Things that make you say hrmmmm:
After facing criticism for his handling of the Ferguson grand jury investigation, St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch may have his law license threatened.
A group headed by Dr. Christi Griffin with the Ethics Project will meet tonight to determine whether it will file an ethics complaint against McCulloch with the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, an agency of the Missouri Supreme Court.
Griffin says initial reports from the Ferguson police chief that Darren Wilson did not know that Michael Brown was suspected in an earlier convenience store robbery were changed in testimony before the grand jury, and she believes that represents perjury.
“He is the one that is allowing that perjured testimony to be presented to the grand jury, and that is a direct violation of the Code of Professional Ethics,” she says.
Griffin also contends McCulloch did not give the grand jury proper instructions – another ethics violation.
I have an idea. They could run the ethics meeting just like he ran the Grand Jury. Just throw all the information out there and let them decide. And they could only interview the people who think he has done wrong. I mean, apparently that is how you run these sorts of things.
debbie
Oh, please let this happen.
Mothra
Please, this is what I want for Christmas
kdaug
My early-Sunday-morning gut reaction? Tread carefully. There’s likely more here that we don’t know, and it smells wrong.
I’ll get back to you after I have some coffee.
TR
Fuck yes.
It’s time we had some accountability for the elite in this country.
greennotGreen
@kdaug: My grandfather often kept pigs in the field behind their house (much to my grandmother’s chagrin.) When the wind was right, the smell wafted to the house, but when she complained, he replied, “Smells like sweet perfume to me!”
That’s how the ethics investigation smells to me.
danielx
From your lips to god’s ears….
Amir Khalid
The group mentioned in the story is only sitting down to consider filing an ethics complaint against McCulloch. Presumably, the first thing they will do is work out the particulars of the complaint. Once it is filed, I hope the lawyers among us can assess the chances of success against McCullough.
Big ole hound
Business as usual for these assholes. Hang him out to dry. Missouri needs a judge or ethics committee with some balls who isn’t worried about re-election in that KKK (underground) controlled state. I’ve lived there and it is more racist than the deep South.
EriktheRed
I’m not as up on the situation as I should be, I guess.
Am I to understand that initially the grand jury was told that Darren Wilson did know about Micheal Brown stealing the cigars?
ThresherK
If I were a race car driver (which would be soooo cool) and sat in the pit for ten minutes after my crew changed my tires and topped off my fuel tank, my crew chief would attack me with an impact wrench and my sponsor would shitcan me.
Jes sayin: He was there to do one thing, and decided it wasn’t his job to do it.
Bobby B.
Like the Mafia, they take care of their own. Ever heard of the Cement Million Dollar Severance Package?
danielx
@TR:
Way past time, but elites have spent the last forty odd years working to set things up so moments of accountability are few and far between if they occur at all.
RepubAnon
After an exhaustive investigation, they’ll note that “mistakes were made” -but that the Supreme Court’s rulings make it so difficult to convict a police officer of anything that the errors did not affect the outcome.
In short, it’s only police misconduct if tactics routinely used against the rest of us are applied to things that the right wingnuts approve of. Any attempt at arresting Nevada ranchers and their armed supporters for pointing guns at law enforcement personnel, for example, would be police misconduct. Arresting members of the Occupy Movement, however, can never be deemed police misconduct regardless of the level of force employed.
MomSense
ADA Alizadeh gave jurors a statute that has been unconstitutional for 29 years which just happened to deal with cops’ use of deadly force when a suspect is fleeing.
Lawrence O’Donnell has been covering this issue since the grand jury decision was released.
rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/lawrence-odonnell-missouri-atty-general-admits-ferguson-grand-jury-was-misle…
JPL
It’s an interesting development but it won’t change anything. The only time someone was under oath was during the grand jury testimony. That didn’t help Martha Stewart but it will go a long way in protecting those in Missouri.
Omnes Omnibus
While I think McCulloch and his staff intentionally half-assed the presentation to the grand jury, I doubt that an ethics complaint is going to go anywhere.
MattF
@RepubAnon: I’d guess ‘prosecutorial mistakes were made, but they didn’t affect the outcome of the grand jury proceedings’ is the likely result of a complaint. Wilson was never going to be indicted.
