(This is super-long, so please excuse me. I am venting.)
When I read Darren Wilson's testimony, it just seems weird to me.
When I read this guy, I believe him. I do think he was prepared. His attorney is Freeman Bosley, who is very active in the AA community in St. Louis and a politician, as well as an attorney. I still believe him. Witness prep is typical, not unusual, if you practice litigation. My clients are always prepped before any testimony under oath.
Here's why I believe him:
He comes off as a typical guy that you might find in that neighborhood. I believe that he had just moved to a better neighborhood from some crappy neighborhood. (Ferguson isn't the hood. It's a working class neighborhood. I went to college with kids from Ferguson. It's not far from where I grew up.) Lots of AA people move from East. St. Louis and North St. Louis to the working class suburbs like Ferguson. There is less crime and better schools.
I know from experience and from living here most of my life that St. Louis cops can be aggressive assholes. They also lie on the stand. It's practically part of their job description. We had a terrible experience in my home town with some drunk St. Louis cops harassing bar patrons and then pulling a gun on them. It ended up with one of our cops shooting one of the St. Louis cops dead.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/i...9bb30f31a.html
I also know that Mike Brown's autopsy said he was positive for marijuana. It's possible and even likely that he was high when he went to the store and stole those cigars. I knew guys in college who did similar things under the influence (1 stole a bottle of vodka after the clerk said he couldn't sell alcohol after 1 am. 1 stole an ice scraper from a gas station. 1 stole a movie poster from the front of a theater. They were idiots, but they didn't end up dead.)
So what happened? I think that Mike Brown was high and acting like an idiot. (Johnson testified that Mike Brown didn't usually act like this.) The cop reacts overly aggressively. He is cowboying the situation. Mike Brown struggles and runs away. The cop kills him because he is pissed off.
I never fully bought the story about Brown charging the cop. Who runs and then turns on a cop? Suspects run or suspects fight. They don't typically run and then turn around and fight. Who turns on a cop that is firing a gun at him under any circumstance? Nobody does that. It's a weird story.
I do believe that Brown might try to run away and then stop and act confused after getting shot. I do believe that a guy who was shot and confused could turn around and face the cop in his confusion. I do believe that a confused person who was just shot might say " I don't have a gun."
I also never bought the story about Darren Wilson being terrified of Mike Brown. They are almost the same height. Wilson has a badge and a gun. He's been a cop for some time. He is trained.
After reading Johnson's testimony and Wilson's testimony, I think Johnson's story is more likely to be true. Wilson executed that kid for struggling and running away.
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