Feeling Rebloggy
[...T]he public got a rare insight into the thinking that goes into letting a cop go free despite stacks of evidence of wrongdoing.
In Judge Timothy J. Wilson’s 30-page ruling you can see the mental gymnastics that went into acquitting a man who said to his partner of Smith, “we’re killing this motherf*cker, don’t you know,” minutes before killing him.
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| white Jason Stockley and his white protector Timothy J Wilson |
There are many embarrassing parts of this verdict. Let’s start, though, with the particularly shameful portion that seeks to vindicate Stockley for this audio-recorded statement of apparent premeditation. During his own testimony, Stockley stated that he couldn’t remember making the “we’re killing this motherfucker” remark, but justified it by saying that “during a vehicle pursuit, there are many things that are said.” He added that “it’s hard for me to elaborate even what the context was, because I don’t even know.”
This dissembling answer was apparently enough for the judge to discount this clear statement of intent. Here’s what Wilson wrote:
People say all kinds of things in the heat of the moment or while in stressful situations, and whether Stockley’s statement that “we’re killing this motherfucker,” which can be ambiguous depending on the context, constituted a real threat of action or was a means of releasing tension has to be judged by his subsequent conduct. The court does not believe Stockley’s conduct immediately following the end of the pursuit is consistent with the conduct of a person intentionally killing another person unlawfully.
Stockley’s conduct immediately after making that statement was to instruct his partner to ram Smith’s vehicle, approach Smith's car, and almost immediately fire five shots into Smith’s body, including one that forensic analysts described as a “kill shot” likely fired within six inches of Smith.
In his ruling, Wilson characterized this as a long period of time and accepted as fact the defense's argument that all five shots were fired at once (the prosecution argued that a final "kill shot" was fired a bit after the first four)
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