>
> >So why then did the jury take a different view?
> >
> >
> >Brad DeLong
>
> They believed the surviving cop, although his
> testimony contradicted itself.
Not unusual with survivors of traumatic events.
> Juries tend to believe cops if they have no direct
> experience with how cops
> lie on the stand.
Right, but this isn't a standard testilying case. "He dropped the drugs right in front of me."
To acquit you'd have to believe
> the guns were planted and
> the defense suggested that but was not really able
> to make a strong enough
> case for it.
Yeah, you have to be able to prove that. the guns were pretty overwhelming evidence, the cop's testimony aside.
There was a lot of veiled
> Muslim-bashing (to a mostly black
> mostly Christian jury). There were no other
> suspects, and the general
> feeling that 'someone must pay.'
But the case was a lot stronger than that.
Al-Amin didn't
> take the stand and that
> didn't help.
It's virtually impossible, at least in federal court, for a criminal defendant to be completely acquitted unless he takesthe stand and says convincingly, "I didn't do it." And generally not even then. Mostly because it isn't convincing.
What makes this case so odd is that it's hard to see the defendant's motivation--that's not an element, but he'd have to have gone nuts to do something like that. He wasn't your usual lowlife cop killer. That's why it seems that he should have been innocent. But to believe that in the face of the evidence of the guns, you have to believe that the guns were planted. The cops are not above that, as we know too well here in Illinois, but it's hard to accept on merely a priori grounds.
Too damn bad, guilty or not.
jks
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