Elizabelle
Read more here: mcclatchydc.com/2014/12/07/249248_obama-urges-persistence-to-combat.html?sp=/99/104/&rh=1#story…
Elizabelle
Link above has links to excerpts from Obama interview. Here’s the long one McClatchy provided:
Read more here: mcclatchydc.com/2014/12/07/249248_obama-urges-persistence-to-combat.html?sp=/99/104/&rh=1#story…
The backsliding is what has surprised me. That and the Supreme Court going all 1870s on us. It gives me anxiety to hear that any case is headed for the Roberts-Scalia Five.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s my take as well. I’d love to be wrong. No question in my mind that a poor presentation was not an accident, but it’s not clear how to craft that into a grievance.
Poopyman
@Elizabelle:
The latter is what has enabled the former. Is it all racist? That’s certainly the primary force in these cases, but I’m pretty sure they do this shit just because they can. As an aging white guy I’m not at all certain that I’m immune to winding up under a pile of cops shouting conflicting commands.
GregB
There is an obvious level of corruption with this police department. There is a reason why Wilson didn’t file a report. It was so the facts could be fixed around the story.
Were the 9/11 calls relating to this story ever released?
By the way, any chance Anonymous will get on this case?
Woodrowfan
I’m not holding my breath.
Adepsis
@Poopyman: Not immune, just less likely. The longer they are allowed to act as an occupying force the more frequently this will happen to everyone – even if relative frequencies remain constant.
ETA: i.e. The relative frequencies for different populations.
debbie
@MomSense:
Did the ADA ask Goldman Sachs for permission to use that defense?
Mike in NC
Conversely, what progress has been made in the past 50 years can be erased by Republicans in Congress and their allies in the Supreme Court. Elections have consequences.
JPL
OT, Seventy three years ago, my father was on the USS Nevada. My mother did not know his status until xmas eve when she received a post card.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
One of my thoughts was, let’s. assume for the sake of argument that Wilson did behave properly; McCulloch hack job on that Grand Jury ensured Wilson looks guilty as all hell. Not to mention if McCulloch had any sense in head he would have realized that the real issue here is the public’s perception that there is no justice and sending by Wilson to trial would have done something to ally that, even if Wilson ended up being acquitted.
samiam
Cole the one man angry mindless mob continues to masturbate over white cop on black man porn.
SatanicPanic
@Mike in NC: I don’t know about that. Society and culture doesn’t always respond to legislative action that much. SCOTUS has no army and no power of the purse. When it comes down to it its power is mostly just persuasive.
kc
That’s not going anywhere.
lurker dean
@JPL: wow, i can only imagine your mother’s anxiety waiting for news.
Renie
I thought it was odd his testimony saying he knew about the theft at the store because I was sure I heard the Police Chief initially say Wilson didn’t know at that time. I think there was even a video of the Police Chief saying this.
Can’t they also add the fact the ADA gave out wrong information on the law that said cops can shoot at fleeing felons which was in fact declared unconstitutional in the 1980s?
And if Wilson didn’t know about the theft, how can he think Brown was a felon? Or was the assumption he was a felon cuz of the scuffle at the SUV? Very fuzzy.
p.a.
@Omnes Omnibus: possibly, but if the AG department has to start shelling out cash to defend itself from civil rights/ethics lawsuits it may cut the people responsible for the suits loose, and maybe decide to deal ethically. I just don’t know how the lawsuits can target one entity to focus the pain when this shit occurs in individual cities, towns, police depts etc.
CaseyL
@JPL: It took me a moment to connect what happened to your father with today’s date.
That made me think about other “days of infamy,” and how the immediacy and power of the emotions they evoke fades with time for people who weren’t directly affected by the event.
December 7 was a viscerally-felt anniversary, one the whole country took notice of, well into the 1970s (at least). Now, the date and events are remembered, but more casually. No TV specials, no commemorative speeches, and the “anti-Jap” bitterness is long since gone.
November 22 is no longer relevant for most people; June 5 even less so.
The anniversary of MLK Jr’s assassination remains very relevant, for the heartbreaking reason that his work remains undone and his dream unrealized – more so today, as we regress in matters of race.
But mostly, “days of infamy” have a shelf life measured in the passing of the people who remember them most clearly and personally.
