Bryant charged VII

Exactly Unionist. That is what you have been arguing over and over again. I never once said that Bryant killed Sheppard because he was white and privileged. If he did, the only provable facts are incidental. Bryant owned the car. Sheppard did not. Other than that, that is your fantasy. Thank you for finally coming out and burning your straw man. Please dont make another one.

Basically you are saying that I am psychologizing Bryant's behaviour, and doing so by psychologising mine.

But that is ok. We all make mistakes.

If the roles were reversed, as Cueball says, Sheppard would have been charged, at the very least, with murder, and then he would have had to plead down. This is not rocket science. We already know that because Bryant is well off, a know politician, a man with incredible pull in legal circles etc. that he has full advantage over almost anyone else in this situation.

No one can be equal before the law when they come to it unequal.Sheppard comes before it unequal. Already he is the one being tried by the media. His entire background is public knowledge. He is the dead one here. He has no voice, and here we are, on a progressive board, pretending this isn't the case (well some of us any ways). Bryant has Navigator and the media as his lap dogs. What does Sheppard have? Nothing. He is dead.

Bryant, had he been another man in the same situation, with less money, less of a reputation, no pull in the legal system, would clearly NOT be treated the same. Full stop. It really is that simple.

"The video shows nothing - at least, not to my eyes. But that doesn't matter. An impression is created that it proves Bryant's guilt. That impression spreads. And people actually start to believe that they've seen something in that video!"

You are seriously saying you see nothing? You don't see the car move forward and the admittedly grainy and shadowy figure of a cyclist is stationary? Later you don't see the car reverse revealing the figure of a person on the ground beside a bicycle and the car then attempting to drive around? Also at what point is the vehicle stationary long enough for there to be any significant exchange of information or offer of assistance to be made as per your scenario.

You keep speaking of facts but where do you exactly expect these facts to come from. Eye witness accounts can vary wildly (as countless research has demonstrated). Witness accounts are not facts they are perceptions that are culturally mediated. If someone believes cyclists are reckless, irresponsible and prone to violence they are more likely to see Sheppard attacking Bryant someone else might see something else as other witnesses have already reported. Witness accounts are also always challenged in court, Bryants PR firm is already doing its work in creating an alternate or more than one alternate narratives that can be used to witness accounts. I'm not quite sure where you expect facts to come from when you seem in doubt of your own senses.

N.R.KISSED]</p> <p>[quote wrote:

Also at what point is the vehicle stationary long enough for there to be any significant exchange of information or offer of assistance to be made as per your scenario.

Could you tell me, please, why someone felt they had to annotate these videos if what they show is so patently obvious?

Also, initial reports said witnesses reported an "altercation". Do you see this in the video, or did it come after? Also, were words of any kind exchanged at any point between Sheppard and Bryant? Without knowing that, I can't judge anything about "exchange of information or offer of assistance". But I'm not the one trying to judge that.

How can you?

Honestly, I don't see any of this. But you're saying the police should have charged him with a section 252 violation based on this video alone. Has someone contacted the police and/or the Crown to tell them what everyone appears to know?

Quote:

I'm not quite sure where you expect facts to come from when you seem in doubt of your own senses.

They can only come from witnesses, or video/photographs, or some forensic data that I haven't foreseen. They cannot come from idle speculation by those who weren't present or haven't heard from those who were. If witnesses filter their perceptions through their sex or race or class or intoxication or prejudice or whatever, so be it. But I know of no attempt at a justice system that doesn't value witnesses above all other forms of evidence where the question of "what happened, who did what, who said what" is unclear or in dispute.

Whereas you appear to have dismissed the witness accounts [b]in advance, on general principles[/b]:

Quote:

Eye witness accounts can vary wildly (as countless research has demonstrated). Witness accounts are not facts they are perceptions that are culturally mediated.

What do you want? A judge to watch the video, reflect on life, and decide what happened? Or perhaps the babble community?

Entirely possible I'll give you. One thing we don't know for sure is if Bryant's car struck Sheppard or his bike. The video does not make that clear.

Unionist wrote:

N.R.KISSED wrote:

Also at what point is the vehicle stationary long enough for there to be any significant exchange of information or offer of assistance to be made as per your scenario.

Could you tell me, please, why someone felt they had to annotate these videos if what they show is so patently obvious?

