I’ve been on a jury.
Someone claimed someone else had run their truck up and down the side of their car, which was parked, and had not only damaged the car but also injured them (because they were in the car at the time) and left them with a permanent disability for which they were seeking damages from the insurance company of the truck driver.
I have never before (and never since) been treated to a fantasy based on such a transparently thin tissue of lies.
Oh, this is definitely one of those ‘both sides do it’ real life experiences that have no satisfactory resolutions. Both the injured party and truck driver claimed they were ‘inspecting a construction site’. At 1 am. In a section of town notorious for street drug dealing. Right. I was born, but it wasn’t yesterday.
While the plaintiff (the injured party seeking damages) set out to confuse us with photos of the damaged car artfully posed between 2 total wrecks that had absolutely no relation to the case at all, they did in fact show tire marks that clearly matched the tires on the truck in question (which were not common).
The defendant claimed, of course, that it wasn’t him and besides he had taken off from the encounter in the 180 degree opposite direction than the plaintiff said. This was indisputably contradicted by the pictures which definitively showed the direction of the impact (tire marks, duh).
To counter this the defense, which is to say the insurance company, brought in an ‘expert’- a retired State Police Officer who had been in charge of Accident Investigation for (mumblety) years.
And he flat out lied to us on the jury.
I glanced around at my fellows and found no indication that it had even registered which I soon found was entirely true.
We had sat on this case for 3 weeks which is unusually long in a civil action for damages and when we got to the jury room I was the lone hold out for the plaintiff.
‘But he lied,’ said I. ‘Look, I can prove it!’
Nope. They bought it hook line and sinker. The Officer was an expert, and who was I? Just some guy prolonging the agony in a forgone conclusion.
It’s not exactly my finest hour or twelve. I held out for a day and a half, but the truth was that the plaintiff’s case fell completely apart on it’s second leg- damages. There was no proof at all that he had actually been in the car when it was struck AND, since he was already 30% permanently disabled, it was hard to argue based on a shyster (made their living by testifying) Chiropractor’s (on my list of Voodoo right after Economics, Mormonism, and Scientology) testimony that there had been an increase.
So I relented with conditions that I’m sure were promptly ignored but it reinforced a lesson I’d learned a long, long time ago-
Policemen lie, under oath, as easily as they breathe. How can you tell? Their lips are moving.
What brings this up?
Officers at Sam DuBose scene involved in death of another unarmed black man
by Ryan Felton and Oliver Laughland, The Guardian
Friday 31 July 2015 15.22 EDT
In court documents obtained by the Guardian and filed by Brinson’s family in a civil suit against UC police and the hospital, all seven officers are accused of using excessive force and “acted with deliberate indifference to the serious medical and security needs of Mr Brinson”.
According to the lawsuit, before Brinson was placed in restraints he “repeatedly yelled that slavery was over and he repeatedly pleaded not to be shackled and not to be treated like a slave”.
The documents named University of Cincinnati officers Eric Weibel and Phillip Kidd – the same men who, in a formal report, supported officer Ray Tensing’s claim that he was “dragged” by DuBose’s vehicle on 19 July.
Tensing’s account that he was “dragged” was used as justification for the lethal use of force. It was later dismissed as an attempt to mislead investigators and as “making an excuse for the purposeful killing of another person” by the Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters, who charged Tensing with murder on Wednesday.
Weibel and Kidd? Do you really need to ask?
No charges for additional Cincinnati police officers
By Amanda Sakuma, MSNBC
07/31/15 01:53 PM
A grand jury has decided to not indict additional Cincinnati police officers involved in the investigation into the death of an unarmed black man who was shot in the head during a routine traffic stop earlier this month, Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters announced Friday.
…
Kidd and Lindenschmidt were on the scene moments later, guns drawn as Tensing reaches into the car to kill the engine. In additional body camera footage, the officers are heard claiming they saw Tensing be pulled by the car.“Did you see him being dragged?” a responding officer asks.
“Yes,” University of Cincinnati officer Phillip Kidd says.
In the incident report, Officer Eric Weibel wrote that “Officer Kidd told me that he witnessed the Honda Accord drag Officer Tensing, and that he witnessed Officer Tensing fire a single shot.”
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