One can never underestimate the willful stupidity of an American grand jury, but Slate was compelled to point out that Witness #40 was not explicitly presented as a reliable source:
A Smoking Gun piece posted Monday reveals the identity and checkered past of “Witness 40,” who likely lied while testifying to the Darren Wilson grand jury that Michael Brown charged Wilson “like a football player” just before he died. The Smoking Gun writes that Sandra McElroy’s testimony is “baked into the narrative of the Ferguson grand jury”; Gawker covered the Smoking Gun story by describing McElroy as “Darren Wilson’s key witness.” But while McElroy’s “like a football player” line has been repeated a number of times on Fox News, testimony transcripts themselves indicate that it’s unlikely that McElroy’s account was taken seriously by grand jurors…
Indeed, a review of the grand jury documents released by St. Louis County shows that McElroy’s account was questioned openly and extensively by authorities. Grand Jury Volume 15 includes her Oct. 23 testimony in front of the grand jury, as well as a transcript of a recording of an Oct. 22 interview between McElroy and a federal prosecutor that was played for jurors. The federal prosecutor tells McElroy that her account of driving through Ferguson is physically impossible, informs her that her car can’t be found in any images from the scene, solicits an admission that she “used the N-word” online a half-dozen times in relation to Brown’s death, and asks her explicitly if she used media accounts to fabricate parts of her testimony. McElroy speaks about having memory problems in both the recorded interview with the federal prosecutor and the in-person interview in front of the grand jury, and tells both the federal prosecutor and the jury that she suffers from largely untreated bipolar disorder. In McElroy’s Oct. 23 testimony, the grand jury prosecution picks skeptically at her claim to have come across the Wilson-Brown encounter—which did not take place on a main road—after getting lost while trying to find a friend’s apartment. (And, to repeat, the federal prosecutor’s skeptical interview with McElroy was played for grand jurors that day as well.)…
More details at the link. There’s a good argument that Witness #40 had no more business being called in front of the jury than one of my little dogs, but the prosecutors were at least self-protective enough to get the obvious objections to her befuddled phantasies on the permanent record… while, of course, giving Fox News the opportunity to further embroider its HULKING BLACK CRIMINAL ATTACKS narrative.
lol
Was it Witness 10, who also backed up Wilson’s version of events, that turned out to run a white supremacist blog?
Omnes Omnibus
Even a “put everything in front of the grand jury” strategy requires a filter. Putting this “testimony” in front of the grand jury means that any filter was absent or that the filter was designed in a particular way.
Steeplejack
All of which
begsraises the question: what possible justification could be given for putting this woman in front of the grand jury at all?satby
@Steeplejack: I think the technical name for that would be “baffle them with bullshit”
ItAintEazy
@lol: I dunno, but Witness # 10 DID change his story—apparently a huge problem if it’s a witness statement against Wilson, according to McCullough.
smintheus
@Steeplejack: Exactly; she was a lunatic and proven liar. I think she was introduced so the prosecutor could portray himself as even handed. All his attacks on credibility otherwise were directed against witnesses who posed a problem for Wilson’s defense. So the prosecutor introduced a whackadoodle nobody would have believed anyway, knocked her testimony down, and got to claim he was just calling them like he saw them.
Violet
I’ve heard a coule of law experts express their disappointment and even disgust with the way the prosecutor handled this case. Said he didn’t live up to his responsibilities as a lawyer and prosecutor. Not sure his reputation is going to be that good in his professional community. Politically is another story.
kc
I do not understand this. Why would the prosecution present all that horseshit to the grand jury? What was the point?
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: @kc: Back while the grand jury in session, I encouraged cynics (or realists, as they call themselves) to wait for the result. The result came. The prosecutor had no interest in actually pursuing an indictment. It is the only conclusion that I can come to.
Mike J
Related?
Pro-lifers more likely to approve of torturing people to death.
patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/12/16/torture-poll-demonstrates-quantifies-depravity-of-pro-life-…
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J: The sanctity of life begins at conception and ends at birth, after all.
Wag
@Major Major Major Major:
This.
? Martin
@kc: Cowardice. By dumping everything on the grand jury, the DA can both avoid having to push for a prosecution and has cover when the grand jury declines to prosecute because nobody can claim he cherry picked information in the favor of the police.
Basically he avoids having to do his job or get blamed for doing it badly. Hasn’t entirely worked out that way, but he probably thought it would.
cthulhu
It really does seem like a big waste of the grand jury’s time to even present her ramblings. I can’t see any reason how this isn’t an ultimately self-serving gambit on the part of the prosecutor as others have noted above.
