NRA Board member and Motor City Madman Ted Nugent’s Facebook posting on the Grand Jury ruling on shooting of Michael Brown:
“Here’s the lessons from Ferguson America- Don’t let your kids growup to be thugs who think they can steal, assault & attack cops as a way of life & badge of black (dis)honor. Don’t preach your racist bullshit “no justice no peace” as blabbered by Obama’s racist Czar Al Not So Sharpton & their black klansmen. When a cop tells you to get out of the middle of the street, obey him & don’t attack him as brainwashed by the gangsta assholes you hang with & look up to . . .
It’s that simple unless you have no brains, no soul, no sense of decency whatsoever. And dont claim that “black lives matter” when you ignore the millions you abort & slaughter each & every day by other blacks. Those of us with a soul do indeed believe black lives matter, as all lives matter. So quit killin each other you fuckin idiots. Drive safely.”
Oooo! He’s gonna get letters.
He probably posted this because he’s low on kindling.
Leave it to Ted to cut right to the core of the matter. Although technically, I think it’s more like hundreds of thousands every year on the black abortion part. Still, if Al Gore can get away with saying the middle of the earth is ‘millyuns of duhgrees’, I can’t blame Ted for a little exaggeration.
Lot of gratuitous profanity for a Christian.
Oh come on he gets a pass, he is a (former) rock star. /sarc
Commandment #11: Thou shalt not swear?
I missed that one.
Try Ephesians 4:29.
> Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
The wholesome talk isn’t having much of an effect.
When did he start claiming to be a Christian? I don’t ever remember hearing that one.
This might make me unpopular, but I am not sure I care about that right now.
I’m a criminal defense attorney, so I am intimately familiar with how grand juries work.
The grand jury process used in the Wilson/Brown case is unlike any other I have known. The threshold for a finding of probable cause is very, very low. As a result, issuance of a true bill of indictment is very, very common.
It isn’t saying a person is guilty, it’s saying there is enough for an arrest.
This grand jury process was appropriately conducted in secret as it should be. However, given the information presented I find it troubling that no true bill was issued. It smacks of different standards being used for a police officer than would be used for the average citizen.
More importantly, though, the grand jury is not a place for the examination and cross-examination of witnesses, it is not the venue for the close scrutiny of forensic evidence by experts tendered by the prosecution and defense.
This is a case that, in my opinion, should go to trial. Everything should be transparent and a trial jury should have an opportunity to consider the evidence presented by both prosecution and defense.
Again…this process was entirely alien to my legal experience. It is troubling and it is guaranteed to decrease rather than strengthen faith in the judicial system.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-michael-brown-indictment-darren-wilson/
My fiance is an attorney (not criminal) and she expressed similar concerns to me tonight while we were talking and then she sent me this article because it explains her points very well. It is apparently not uncommon for police to not come back with a no true bill.
Which as you stated, undermines the faith in the criminal justice system and makes the relationship between prosecutors and police seem corrupt.
” It is apparently not uncommon for police to not come back with a no true bill. ”
Wow. I quadruple negative sentence! I actually had to do mathematical reduction to figure out what you were trying to say there.
“not uncommon” == “common”
“not come back with a no true bill” == “come back with a true bill”
So, I get “It is apparently common for police to come back with a true bill.”
Was that your intended meaning?
as soon as you’re past one negative in linguistics the literal meaning becomes positive, double, triple et al.
“i ain’t not never took nuthin’ from no toys is us knowhow.”
You are wrong, this sentence is not a quadruple negative.
The term “No True Bill” is not a negative modification of a term, “No True Bill” is actually a legal term,
“A No True Bill is a finding by a grand jury that there is no probable cause to decide that a crime has been committed.” -http://definitions.uslegal.com/n/no-true-bill/
The term is not, “no “True Bill” …”
The term is, “a No True Bill …”
Hence the use of “no” in “No True Bill” does not change the meaning of the sentence.
On a scale of 1 to 10 how abnormal was it? 10 being pigs taking flight…
Is it possible the entire incident was contrived for media consumption? I know it sounds crazy, but something about this case stinks much like the Trayvon Martin case. A truly abnormal grand jury would lend credence to this notion.
