The justice system.

I know that I am a part of it, but sometimes the justice system doesn't seem so just.

Take for instance this latest decision by a federal jury in New Orleans.

If you don't know the story about the murder of Henry Glover you should learn it.

Mr. Glover was shot and killed by police officer David Warren in the aftermath of Katrina, and the NOPD covered up his killing.

Charges were filed, arrests were made, and a state jury found all the officers guilty for their actions.

But now....

"NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A former New Orleans police officer whose 2010 manslaughter conviction was touted as a milestone in the city's healing after Hurricane Katrina was acquitted Wednesday by a different jury of charges he fatally shot a man without justification during the storm's chaotic aftermath.
David Warren spent more than three years behind bars after he was charged in the September 2005 death of 31-year-old Henry Glover, whose body was burned in a car by a different officer after a good Samaritan drove the dying man to a makeshift police compound.

Leaving the courthouse a free man, Warren, 50, was reunited with his wife and five children after jurors acquitted him of a civil rights violation and a firearm charge.

Warren told reporters that he "took the action that I had to take" when he shot Glover once with a rifle from a second-story balcony at a strip mall he was guarding.

"We have spent years talking about something that lasted seconds," he said.
Warren's trembling relatives wept and embraced each other after the verdict, which jurors delivered less than two hours after they informed a judge they were struggling to reach a unanimous decision.

"Oh my gosh, I can't even get it in my head," his wife, Kathy Warren, told a supporter. Her husband had been in custody since June 2010, when he surrendered to authorities following his indictment.

On the other side of the courtroom, Glover's sister, Patrice, slumped over and wailed so loudly that U.S. District Judge Lance Africk paused as he spoke to jurors. After a man carried Patrice Glover out of the room, several jurors wiped away tears as they filed out.


Friends and relatives tried to console Patrice Glover as she sat in a chair in the lobby of the courthouse.

"He was a good child," she said of her brother. "That was my baby."
U.S. Attorney Kenneth Allen Polite Jr. said in a statement that prosecutors were disappointed by the verdict but thanked jurors for their "attentive service."
His predecessor, Jim Letten, said after the 2010 verdict that it marked a "critical phase in the recovery and healing of this city, of the people of this region."
Africk had sentenced Warren to nearly 26 years in prison after the jury in his first trial convicted him and two other former officers of charges stemming from Glover's death.

But an appeals court overturned Warren's convictions and ordered a new trial last year. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit ruled that Warren should have been tried separately from four other former officers charged in an alleged cover-up of Glover's death. The panel agreed with Warren's lawyers that the "spillover effect" of evidence about the cover-up, including testimony about the burning of Glover's body and photos of his charred remains, denied him a fair trial.

A different officer, Gregory McRae, was convicted in 2010 of burning Glover's body. The 5th Circuit upheld McRae's convictions.

The jury for Warren's retrial was barred from hearing any testimony about what happened to Glover in the aftermath of the shooting.

On Monday, Warren testified that he feared for his life when he shot Glover because he thought he saw a gun in his hand as he and another man ran toward the building he was guarding. Prosecutors, however, said Glover wasn't armed and didn't pose a threat." [Source]

Officer Warren is now a free man. But was justice served? Sadly, only David Warren knows for sure. 

Then there is this crazy story out of Texas. Rich kid gets hammered and gets behind the wheel of a car. He kills four people and doesn't get sentenced to a day in jail. Why? Apparently he suffers from a rare desease called "affluenza" . -I think Mitt Romney has the same desease.- I  wonder what kind of treatment they have for that.

"The Keller, Tex., 16-year-old has a rare condition that a judge believes is best remedied with anything but dealing with the consequences for causing a DWI wreck that killed four people, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

Couch suffers from “affluenza,” according to his lawyers, a term which means that his wealthy parents pretty much let him get away with everything. The defense saved him from a 20-year sentence; State District Judge Jean Boyd bought it at his sentencing on Tuesday and gave Couch probation instead.
“He never learned that sometimes you don’t get your way,” Gary Miller, a psychologist assigned to Couch said in court. “He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle.” [Source]

Poor Ethan, we all should have it so hard.













  

A sad comparison, and a republican that republicans can be proud of.

Some of us black folks are upset at the GOP and their lemmings for comparing the failed roll out of Obamacare to Hurricane Katrina.

It's appalling that they would do such a thing, but it's understandable.

Katrina was a poor and brown people tragedy; the suffering that those people went through was not viewed as real suffering by some folks in the majority. Rather, it was a political problem for George Bush.

It's easy to trivialize the suffering of those people down in New Orleans. It might as well have been a typhoon in the Philippines. Most Americans just didn't relate.

So now, here we are years later, comparing glitches in a computer software to one of the greatest natural disasters in our nation's history.

"Just like Katrina, when the big problem President Bush had was diminishing the significance of what was happening, saying ‘Hey, way to go, Brownie,’—you had the president yesterday talking about glitches and kinks. This is bigger than glitches and kinks,” Fournier said.

“The one difference was Katrina was a storm, the health care law was Obama’s creation,” Wallace demurred. “I’m not defending my White House’s handling of Katrina, but it was a natural disaster. This was a disaster of Obama’s creation and imagination.”

Here is a shocker, I agree with Ed Shultz.

“Comparing the law that will save millions of lives in this country to these two dark events is absolutely despicable,” Schultz continued. “George W. Bush’s negligence in the handling of Katrina cost American lives. The botched war of choice, may I remind all Americans, in Iraq resulted in over 4,000 Americans being killed, for what?”

“Comparing these two horrible chapters in American history to a law that will save lives is truly unbelievable,” he concluded. [Source]

Nope, it's truly believable if you understand how the the mind of a wingnut works.

So anyway, I am glad to see that there was an arrest in that case where the Detroit homeowner shot and killed that young lady after she was trying to get help.

Dude is being charged with second- degree murder and manslaughter. He claims it was all just a tragic accident and he thought that she was breaking into his home, but, sadly for him, some things just weren't adding up.

Sorry Mr. Wafer, back in the day you would have probably gotten away with this, but not now. Not after Trayvon Martin and the national attention that his tragic killing received. Prosecutors nationwide are going to have to do due diligence from here on out.

Finally, speaking of prosecutors, I was speaking to a friend of mine today who ran against our DA here in Philly and got crushed. His name is Danny Alvarez, and he is a Latino republican in a town where republicans are down three to one in voter registration.

I met Danny a few years back when he worked as an ADA in my particular division of the courts. We would see each other from time to time and every now and then he would try a case in front of me.

He always struck me as good guy who really cared about the job that he was doing, and he did a good job doing it.

Danny only got 18 percent of the vote, but he had no money and he was outgunned from all sides. He never had a shot, but he gave it the old college try.

I respect him for that.

With what little resources he had he campaigned for every vote and wasn't afraid to go into housing projects and look people in the eye and tell them that he wanted their vote.

Other republicans need to take a page out of his book. If you want to reach black and Latino people and change the perception of your party you have to recruit candidates like Danny Alvarez.

"Wayne, A lot of these people didn't vote for me because they didn't know that they could vote for a republican candidate. I just hope I made them realize that there are other options out there."

Danny, I think you did.