Also, initial reports said witnesses reported an "altercation". Do you see this in the video, or did it come after? Also, were words of any kind exchanged at any point between Sheppard and Bryant? Without knowing that, I can't judge anything about "exchange of information or offer of assistance". But I'm not the one trying to judge that.

Yeah Uni, someone has words with me an I run them over. Right? That's just another day in my life. If you talk the talk gotta walk the walk. The part you seem to be missing is that Bryant appears to instigate the violence by first using the car to threaten and then attack Sheppard. That is the way it looks.

Again, the exchange of information can not happen here, because Bryant is already driving away as soon as the accident transpired. At the point where Bryant and Sheppard may have spoken there has been no accident. It is only after Bryant hits Sheppard that this issue becomes relevant, and Bryant starts driving away immediatly. Sheppard is prone. Again how was the contact info disseminated? Bryant threw a business card at Sheppard as he was driving off? He yelled out "See you in hell motherfucker"? What?

The whole thing is one altercation. Get that straight at least.

As for the annotation, well, I told my friend the Seabee to turn the annotation off, and he was able to see plainly what you seem desperate to obscure, for reasons known only to yourself.

All you have to do is explain how Bryant is offering assistance and or giving his contact info to Sheppard as he pulls around him after he hits him. Some reasonable explanation for that, because you keep going on about this possibility. This is all happening in a matter of 3 or 4 seconds deary.
Bryant sent telepathic messages? Picked up on Sheppard evil intentions, and fled. What?

When Sheppard and Bryant had an opportunity to chat, there has been no "accident". Sheppard is in front of Bryant mouthing off at Bryant or something, but no one has hit anyone and Sheppard is still standing.

Your assertion that the car hit the cyclist is not clear from the video provided.

Well good, at least you are not nattering on about Bryant handing over his drivers license and phone number to Sheppard as he is driving around him and escaping from Sheppard's alleged verbal threats, after he hits him.

As for these alleged verbal threats, I am sorry, whenever and however they are supposed to have transpired, Bryant begins the violent exchange by hitting Sheppard. SAAB's don't have reverse gears, now or something? He can't back up and pass in the left lane? He has to go through Sheppard to escape him?

Where is the altercation? I don't see any altercation. I see a car hitting a cyclist.

"Your assertion that the car hit the cyclist is not clear from the video provided."

What exactly is not clear? Can you see the cyclist pass the car? Once the cyclist passes the car and comes to a halt the image of the cyclist is blurry, the fact that the image of the cyclist is blurry doesn't stop it from being an image of the cyclist. The image of the cyclist does not move the car does move beyond the point where the image of the cyclist is. WHat does that suggest to you"? In the second clip the cyclist is on the ground which would actually correspond with the image of the car moving beyond the image of the stationary cyclist. Maybe you could explain to me what is not clear.

"We don't see an impact on the bike. It's that simple. My hypothesis that Sheppard fell off his bike is not refuted by the videotape."

We see the shadowy figure of the cyclist not moving, we see the figure of the car moving beyond the point of the stationary cyclist. How is that not impact?

The second clip is a follow up to the first the car has moved beyond the point of the cyclist, the car backs up revealing the cyclist on the ground. Your hypothesis makes absolutely no sense. It doesn't make sense logically anyways, drunk cyclist accidently falls off bike and then decides to hitch a ride on the side of a car for fun.

Yes, well its very nice of Dave to contextualize this as a "cyclist" issue and ignore any of the other issues about class, gender and privilege. For one thing there is a bike lane on bloor right there, and it was closed for construction.

HeywoodFloyd wrote:

We don't see an impact on the bike. It's that simple. My hypothesis that Sheppard fell off his bike is not refuted by the videotape.

Yes, I get it, He was drunk and fell off. Considering how drunk this guy was he showed amazing dexterity and motor control speeding up to the car at at least 20 kmh and hour and then deftly coming to a perfectly executed stop a few meters from the car in front of it. Then of course he just happened to "fall off". It's just incidental that a car is stopping starting and lurching forward to within inches of the cyclist. Frankly, if anyone doesn't seem to be in control of his vehicle, it is Bryant, who can't seem to decide what to do.

Not only that, as NRK so deftly pointed out, he then had the wherewithall to get up after "falling" and leap onto a moving vehicle and then hang on for a couple of hundred meters or so.