Former New York state Chief Judge Sol Wachtler famously remarked that a prosecutor could persuade a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” The data suggests he was barely exaggerating: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.
From the article I linked, so about a 10, less than a 1 in a thousand chance of it not happening at a federal level.
We all know that the media played up the story they way they wanted in the beginning and now they are spinning it another way in order to get clicks on their sites and viewers on their TV program. MSN has zero credibility if you have any sort of critical thinking skills, and has zero credibility on any subject.
I am wracking my brain trying to think of a case I worked on that a grand jury didn’t indict on. I honestly cannot think of a single instance where a DA presented a case and failed to get an indictment.
Like I said, this stinks. I honestly wish I could come to some better conclusion but, rationally, as an attorney, I cannot escape the conclusion that a very different process was used with specific intent.
@justamessenger, or justanotherrabblerousingleftisttroll?
well seeing as they only did the grand jury under intense pressure it’s hardly surprising the Jury decided to no bill Wilson –this obviously shouldn’t have even made it to a grand jury, but they had to appease the rabble and at least act like they might lynch Wilson with the rest of them.
Well, I know of a Grand Jury or two in Texas that “no-billed” guys for shooting cops–so yeah, GJ’s have been known to do their job on a hummer case. And in general, GJ’s are presented cases that have already essentially been made; the DA doesn’t have to present the case until he thinks all the elements are there. This was a case that was presented to the GJ because it had to be, not because the DA necessarily thought he had a case.
Normally grand juries are handled as follows:
1) Grand jury is empaneled,
2) DAs present evidence favorable to the prosecution, they don’t show everything they show enough to get the indictment,
3) The DAs don’t present exculpatory evidence, they don’t produce witnesses favorable to the defense,
4) The DAs run the show from start to finish, no judge & no defense attorneys are involved,
5) The DAs request a true bill of indictment issue on various charges,
6) In the vast majority of cases probable cause is met (since it doesn’t mean 51%, hell 30% is enough) and the true bill of indictment is issued by the grand jury and the defendant is arrested and charged.
In this case the DA presented all evidence, not just that favorable to the State, the DA did not jockey the grand jury for issuance of a true bill.
It wasn’t a trial, it was a probable cause proceeding. Probable cause is the lowest burden of proof in the criminal justice system. Probable cause is widely considered a mere ‘speedbump’ for the State to overcome, since the threshold is so low.
Assuming there were conflicts in testimony and forensics (as the DA purported in his statement) such conflicts are best resolved by a jury at trial.
I will be abundantly clear, I am not saying Brown was a saint, I am not saying Wilson is, in fact, guilty of any crime.
What I *am* saying is that the grand jury process was handled differently and less aggressively than is typical. The grand jury process was treated more like a ‘one-sided closed room trial’ than as a probable cause proceeding. It isn’t transparent and it is troubling.
The case should go to a public trial. No closed doors, no questions about which evidence was considered, which questions were asked, etc.
I mean, I am a pretty objective guy and this, to me, stinks to high heaven.
justa, as I said, IANALe, so I defer to your exxperience, and you are entitled to your opinion, but obviously this is not a “normal” case given the larger political landscape, and active involvement, in public and behind closed doors by the WH and self described Activist AG. And thats not to mention the discredited and disreputable interference on the Zimmerman witch_hunt. Now, read the last four paragrahs of the 538 article, never-mijd the lede, and tell me again, has your opinion changed at all? Given that the prosecutor released EVERYTHING what does that say about open-ness, given this prosecutor is a Democrat and past member of Obamas truth-squad?
In less heated circumstances, Wilson would have been “investigated” by his department and would never have seen a grand jury. From the start, this grand jury was a dog-and-pony show whose main purpose was to manipulate the public drama surrounding the shooting and protests. I’m not at all surprised at this outcome.
But you raise and important point, something that is a part of the street protests we’re seeing and something this is becoming an issue in other, more civilized, contexts. With implied immunity, a cozy relationship with local DA’s, judges, and politicians, police enjoy double-standards regarding violence and death that are easily and flagrantly abused in ways that are increasingly public. If Wilson had been a tire-buster at the local tire-shop he might very well be in jail, facing a murder charge because he fired “too many” rounds at Brown.