Alison
@Major Major Major Major: As the great George Carlin put it, “If you’re pre-born, you’re fine. If you’re pre-school, you’re fucked.”
? Martin
@Alison: No way to get bootstraps on a fetus. Infant, however…
Ruckus
And it has done nothing to discourage those who think the police never do anything wrong, especially when black people are involved. And because the situation is now over in their minds because the grand jury acquitted Wilson, because of all the testimony that stated Brown charged him. And this is exactly how a friend explained it after getting all his info from TV news. His question to me was, why would they, including Wilson, lie?
trollhattan
O/T In its many decades has CSPAN ever had mama call in to upbraid two of their scrappin’ commentators?
Must see teevee.
Mike in dc
Witness 10 should also be subjected to heightened scrutiny. They changed their story from the first interview to grand jury testimony.
TheMightyTrowel
OT. Just found out I won an annual teaching award and am now $3000 richer. Go me!
Alison
@TheMightyTrowel: Go you, indeed! Awesome :)
Steeplejack
@TheMightyTrowel:
Congratulations!
Villago Delenda Est
There are fuckheads here in Oregon who think that Witness #40 is the ONLY reliable witness to appear before the Grand Jury, save Darren Wilson himself, who obviously has no reason to lie.
Damn, we need selective meteor showers.
AxelFoley
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, we told you, Omnes. We’ve seen this movie before and the ending is always the same.
Usually, I’m with like you with the wait and see part. But I knew this was gonna be some bullshit from jump and was not let down, sad to say.
Amir Khalid
@TheMightyTrowel:
All right! Go you!
Tree With Water
The charade played out by the Ferguson grand jury is typical of the various legal oppressions that gave birth to the Civil Rights movement. And the legal assault on the gains of that movement by the republican party’s bagmen on the Supreme Court has insured the reemergence of Jim Crow justice. Same fight, different cast, different decade.
PurpleGirl
@TheMightyTrowel: Awesome. Congratulations!
dopey-o
@Villago Delenda Est:
Just send an asteroid. Large, fast and heavy. I think the results of the experiment are obvious, dismal and discouraging.
mickDick
like cokie roberts said, “it’s out there.” so the prosecutor got the testimony “out there” in front of the grand jury, and covered his/her ass by raising a few credibility issues. and the rubes selected for jury duty, probably 3 out of 5 of these critical thinkers believed witness 40.
nice moves, prosecutor.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mike J: If you embrace Calvinism with it’s everyone who isn’t rich is EVIL philosophy then stuff like this follows.
gvg
Juries and grand juries can be instructed to ignore what they have just heard but for humans its actually kind of hard to do. You can try. I am sure it’s better from a justice standpoint for the jury to never hear the false or irrelevant info. For several informants to be giving such blatant false info has to have a distorting effect. Juries are only human.
Besides casting doubt in some testimony that they still were allowed to here isn’t quite the same as being told flat out that it was a lie and should be disregarded.
If you start hearing several clearly false stories…..my reaction would probably be trending towards disbelieving all of it….sort of like reading the news these days. I am sure it would make it harder for jurors to fairly evaluate the evidence. No action might be the result which works out for Officer Wilson.
The only good news is since this wasn’t a trial and he hasn’t been charged, it’s not impossible that it still could happen in the future. I am afraid a trial now would get him off and that would mean no future charges. I don’t like it though.
JDM
And why exactly is Witness #40 not going to be charged with perjury? Or obstructing the law, or whatever?
dmbeaster
Lawyers have a duty not to present perjured testimony. This is frequently an issue for prosecutors, and this guy clearly ignored it in favor of having someone support Wilson’s story. It was a serious violation to present this witness at all. Plus he did not then reveal all of the information that gives rise to the conclusion that she is a liar — including her history of doing exactly this — fabricating testimony for big cases, and her history of mental illness that caused this behavior. He pretty clearly enabled perjured testimony.
But there is another aspect to this rule. How do you know whether or not someone is lying — you never know for sure, and there is no way to get someone else to decide for you that someone is lying so that you know you cannot call them as a witness. By definition, the attorney has to make this call on his own, and cannot just pretend that he does not know whether or not the witness is lying, and let the jury figure it out. There is no plausible justification for putting this known perjurer on the stand to present perjured testimony, other than the obvious one to provide cover for Wilson’s bullshat.