>
> Sure, but the deputy's testimony changed markedly
> over time--in ways which
> made it obvious that these were not memories but new
> constructions. He said
> early on that the assailant had grey eyes, which was
> what was on the warrant
> they were trying to serve on Al-Amin, but
> unfortunately for the prosecution
> the warrant was wrong. Later he said the assailant
> was wearing yellow-tinted
> glasses (explaining the discrepancy between the
> reported eye color and
> Al-Amin's actual eye color.) Maybe the jury knew
> that the deputy, Aldranon
> English, was making stuff up but forgave him cause
> he'd been badly injured
> and traumatized.
This is problematic, but not necessarily material.
Even if the deputy lied about the warrant and glasses,
that doesn't mean that he lied, or was even wrong,
about who shot him.
> >
> >Right, but this isn't a standard testilying case.
> "He
> >dropped the drugs right in front of me."
>
> It had its moments. For example, there was the
> shell that supposedly rode
> unmolested on the car hood on the freeway for three
> hours ('he found the
> shell right in front of me')
I'm unclear about this, there was a shell found a car hood that was supposed to have remained there while the car was driving on the freeway?
and the guns 'found' in
> the woods ('he dropped
> the guns--sorta--right in front of me').
Would you say the same about the guns found in the car with the DC snipers?
And
> English said the assailant
> fired first, while two witnesses testified they
> heard pistol fire before the
> assault rifle (nobody argued that the assailant used
> the small gun at first.)
That's nothing, anyone might be confused in the circumstances, much less someone who had been wounded.
>
> I think they successfully made the case that he had
> something to do with it,
> and may have known who did it, but *not* that he was
> the shooter.
As I say, you know more than I do. But depending on how much of something he had to do with it, it might not matter if he was the shooter. You can bve guilty of a crime under accompliance liability, e.g., conspiracy, aiding and abetting, felony murder (not applicable here, maybe), though not for just knowing who did it.
> >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.
>
> He denied it in the press before the trial.
That's not evidence, as you know.
It was
> implied that he didn't
> take the stand because he didn't want to give
> information that might lead to
> the prosecution of another person. Which would be a
> pretty strong
> moral-political stand, if you're the victim of a
> frame-up, to not reward the
> frame-up machine that's doing you.
I don't understand your point.
Indeed, some guy
> in Colorado confessed to
> the shooting and then retracted the confession-sort
> of.
Phiny confessions are a dime a dozen.
Of course, the
> police didn't spend a minute on the idea that the
> assailant might NOT be
> Al-Amin, despite three 911 calls about a bloodied
> person or persons wandering
> around the West End area later the night of the
> shoot-out.
Generally when they think they have a case, the go with it. As I say, the guns they found were pretty damning.
>
> If it was Al-Amin, or Al-Amin and someone else, in
> my view it had to be the
> product of some kind of provocation, such as he was
> told someone was coming
> to kill him. Or, as the two witnesses said they
> heard, the cops fired first.
Well, the latter would be self-defense, not provocation. As for the first, being told that someone is coming to kill you isn't provocation, and outside the wild west, isn't an excusze for killing them first.
> Sure, the prosecution and defense agreed not to
> introduce Al-Amin's previous
> record or politics, nor the history of police
> harassment. To that extent,
> Carrol's right, the defense chose a non-political
> trial, very much in keeping
> with everything I've heard and read about Al-Amin's
> current views. And
> without the political history, a juror would
> naturally wonder why the cops
> would go to all the trouble of framing him.
Right, a bad idea if his theory of defense was a frameup.
In the
> only phase where the
> political history was mentioned, sentencing, the
> jury backed off from the
> guillotine.
>
We don't know why, of course.
> >Too damn bad, guilty or not.
>
jks
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