For the record, I never thought Wilson did anything but defend himself against Brown. But double-standards, especially obvious ones, are not in the best interests of America’s body politic.
I will assume (and pray) that you did not pass the Bar in MO.
There are two different ways that Grand Juries operate in MO. Grand Juries are empaneled for a period of time and hear that which the prosecutor presents. Or, which also happens, they are allowed to conduct their own investigations. When dealing solely with what the prosecutor offers, he essentially has complete control over what they see and hear. As is widely known, any prosecutor with a pulse can indict a ham sandwich.
If anything is fair and balanced, it is presenting the entirety of the evidence to the 12 jurors.
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/whats-different-about-grand-jury-process-darren-wilson-case
“What I *am* saying is that the grand jury process was handled differently and less aggressively than is typical. The grand jury process was treated more like a ‘one-sided closed room trial’ than as a probable cause proceeding. It isn’t transparent and it is troubling.”
I really have no idea how you come to this complete logic fail after laying out all the evidence to the contrary. This investigation by the GJ was presented with all the evidence, not just the usual 100% prosecution positive skew. It was a two-sided finding of fact, with actual analysis. Also, the evidence, save for the witness IDs, are readily available. If you think that some other process would have produced more “open” evidence, I have no idea what banana republic you “practice” ‘law’ in. The GJ had complete access to the entirety of the investigation.
Let’s be really honest. Had the animals not been in the streets, this would have been handled as normal. The investigation and evidence would have readily validated Wilson’s story in a matter of weeks. The prosecutor would have decided not to prosecute, and nobody outside the courts have seen any of the evidence.
It is as you said, a grand jury no billed him, which either means there’s a serious problem with our criminal justice system (there may be) or it was such a clear cut case of self defense/justified homicide that there wasn’t even enough evidence to make it to trial.
IANAL but note a real prosecuting attorney from a neighboring county is assisting the local Fox affiliate, ktvi, as they report live, on the protest and fires, cutting back and forth to witness statements from the transcript. Lots of. facts, there.
http://new.livestream.com/ktvi/live
I’d say a grand jury using any process at all is out of norm when an officer shoots someone. The DA didn’t want to charge him. The DA has a pro cop reputation -according to one of the question”ers” following the “no bill” statement. So he went through the motions of the grand jury process, presented evidence supporting his desired outcome – which is what a DA does every time.
I wasn’t there but I do not give police the benefit of the doubt. Its 2014…show me video or pictures or audio or physical evidence or it didn’t happen…there is no excuse in this day. In this case, we have the deceased blood and a bullet (complete with hole) fired from inside the police cruiser backing up the officer’s story of being attacked while in the cruiser. Even being a white guy, I can figure no better way, in 2014, to get myself killed than to run up to a police cruiser, unarmed and attack a police officer.
GJ had access to the entirety of the investigation. Good, bad, ugly. All witnesses pro and con.
This was lightyears more in depth than any “normal” GJ ruling.
agreed
There’s a multitude of actual bad shoots that require our attention and vigilance. This? This was as clear-cut a justified good shoot as one can hope for.
“More importantly, though, the grand jury is not a place for the examination and cross-examination of witnesses, it is not the venue for the close scrutiny of forensic evidence by experts tendered by the prosecution and defense.”
Says whom? Is it so terrible that potentially exculpatory evidence be presented at an earlier stage? The reality here might be that the prosecutor realized early on that he could not meet his burden of proof but knew if he unilaterally decided not to charge it would cause a firestorm. So while he still empaneled the GJ, he wanted to make sure they had all the information so as not to bias them.
Probable cause is indeed a lower standard than guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But it still requires that it be more probable than not that there was a crime and that the defendant was the perpetrator. Based on the evidence released so far I question anyone’s legal chops who thinks the no-bill was not a reasonable decision (even if you would have come down on the other side yourself).
Agreed 100%. The customary cursory investigation would have produced a ‘good shoot’ and no bill.
