Saturday, November 1, 2014
Good afternoon:
Cheryl Carpenter, the lawyer who represented Ted Wafer, gave an interview recently about the trial in which she attributed the guilty verdict to Trayvon Martin’s ghost in the courtroom.
By that she meant the jurors felt like they had to find Wafer guilty or be subjected to the same intense scrutiny and criticism suffered by the jurors in the Zimmerman case.
I disagree.
The jury convicted Wafer in record time because, instead of calling 911, he grabbed his shotgun, opened his front door and fired his shotgun at point blank range through his screen door into an unarmed Renisha McBride’s face, killing her.
That is not self-defense since a reasonable person in his situation would not have believed he was in imminent danger of death or serious injury. It simply does not matter how fearful he was or claimed to be and no amount of wishing and spinning can change that.
Regardless what Carpenter wants to believe, Wafer had no defense, and that is why the jury rejected his claim of self-defense.
Before going to trial, most criminal defense lawyers will convince themselves they can win the trial, regardless of the evidence. However, no amount of positive thinking can transform a sow’s ear into a silk purse.
She obviously cared about him and there is nothing wrong with that. We should care about what happens to our clients. There’s nothing wrong with tears either. I’ve done that in death penalty cases. Lots of lawyers have done that.
She did her best, but she had a loser case, and it’s time for her to reconnect with reality.
I went through this experience. Every criminal defense lawyer does.
We don’t get to write the scripts and sometimes it’s better to zip it and move on instead of granting an interview and saying things that may come back to haunt us.
Frederick Leatherman Law Blog 
… and the continuous stream of horseshit flows from cheryl carpenter’s mouth. yes, getting in touch with reality would be a good thing for her. so would acknowledging that her andy warhol given 15 minutes have expired.
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howdy fred, crane, brothers and sisters —
i am very involved with family issues that are time sucking vortexes. i miss this place, hope you all are well and will meet up with y’all as time allows.
peace,
f.
Great to hear from you. Remember to be kind to yourself as you take care of others.
Be well.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/graphic-video-released-firing-squad-style-police-killing-mentally-ill-man/#b0PB3oBy5GDzCwLH.99
Hmmmm, I have a different take. I’m really pleased that Trayvon’s ghost is making people think twice about letting racist violence go unpunished. If the evidence is there, convict.
I concur. I also hope that Trayvon Martin’s ghost continues to linger until it makes GZ’s Jurors fall asleep on the highway, at high speed (with the exception of the lady that has publicly regretted her decision and apologized).
I don’t disagree with what you’vr eloquently said here; but coming from Carpenter in the context of her interview it was quite bone-headed.
Words fail.
See my post above. You are describing exactly the views of a typical Livonian.
No matter what she says, Wafer is still in prison. It’s not about the last laugh, but lets face facts, she doesn’t have it.
So she’s taking a year off from her law practice to weep for the killer. Does she actually think that makes anyone, other than Fogen that is, feel for her or Wafer ??
She’s made up in her fevered imagination some kind of divinely awkward universal administration of “justice” where the fact that in Florida, “a” white kills “an” innocent unarmed black results in “an” innocent terrified white in Michigan being convicted for accidentally killing “a” black. She should rather write short stories for the dumbass crowd than appear in courtrooms practicing law or on TV giving analyses of criminal law. SMDH!
I believe her “…fevered imagination…” has fried her brain.
She’s probably pissed that Moron O’ Mara did it and she didn’t.
How on God’s Green Earth does anyone not see the “…I had to unlock and open the door……” as putting the kibosh on any possible defense ???
…………..must be me I guess.
**She’s probably pissed that Moron O’ Mara did it and she didn’t.** Probably.
Of course she hoped for a lesser verdict, but what she said makes no sense. I should be outraged but it’s laughable in a twisted way.
It would make more sense if she asked rhetorically why the result by a Michigan jury wasn’t the same as the Florida jury. And then she might have to truly consider all the ramifications.
Don’t follow. Don’t open the door. Don’t shoot people who aren’t a threat. Doh.
In all reality, she just doesn’t get it. If the stealth juror in Fogens trial had been booted, he’d be in prison as well.
Not only that, Fogen was outside, Wafer was in his house. Pretty big difference, but then again…………..maybe it’s just me.