On one hand, I think that’s good: society moves forward and gives up (some) grudges and bitterness as it goes.
On the other hand, it’s sad. Those were important times. Fractures in history, black swan events that shaped the nation and world we live in. It’s poignant to see them recede from memory as we lose the people who lived them.
ruemara
Not interesting. A blessing. A message that the justice and the law are not blind in the case that those entrusted to be it’s representatives cannot abuse their power. I sure hope so.
Bobby Thomson
The “thin blue line” argument that protects police has nothing on lawyer self-protection. The most he gets out of this is an admonishment.
max
@p.a.: possibly, but if the AG department has to start shelling out cash to defend itself from civil rights/ethics lawsuits it may cut the people responsible for the suits loose, and maybe decide to deal ethically.
They can file an ethics complaint, but if the bar in Missouri is anything like the bar in Texas (and I’ll bet it is), it’s hard to get a lawyer disbarred for active malpractice or actual crimes, much less get a prosecutor disbarred for anything related to his official duties. If McCulloch was actively trolling for gay male prostitutes while high on meth, he’d be in (some) trouble. More trouble than he’ll get over Wilson.
Lawsuits are much the same. All these exonerations that have occurred over the last decade have spawned an endless number of lawsuits and payouts (as have many cases of police misconduct) and … nothing happens. The relevant municipal authorities pay out the case, slow-walking and bitching the entire way and then write off the lawsuit as an accident or something. Even if there is actual prosecutorial misconduct.
What works is DOJ lawsuits that result in consent decrees. Those have an effect because the presiding judge winds up overseeing the entire department and *then* cases of actual misconduct are addressed immediately instead of being dragged out for years.
It’s all pretty disgusting but that’s the way the Supreme Court has set it up.
max
[‘You’d almost think the Supremes see themselves as the uh, Supreme law of the land, and are thus very intolerant of lese-majeste.’]
lamh36
OT…so the other day D Rose wore a #ICantBrea the warm up shirt at the NBA pregame warmup. The majority of the rxn has been good for DRose.
So thus journo, who apparently, reports on DRose and NBA tweeted the following:
Now let’s get him the bebefit of the doubt (as we always seem to do for white folk) and just maybe he thinks DRose is a dumb jock. Ok fine, but the idea that this young man from the south side of Chicago “doesn’t understand what’s he doing” is insulting and borderline racist if not in its intent, then def in its condescension.
People are rightful so, IMHO, giving him the bidness on twitter.
Also WTF does DRose have to explain any damn thing?
max
@Elizabelle: The backsliding is what has surprised me. That and the Supreme Court going all 1870s on us.
That’s the Federalist Society’s mission – to populate the benches with judges who will be ‘strict constitutionalists’ which just so happens to coincide with the ‘proper’ constitutional understanding. And they view the 1880’s as the apex of American society and legal practice.
That that era happens to coincide with the anti-Reconstruction backlash reaching full tide is… not a coincidence. After all, what they’re unhappy with is all those anti-discriminatory stuff. Which they want to overturn.
max
[‘Jerks.’]
Omnes Omnibus
@p.a.: An ethics complaint is not handled by the AG. It isn’t a lawsuit; it is a matter of professional discipline. No money is going to be shelled out by the state.
mai naem mobile
I’ve never bought that the shoplifting deal was involved. Say it’s aggravated or whatever but Michael Brown looked like an average big black guy hanging out with an average looking shorter skinnier black guy. I don’t see how/why a cop is going to go searching for that person several minutes later a ways from the original.incident and i don’t believe that the cigarillos were in Browns hand. If you stole something you’re going to shove it in your pocket not it in your hand if a cop
Villago Delenda Est
The only example the elite in this country sets is a bad example.
The higher you are in the hierarchy, the less likely you are to be punished for transgressions.
Exactly the opposite of how it should be.
FlipYrWhig
@mai naem mobile: that’s pretty much what I’ve thought too. As with Garner, the cop starts to stew because the guy gets mouthy, and he loses patience quickly (because mouthy black man is a challenge to his authority, and there are witnesses, and he has to reassert control), and it all escalates from there.
