JUSTICE

Michael Brown


A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Winston Churchill


  My sense of justice came from various sources. Primarily my parents but I can't leave out Marshal Dillon. I watched Gunsmoke for much of the twenty years that it was on the air and no matter how evil the "bad guy" was Marshall Dillon was determined to guarantee that the man received a fair trial. Marshal Dillon only killed the "bad guy" in self defense. When I heard about the killing of Michael Brown I was very skeptical of how it was being portrayed by the media. That Michael was holding his hands up in surrender and a police officer shot him down in cold blood. That he was an innocent high school sudent and a gentle giant. This was so reminiscent of the way the media had portrayed the killing of Trayvon Martin. The narrative in that killing was the same as Michael Brown. The media at first portrayed Trayvon as this young innocent kid just minding his own business, innocently walking through an upscale neighborhood until he was gunned down in cold blood by a "white Hispanic" police wannabe. 

 As time went on the truth caught up with the lie and we found out that, like Michael Brown, Trayvon was a violent thug that was killed in a justified shooting. Now we are finding out the facts of this shooting and it is looking even more justified than the Martin shooting. Using the Marshal Dillon test Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin did not deserve to die just because they were thugs. It was their actions toward Zimmerman and Wilson in a moment of confrontation that got them killed. Both Zimmerman and Wilson justifiably feared for their lives. Since the Trayvon Martin incident we have learned that George Zimmerman is no angel and Darren Wilson on the other hand seems to be a man of good character but character, bad or good, does not prove guilt or innocence. 

  Only the facts prove guilt or innocence. Good character is a mitigating factor but nothing else. Facts are a two edged sword. If they bear out that Wilson is guilty I can accept that truth just as easily as I can accept the truth that he is not guilty. Adams said it best as he took the unpopular position of defending the British soldiers charged with murder in the Boston Massacre trial in 1770. He argued that the soldier who fired first acted only as one might expect anyone to act in such confused and potentially life-threatening conditions. "Do you expect that he should act like a stoic philosopher, lost in apathy?", Adams asked the jury. "Facts are stubborn things," he concluded, "and whatever may be our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." The chant in Ferguson Missouri is "no Justice, no Peace but I like Ann Coulter's chant better, "no facts, no peace". If these people really want justice they must be willing to accept the possibility that Michael Brown deserved what he got.
Officer Darren Wilson

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