This eliminated the prosecutorial fudge factor. There were 12 people who saw every shred of evidence, not just what the prosecutor wanted to show to further his goal, whatever that may be. Juries are not perfect, and if you feed them a bunch of lies, they may reach a bad conclusion. But this? This was insanely over-investigated, and the results were unquestionable.
Except for the idiots who just want to believe, regardless of the facts.
A jury trial in this case should not have taken this long, start to finish. The finding was obvious before they started. All the fuss is about politics and appeasement, and the losers will be the cop and business owners in the area. I will guarantee that if the cops were given a “shoot to kill” order there would have been little protesting and no looting or burning. I say that because most of the “protesters” were actually only there to loot and burn, many didn’t know diddly about the case.
A jury trial in a case like this? Two years, minimum. Bare minimum.
So Mr. Attorney, if I find myself in the same unfortunate situation, you would support my arrest and being put on-trial for saving my own life when someone attempts to take my duty weapon? So, Officer Wilson should have just let himself be killed and all would be good, right? So, I should let myself be killed to avoid being arrested for following the letter of the law?
@gregory, that dude isn’t an attorney. He/she is a paid leftist shill.
If you are a criminal defense attorney, have you also forgotten the 1st sentence of the 5th amendment like the NBA lawyers apparently do? Are you an NBA lawyer?
Well I can’t say I always agree with uncle Ted but he is right on this. Also I would like to add that this no justice crap is crap! Innocent until proven guilty? Police or thugs, sometimes one in the same, should still be allowed a fair trial. P.S. if Mr. Brown was not reaching for the gun, why did he have powder burns on his hand?
We all get in a hurry sometimes, but I wish Mr Farago would read the headlines he writes, just once, before he hits the POST button.
Nugent doesn’t mince words and once again, he is spot on.
Is Ted right about this? Absolutely.
Is Ted eloquent about this? Not so much.
Ted has a way of.cutting through the BS, and saying it how he calls it.
Some of us may admire Ted’s candor, but those comments are not helpful to the immediate situation, the NRA, or the larger campaign to advance the second amendment. He has every right to express his opinion, of course, but an NRA Board member should be more careful with his words. I personally do not care for how his comments reflect on me as an NRA member.
I thought the same thing. While there is some underlying truth in what he said, *how* he said it and *when* he said it left much to be desired. Making poorly worded, inflammatory statements doesn’t help the immediate situation, and could hurt the pro-2A cause in the long run.
At the end of the day, the goal is to win people to our side. He failed. Miserably. And probably drove a few on the fence away.
Exactly.
agree. he may not be incorrect with his assessment, but his tone and timeing are wrong.
I think we should be more careful who we pick as board members.
The problem is that now if you do not use such language your voice is drowned out by those who do. Its a sad state of affairs where only the squeakiest wheels get attention.
I think that perhaps he should have chosen his words a smidgen different.
Right on Ted. For the record (to the trolls who claim they follow TTAG) I am an OFWG married to a beautiful black woman. With 2 large caramel colored sons. I honestly don’t care about “winning the lowlifes over”. I know more than 1 black person who claim to be NRA members. And continue to vote lock-step with the dumbocrats. And one older man at the gym said the NRA lied about Obama when they said he wanted to take your guns. So when I hear Ted speak without fear it’s OK with me. Especially about the murder of black babies. The miracle of Eugenics brought to you by Margaret Sanger, Hitler and the democrat party-with help from planned parenthood…stay locked and loaded.
It’s fairly clear that the protestors and the media are going rabid over a fairly clear cut case of self defense. Of course had this been you or I instead of a cop, well we would have driven off, but failing that, had we some how ended up in the same physical altercation with Brown and fired our gun in self defense, we would have almost certainly been indicted and it would have gone to trial.
But a larger point occurred to me today. The fomentors must pick cases in which the evidence is fairly clear that there was no wrongdoing. If, for instance Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson had chosen to agitate over the black man who was shot in a stairwell by a rookie cop in NYC recently, they would have people on both sides screaming that it was clearly negligent on the part of the officer and most of them would be declaring it to be criminally so. They MUST choose incidents like Ferguson that have plenty of exculpatory evidence for the officer involved. They must do this in order to create sides that can be pitted against each other.
