Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Good afternoon:
Despite an incredibly messed up and ultimately failed effort to livestream the trial today, the prosecution and defense gave their opening statements in the Theodore Wafer porch-shooting case.
With the exception of something defense attorney Cheryl Carpenter said during her opening statement, we did not learn anything new.
Oralandar Brand-Williams tweeted,
wafer atty says he was sound asleep the heard “boom, boom, boom, boom” (shouting loudly) about noise she says he heard
wafer cld not find his cell phone, defense atty says. he goes to the kitchen..he is not armed..looking for cell phone..”‘his heart is racing
wafer looks outside and sees not 1 person but 2/ more people..the door was shaking..people were trying to get in, wafer believed, says atty
ted is thinking they’re coming to get me..they’re breaking into my house, says wafer atty.
he’s thinking go away..leave me alone..he goes to get his shotgun.it’s not his first decis. he doesn’t know what else to do, wafer atty says
Marie Osborne adds via twitter:
#TheodoreWafer trial defense: Grabs shot gun AFTER hearing repeated bangs on his front and side door. “Never so scared in his life”
#TheodoreWafer Defense: “He sees a figure and shoots. He looks and knows immediately it’s a shorter person, a woman”
Now, back to Oralandar Brand-Williams,
atty says he didn’t know if renisha was african american, arab, hispanic when he shot her to death.
My comment today:
I wonder who these other mysterious people were and if he told the police about them.
He didn’t mention them to the 911 operator.
We will find out tomorrow if Wafer mentioned these other people to the detectives. My guess is they will deny that he did and hopefully they video and audio recorded what he told them so there will not be any doubt what he said.
Until tomorrow at 9 am EDT.
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How would we know that the victim smashed the peep hole or detached the screen when the PD failed to secure the murder scene and left Wafer free to “tidy up”?
Conspiracy theory of mine.
Wafer “I shot her and what can I do?”
Cops “we understand why you would want to shoot one of those people, so maybe if you make things look like she tried to break in, your chances of getting off will be better”
I will tell you a story about Detroit Police back in those “good old days” that the Reich Wing fawn over.
They use to tell us { us meaning whites } to shoot any black person who you thought was going to enter your home and just pull the body over the threshold so that castle doctrine would be clear. And I was told this more than one time.
My CT may be total BS, but I find it very, very odd that forensic evidence that could clearly prove innocence or guilt was not 100% secured and the accused not allowed any access to it.
For example, both doors should have been removed ASAP and kept uncontaminated.
Cosign!
I’m not sure if black folk were told the same, or if word spread from the white community to the black community. I do remember my black father and his friends talking about “drag the body in the house” when I was a kid. It was during a housewarming cook out we had when I was a kid. We had moved into the Boston-Edison Historic district, just off 12th St, right after the riot in ’67.
i would also point out that this was said in my home state of california for as long as i can remember and i’m 50 now. there was no color requirement, however, it applied to any home invasion. this would have been the mid 60s in southern CA, which was an open carry state at that time.
my dad who was a special agent for the IRS (gun, badge, investigating the mob etc.) taught me at a young age that the best way to prove a self defense claim was that the body be half in and half out of the home and that the door/window showed signs of forced entry. he was a CPA with a law degree and i expect he knew what he was talking about.
many years later, my high school civics teacher told us the same thing in 1982, again with no mention of race.
i think that in essence, this is the most simple way of describing the castle doctrine and self defense. what is also obvious is what racist garbage gets attached to a simple premise depending on where one lives and who is telling the tale. in it’s pure form, the axiom stands as good common sense — how to protect your self/family/home and not wind up in jail. it clearly gets perverted and you can call me naive, but i have never heard it said with racial overtones – which is likely because of who raised me and the communities where i have lived. it makes me sad that y’all heard this expressed differently. damn, those haters are just gonna hate.
I’m surprised none of you caught the “victim smashed the peep hole in the door” excuse for why TW had to open the door to see who was there. I next expect the defense to say she also painted all the windows at the front of the house with “disappearing” paint as well, which also forced him to open the door to see out. Does anyone know if TW is right handed or left handed?
Good catch!
I don’t know if he is R or L.
