* I’ve gotten really tired of my Canadian relatives telling me what a great human being, the murderer, “Hurricane Carter” is. Unfortunately, the Negro males, like Carter, who cause most of the chaos in the USA go through three life cycle stages: cute tyke until pubescence, atavistic, homicidal thug from then until they age out in their late thirties or forties, and a less dangerous stumble-bum old age as genetics, and a grossly unhealthy lifestyle kick in. Carter’s in that last phase so his Canadian benefactors are unlikely to ever pay the price for their moral inanity and criminal stupidity.
* As Steve has declared time and time again, The Bonfire of the Vanities is probably the most prescient and best explanation of American culture of the last 30 years. The hunt for the Great White Defendant is the goal of every career-minded prosecutor in the country.
* If I came across a gunshot victim who was still breathing it would not occur to me to give CPR. Gunshot victims are usually suffering from massive blood loss and major organ damage, soon to slip into shock. Though still breathing I don’t see how CPR can assist them in any way. If I did anything I would try and apply pressure to the obvious wounds and call for an ambulance right away. Jenkins probably assumed, correctly, that she was already a goner and there was nothing that could be done except for the ambulance to get there ASAP.
* From the article, the first two trials were held in the downtown courthouse and resulted in hung juries. The third trial was moved to Lancaster, home of the victim, and had a conviction.
Mr. Jennings was very, very unlucky and unfortunate. The LA County DA’s office went to great lengths and pulled every string to convict a man against whom there was no direct or forensic evidence.
Hank Goldberg, a member of the Simpson prosecution team, made an off-hand observation in his 1996 book, “The Prosecution Responds.” Goldberg wrote that a white defendant is easier to convict. I don’t have the page number, but it’s in the book somewhere. Something like a white defendant is less trouble.
Imagine if there had been a hung jury in the Simpson criminal trial and the retrial had been moved to Santa Monica. Jennings had his third trial moved to a less favorable location and there was no objection from Higher Courts or the media at the time.
* The girl was changing in her car and he was reluctant to get get close until he was told she’d been shot, but men can’t assume their motives for being around young women in dishabille are beyond question now. CPR is intended only for someone whose heart and breathing has stopped. I suppose you can do more harm than good if they are breathing and have spinal injuries ect, and if he thought she was alive he must have thought she was breathing, eh? The whole world has seem CSI .The husband of one of the BTK psycho victims was no 1 suspect in her murder for decades because he had untied her.
Just because you are trying to give first aid doesn’t mean you can’t be sued for a well intentioned mistake, or even for following correct procedure . I know paramedics are loathe to stop at accidents while off duty for that reason. His only mistake was being loose mouthed around the police and letting them keep him talking about the case for hours. If your wife goes to your trial for killing a girl changing in a parking lot and testifies you were an unfaithful husband, it’s Goodnight, Vienna.
* It strikes me as a major systemic problem that the innocent would have anything at all to fear from talking to the cops. Is this phenomenon found around the world?
* I watch a lot of TV true crime shows, and I’d say about 5% of the cases they televise seem to be people who are convicted on completely inadequate evidence. People seem to get convicted on evidence like “he was a weirdo acting weird, and had opportunity, plus the victim and he disliked one another” not too terribly infrequently. Undoubtedly there is selection bias in what cases are presented (e.g. blacks are massively underrepresented as both victims and perps) and probably there is bias in the presentation. Nevertheless, unless you assume these shows are lying pretty often, watching them is disquieting. And it would be a weird kind of lying—sometimes the presenter on the show seems to think the victims of these evidence-free convictions are guilty. The shows generate the impression that the police have a non-trivial chance of putting you in prison for life if they want to, even if you are innocent.
I’m sure the vast majority of murder convictions are righteous. But that’s because the majority of murder convictions feature some dimwitted thug murdering some guy, in front of witnesses, who he has recently taken to threatening to murder in front of scores of other witnesses. The First 48 is a good show to see how incredibly boring most murder investigations seem to be.