There will always be some folks who believe any interaction between a white person and a black person is racist against the black person. There will always be some people from the community that are blind to the sociopathy of the individual who was shot, and will choose to see it as injustice on those grounds. On the other hand there will always be some folks who immediately assume that someone shot in a poor neighborhood is a thug and had it coming. Then there will be others who look at the evidence but not in great depth who conclude that it was most likely justified and those who look into things in greater depth who conclude the same. The readers here tend to fall into the last two groups, which is really more of a single group.
In short, the incident in question needs to have not only the right racial mix to make a good social justice poster, but also enough exculpatory evidence to produce dissenting opinions. Then since the art of civil discourse is dying in this country the resulting conflict can only serve to deepen the schism.
Remember, the news professionals today are largely activists who have been convinced that objectivity is impossible and that their job is not to inform the public but to effect change according to the progressive agenda. Not that anyone here needs reminding.
I shouldn’t have had that rockstar so late.
There have been numerous incidents where the cop’s actions were heavy handed, unnecessary, and illegal. Why didn’t they pissed then? Why did they choose to lose their collective minds on THIS case? Why has our president (Twice) stood behind a pulpit standing with the family of a criminal? I am no fan of cops and their bad eyesight, aim, lack of knowledge of the law, etc. but this case was so clearly not the one to rally around. This man was a criminal who assaulted a cop and even by the higher standard that us regular folk would be held to, it was justified. It’s a shame to waste their voice on a righteous issue with a case that just makes them look ignorant.
They can’t pick legitimate injustices because everyone would agree it’s an injustice. They have to pick cases like this to have two disagreeing sides. This way we have those who always filter any event through a social justice mindset vs. Those who look at the evidence and conclude that the shooting was most likely justified. The purpose isn’t to uncover real injustice and regret it, the purpose is to create unrest and start a race war.
Mr. Nugent’s comments posted here make my blood run cold. I have never had an interest in joining the NRA, and this can of gasoline Ted threw on the Ferguson fire ensures that I never will.
Meh,You must be allergic to the truth.
@rodalena, good. The NRA isn’t the place to be for the sick, lame and lazy nor for those weak of mind and spineless.
Ted is a kook who makes me cringe when he opens his mouth representing me as a bowhunter and gun owner. The man has the courage to speak his mind and is spot on here, however. For a more eloquent and fact based version of what Ted is trying to capture see the link (which I have used a number of times with friends and family while discussing these issues) which is an excerpt from Jason Riley’s book.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/21/family-secret-what-the-left-wont-tell-you-about-bl/
The misdirected outrage from the black community is best illustrated by the stats from Chicago. The carnage there, on a DAILY basis, should be what people should be protesting to stop.
And they are protesting as I type. Occupy city hall. Too bad they seem to only support thugs gettin shot…or if you dance for Odumbo
> racist bullshit “no justice no peace”
Since when is “No Justice, No Peace” racist bullshit?
These rants just make him look like he’s far off the deep end.
@I like cake, well…it’s been racist bullshit ever since it flowed from the mouth of Unreverend Al Notsosharpton.
Since demagogues like Sharpton are so very fond of spotting “racist code” in people’s speech, I’ll return the favor by pointing out that “No Justice, No Peace” actually means “We’ll burn your city to the ground unless we get our way, based on our unique interpretation of reality.”
For you delicate flowers who are getting the vapors from Ted Nugent’s colorful vocabulary, here’s a quote from preacher Tony Campolo that ought to provide some perspective.
“I have three things to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases caused by malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset about the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”
The point? Lives are in danger and livelihoods are being destroyed because of thugs who are consumed by hate and ignorance. That is a crisis; a few cuss words is not. Learn to pick your battles.
^1000 Political correctness and the social shaming or our language is America’s death knell
Exactly.
Previous post quote – “It smacks of different standards being used for a police officer than would be used for the average citizen.”
Exactly true. In most states, cops enjoy a wider latitude in use of force than the average citizen in statutory law. This is because we ask them to make sacrifices that you never would and to go into situations that you would run away from screaming.
Ted’s 100% right. He tells it like it is IMHO. Needed to be said.
Comments are closed.