SatanicPanic
@Villago Delenda Est: yurp, they should suffer the most for fucking up
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
I have my doubts as well, in part because that “Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel” is set up mostly to police the actions of private attorneys, not public prosecutors.
Anyway, Griffin and her endeavors are worthy of support regardless.
Ruckus
@lamh36:
Also WTF does he have to explain any damn thing?
Did you really have to ask?
You hit the nail on the head, it is, as always, racism.
First thing I wrote was the following:
Another chance for this moron to gain traction with his inherent racism, which is, a black athlete can’t do anything except play the game he’s paid to, he can’t possibly be intelligent enough, he’s black.
But then I realized that no matter how I prefaced it, or explained it, it would sound condescending, not because I intended it that way but because explaining a truth that you know far, far better than I ever could will always be.
Villago Delenda Est
@CaseyL: In the aftermath of 9/11, I asked my parents, who were both fairly young people in 1941 (my dad 22, my mom 16) if the country had the same reaction on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor as it did every September 11th.
They both said no. The day was of course remembered, but the massive wallow that we’ve experienced every September 11th since 2001 did not happen.
Ruckus
OT
Why am I hearing air raid sirens at 9am Sunday morning? First I thought they stopped that decades ago, second WTF?
Suzanne
@Villago Delenda Est: Truth. The moneyed elite only encourage self-centered, self-aggrandizing, dog-eat-dog behavior, and worship of brands and logos and accumulation of material wealth as if that were more desirable than a personality, talent, hard work, sharing, or volunteerism.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
Absolutely not — because we were in an actual war, for years afterwards, there were many bad days, and we all felt the pain and sacrifice each day, unbidded, in our own hearts and homes.
CarolDuhart2
@CaseyL: It’s sad, but what has helped December 7th fade:
1) We immediately fought a war and won it.
2) Japan gave up its imperial ambitions
3) Japan and the United States not only aren’t enemies, but are trade partners.
And my impression is that Japan as time goes by, is less and less interested in reviving that era.
Suzanne
@lamh36: That’s fucking ridiculous. “Doesn’t know what he’s doing”?! What the fuck?! He knows exactly what he’s doing.
It’s really too early in this morning to hate people this much.
Going to go get a Saturnalia tree today.
burnspbesq
Link to Missouri Rules of Professional Conduct.
courts.mo.gov/page.jsp?id=707
Find the violation, if you can.
I’m generally not averse to publicity stunts, but call this what it is. Don’t pretend that it’s a serious effort to get anybody disciplined.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
My thought is, Really, you need someone to explain to you in detail why they’re upset that someone was suffocated to death by cops? What kind of empathy-free idiot are you?
burnspbesq
@samiam:
You’re just jealous of Cole, because your peepee is so small that you have no chicken to choke.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: The grievance, I would think, will allege violations of the diligence and conflict of interest provisions. Crafting a grievance that alleges those violations would not be that difficult. Proving the violations would be.
JohnK
From CNN: Dramatic arrest caught on camera Suppose this thread is dead but this story is remarkable because it shows the courage and effort these police show to arrest, unharmed, a convicted white felon brandishing a knife.
eldorado
i’ve looked, but i haven’t been able to find any testimony from the qt clerk and the police report i read is only about the video. does anyone have more info?
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: @Omnes Omnibus: From what they article says, candor toward the tribunal is another possibility.
Lurking Canadian
@Renie: The excuse is that Brown “went for his gun”. Grabbing a police officer’s gun is itself, apparently, a felony, so that’s just cause to shoot him dead in the street. Apparently.
Barry
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: “Not to mention if McCulloch had any sense in head he would have realized that the real issue here is the public’s perception that there is no justice and sending by Wilson to trial would have done something to ally that, even if Wilson ended up being acquitted.”
No, because for the Ferguson government, their constituency is the white right-wing community.
They don’t care about the black community’s perception.
Barry
@SatanicPanic: “I don’t know about that. Society and culture doesn’t always respond to legislative action that much. SCOTUS has no army and no power of the purse. When it comes down to it its power is mostly just persuasive.”
Wong, as Shelby County v. DoJ and Citizens United and Bush v. Gore clearly demonstrate.
Matt
Even money that if this gets any momentum behind it, McCulloch resigns to “spend more time with his family” and picks up a Faux Nooz gig.