She might as well have blamed Al Sharpton or Eric Holder or Obama.
Or perhaps claim that blacks have it easy – they can just “play the race card” and juries and judges alike roll over for them and convict just about anyone for no reason.
Whatever.
She’s probably just positioning herself to be the future defender of racists in high-profile racist murder cases.
Have fun with that.
I agree with the professor about the evidence. Regardless of how it was presented, or whether or not the defense was brilliant or inept, the facts of the case showed intentional murder. Only a Fogen-style deliberate sham trial, or planted stealth racist jurors, would have resulted in a non-acquittal.
If she really felt the need to rationalize her “loss”, maybe she should have said something like “The spectre of GEORGE ZIMMERMAN’S / MICHAEL DUNN’S HATE and/or INSTITUTIONALIZED WHITE RACIST VIOLENCE AGAINST BLACKS hung over the trial”.
That would be pretty much the same thing as I assume she meant to say, albeit less stupid and more accurate, and still be a way for her to reason away her lost case.
I missed this from the cited article:
The daughter of an attorney and an inner-city school teacher, Carpenter was raised in Livonia and has practiced law for 15 years, first as a public defender. No stranger to controversial cases, she is most well-known for having freed some 35 youth offenders from the sex offender registry in Michigan. She is ardently opposed to the registry because she said it does not differentiate between consenting under-age teenagers in love and having sex, and “a 50-year-old child molester taking advantage of a 6-year-old.”
End quote.
One of my many minimum age jobs was at a party store two blocks from the border with Livonia back in the early 1980s.
Anyhow, the owner {he was a racist} thought is was funny to see a black women walking past along 7 Mile to the Livonia Mall along with her kids. You see, the City of Livonia opted out of transit so that the “undesirables” could not take the bus to their city. IOW, this women was walking about three miles from the DSR stop and Seven-Grand.
And another employee {who was also racist} chuckled that Livonia has citizens who would report any back they saw on the police band.
And the few people I met from Livonia who were attending WSU harbored racists thought that made them “non-friends” quickly, They would spout off stereotypical crap about “the blacks” that would not stop, although I tried to politely tell them that many of y neighbors at that time were black.
So I also have a problem with the “inner city” teacher who was a parent.
How could this teacher be in the “inner city” and be able to tolerate the filthy crap that came out of the mouths of people in Livonia?
You know what is funny?
The racist owner kept me on, although I refused to throw my “fellow Detroiters” under the bus, because I showed up on time, kept a clean till, and did not steal merchandise, unlike all the other white males he hired.
Jeeze, I could equally argue that, as time marches on, the jury that found Zimmerman innocent will be compared to the two juries that could not convict Byron De La Beckwith of killing Medgar Evers back in the 1960s.
Whereas, as the Professor says, the jury in the Wafer trial objectively applied the law.
Sorry Ms. Carpenter, but the crap that went on with Martin and will bear bitter fruit with Brown should be a warning to anyone sane that what happened in Germany can happen here.
**Jeeze, I could equally argue that, as time marches on, the jury that found Zimmerman innocent will be compared to the two juries that could not convict Byron De La Beckwith of killing Medgar Evers back in the 1960s.**
I agree. Down the road, the GZ case will be as shocking as the historic Jim Crow cases are now.
Ooo, here’s an oldie but a goodie, a 2013 article about Fogen and Trayvon’s astrological makeup by Dr. Turi – http://www.drturi.com/why-george-zimmerman-killed-trayvon-martin/
Fogen’s propensity for violence is catching up to him and will be completely revealed in time.
Thanks, MDX, for the clip. The full movie I am never tired of watching – for various different reasons.
I’m just so glad grateful he was convicted. The Trayvon Martin jury travesty shook me to the core. Now I’m girding for Ferguson …
Shut her damn mouth! What an outrage, to blame the “ghost” of a murdered child for a just verdict rendered by the peers of her client in a case tried in a duly authorized court of law, both sides ably represented. Shame on her for not only blaming the victim (of somebody else’s crime in another state in totally different circumstances) but for having the pure unadulterated gall to open her mouth and spout such unmitigated bovine fecal matter!
It’s almost like she’s lamenting the fact that racist killers can’t get off any more thanks to that sneaky Trayvon Martin and his ghostly influence.
Despicable.