence of criminal guilt, at least among the more serious charges. But the grand jury indictment, I suppose, will put political pressure on the D.A.'s office to prosecute--or else. We live in a political world....

[KeithKSR]

Grand jury indictment is a long way from a criminal trial.

It does put the D.A.'s office in an awkward position. From what little I know, there's little evidence of criminal guilt, at least among the more serious charges. But the grand jury indictment, I suppose, will put political pressure on the D.A.'s office to prosecute--or else. We live in a political world....

The overcharging will be detrimental to the prosecution, IMO.

[Darrell KSR]

Grand jury indictment is a long way from a criminal trial.

It does put the D.A.'s office in an awkward position. From what little I know, there's little evidence of criminal guilt, at least among the more serious charges. But the grand jury indictment, I suppose, will put political pressure on the D.A.'s office to prosecute--or else. We live in a political world....


The overcharging will be detrimental to the prosecution, IMO.

Yes, they are in a very awkward position. If there's no political element to it, they don't prosecute this one, IMHO. Prosecution generally takes cases that are much more cemented in fact and law. They'll plead the others, or even dismiss (as they should). I would be very irritated if I were in the prosecutor's office with this case.

[DanISSELisdaman]

The only way there will be a verdict of guilty of murder in this case, is for the jury to be rigged IMO.

[CitizenBBN]

The only way there will be a verdict of guilty of murder in this case, is for the jury to be rigged IMO.

Based on my observations of Baltimore, that doesn't seem like much of a problem.

It's a dirty city politically. Rep. Cummings hails from there and you won't find a more politically driven, money driven, graft driven guy on the Hill. OK, a few, but he's right up there. From what I've seen the whole city is like that, which happens whenever one party runs the show without opposition for decades (either party).

[suncat05]

Based on my observations of Baltimore, that doesn't seem like much of a problem.

It's a dirty city politically. Rep. Cummings hails from there and you won't find a more politically driven, money driven, graft driven guy on the Hill. OK, a few, but he's right up there. From what I've seen the whole city is like that, which happens whenever one party runs the show without opposition for decades (either party).

Hmmmmmm............Baltimore, NYC, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, LOUISVILLE, Atlanta............I think I see a pattern here............Los Angeles, Denver, St. Louis, Kansas City.........and there's more, to be sure, where the party of progressiveness is managing quite nicely to run things into the ground, and all the while telling the people of those communities that the answer is MORE GOVERNMENT CONTROL and MORE TAXES, and for the people to "trust them" even more because they (the lying politicians) can fix it all............oh yeah, I forgot to mention the epicenter of all of this ignorance.............WASHINGTON D.C., the breeding ground of ALL stupidity.

[jazyd]

Murders are up.