If you stand behind your door you will find out that the direction that the door knob falls in relation to your dominate hand will make a huge difference when you have to unlock a deadbolt or even open the door, especially when space is limited by a foyer that is not large. Then add to that the awkwardness that having a large/long/heavy object (shotgun) being held in your dominate hand and consider how important and difficult the simple opening of a door becomes. This compounds the effort that TW had to make to open the door and then shoot the shotgun, especially since he most likely held the shotgun in both hands as he fired it. This is time consuming event if you think about it, so to state he did not know who or what he had shot is absurd, he had plenty of time to survey the porch and make a will full decision to discharge his weapon and murder the girl standing there… This was not a time of fear for TW, this was a time of anger… How dare anyone beat on his door at that time of the night. IMO his calm demeanor when he called 911 was a pretty good indicator of his state of mind at the time of the shooting… The only fear he showed the morning of the murder was when he was in the back seat of the police car and realized that he had made a big mistake and was fearful for his own freedom, but not remorseful for killing a human being…
Like Fogen, Wafer probably had misguided self-defense fantasies and wanted to shoot someone.
oh, i caught it, mothman, but found it so unbelievable that i just gave it no real attention. sounds like they are building the perfect ‘horse shit defense’ alright. only a racist fool would believe it, and therein lies the problem.
fauxmccoy, to make it even better it was testified by one of the officers that he looked thru the peephole and there seemed to be nothing wrong with it on the day of the shooting… Whoops?
that’s a texan size, rick perry ‘oopsie’ alright! his multiple ‘stories’ should be the death of his defense … but then, there is a jury.
i was not able to ‘watch’ the non existent video in real time today and am very disappointed that there is little to be found.
what i do know is that with the defense’s new claim of 2 or more people outside, someone — the only one who can enter such information as ‘evidence — is going to have to take the stand. namely, mr wafer. is this not his third story? (1) gun accidentally went off, (2) i shot her in self defense, and now (3) there was a mob of ’em out to get me and although i have no evidence to back this up, ya gotta believe me!
i sure hope the live feed situation improves by tomorrow.
Yes, this is the third version that I know about and yes, this means TW is going to have to testify.
But Fogen got off without testifying. His version was “believed” without him swearing to it.
that is because the prosecution stupidly entered his defense for him, malisha. take a closer look at this local prosecutor (kym worthy), i don’t think she is going to enter wafer’s testimony for him.
this is just me, but i see little value in comparing every trial, judge, prosecutor and defendant to zimmerman. just as there is only one hitler, there is only one zimmerman.
in a normal world, that would all make for a rough defense. i can only see this as an ‘all bets off’ scenario. remaining cynically optimistic, as always.
i was pleased to see a prosecution who was diligent about making timely and relevant objections. that in itself is a breath of fresh air. i only wish that there at least some audio for the proceedings. frustrating!
I hope we have a functioning live stream today. Yesterday’s effort was ridiculous.
Wildabouttrial appears to be ready to go, so we’ll see if the locals at the source can get the feed feeding.
Uhhhhhhh…..I see it coming. The new version will evolve into Mcbride using part of the porch to smash the door with. Since every slightly built black person can summon super human strength at will, and exhibit a tendency to use large chunks of whatever cement is lying about as a weapon……well, something bizarre will be bandied about.
What a lame story. There’s certainly no forensic evidence to support it.
It’s always shoddy work when they are investigating a shooting of an unarmed black kid. They really don’t put much thought into seeking the truth when it comes to our children and women.
I will put this comment in the latest thread.
Isn’t that rather shoddy police work to have not cuffed and arrested Wafer in that he clearly shot McBride and, as such, should not be allowed to tamper with a crime scene?
Which apparently he did – the screen was put in the basement.
Yes, it was shoddy and incompetent.
Unless it was collusive and permissive.
One big hole is this fabricated tale is that, at first, he is scared silly because THEY are trying to get him. So he gets his gun.
Fine, I could see that,
But then he gets so BRAVE that he opens his best defense, the inner door, to peak out at what he as already established in his tale as THEM.
The two events contradict each other.
At least Pistorius tells a lie where he is so scared that he fires pre-emptive shots through a closed solid door.
And then, as Malisha astutely pointed out, he shoots one of THEM, leaves the gun on the floor an goes for a stroll on his property UNARMED.
And, sadly, there will be a few that buy this BS to the hilt.
A key to this trial may be a forensic analysis of the door and screen. The defense may be trying the twist a screen opening that resulted from blast forces to proof that McBride and those OTHERS were ripping it open.
And I have a pure speculation of my own. Maybe McBride was being stalked by a male or males with ill intent and she ran to this home and banged the doors in panic.
Anyhow, I have no sympathy for this chicken shit.
My father lived alone in Detroit till he was 87. Yes, there are times you get a gun. But you always make damn sure what the fact situation is before you even point the damn thing.
This country is getting too dam full of stupid asses with guns.
RIGHT ON. I don’t mind that the country is full of stupid asses; after all, they do need a country, don’t they? But when they get GUNS, that does pose a problem.
SICK OF THIS SHIT.
Amen. I’m sick of all the lameass excuses people have for acting as cop, judge, jury, and executioner, and trashing the victim to save their own sorry asses.
Oh I know who those other people were banging on his door.
(a) The Bogeyman;
(b) Three invisible gang leaders from the Ghetto;
(c) A windmill;
(d) The ghost of Osama bin Ladin;
and last, but not even near least,
(e) The King of all the Welfare Queens.