In other words your hypothesis is about as realistic as the moonlanding is fake theory. You are going to start talking about shadows on the images at any moment now, I can see it coming. Will you please put away the drunk derelict goes crazy and tries to carjack respectable politician when he falls off his bicycle fantasy now?

The only reason he fell is because he was hit by Bryant's automobile.

These threads have a lynch mob feel to them. Do we have any lawyers on Babble? Where is Jeff House when we need him?  I admire Unionist's tenacity and patience in these threads.

I used the term as an adjective not a noun.

N.R.KISSED wrote:

The second clip is a follow up to the first the car has moved beyond the point of the cyclist, the car backs up revealing the cyclist on the ground. Your hypothesis makes absolutely no sense. It doesn't make sense logically anyways, drunk cyclist accidently falls off bike and then decides to hitch a ride on the side of a car for fun.

 I tend to agree with Heywood. But I think Sheppard was tired and didnt feel like pedalling anymore. And there was a perfectly good Saab convertible driven by a psychotic person with connections to one of the two old line property parties going in the same direction. Bryant's screaming profanities at Sheppard over one-hundred metres or so was actually the two of them negotiating a fare and drop point. Happens all the time.

Rumour, remind. Just because she is seen beside the patrol car Bryant is in at the hotel does not mean she was the passenger. Between the time the two people in the Saab called 911 and the police arrived, a whole host of others could have come to visit Bryant at the hotel. Like a PR rep, for instance. Or a former assistant. Or anyone else.

Sorry, I do not get what you mean?

Could Bryant's wife have showed up too, and may not have been the person in the vehicle, or she was in the vehicle, but left?

Okay thanks, that is what I thought you meant, at first, but was making plum jam, and started rethinking it.

Yes, and while munching you can look at that video for signs of that alleged "altercation" that took place, before Bryant knocked Sheppard off his bicycle.

Excelent so we are clear now that the begining of the so called "altercation" is as far as we can tell when Bryant hits Sheppard.

Now you are left explaining your theory about how Bryant is carefully removing his business card from his wallet, and throwing it toward Bryant, as he is also slamming his car into reverse, turning the wheel and trying to evade further contact with the person he has just hit, asking him if he needs assistance and so on and do forth, in the 3 or 4 seconds after he hit Sheppard.

Sorry Unionist, this does not look like an accident followed by an altercation where Sheppard threatens and attacks Bryant, it is one seemless series of events that are part of a single altercation, which is instigated by Bryant's act of hitting Sheppard, willfully or not.

The premise that Bryant willfully hit Sheppard suits the facts as we know them just as well, as your theory that there was an accident, and as we can see, there is simply no evidence in that video that Bryant had the time or the inclination to ask Sheppard if he needed assistance, give him contact info, and so on and so forth, and drive his car at the same time.

My point has been all along that the "criminal negligence" charge takes at face value the premise that it was an "accident".

The idea that this is an "accident" followed by an "altercation", is just pure speculation and spin, and you have been spun

.

Cueball, I'm rather tired of telling you this:

You know what happened.

I don't.

Have fun shadow-boxing.

All the video does is give visual credibility to this account from the Globe and Mail:

Quote:

Earlier eyewitness accounts describe an angry clash between Mr. Bryant and Mr. Sheppard – a toot of the horn and a shout to get moving from Mr. Bryant; a refusal and perhaps an answering shout from Mr. Sheppard; Mr. Bryant edging his convertible closer, and by one account, actually hitting Mr. Sheppard's bike, whereupon Mr. Sheppard allegedly left his bike and marched over and reached into the offending open car.

Based on the collection of data, including the video, it is Bryant who starts the altercation, first verbally and then physically as witnessess confirmed that he struck Sheppard. It is very hard not to conclude that there is a very strong case that Bryant began a violent confrontation using his automobile as a weapon to threaten and then attack Sheppard, and that this attack was part of an altercation begun by Bryant resulting in Sheppard's death.

Sound like good basis for a murder charge to me.

If pictures hadn't been taken, it would be all too easy to spin right out of history the tradition of lynching Blacks in the South, the massacre of hundreds of thousands during the twentieth century and other horrors (whose authors have almost all remained unpunished).

We are reliving that process and internalizing the cognitive dissonnance between what the pictures show, what witnesses have seen and what the system will achieve in saving Bryant's ass by redefining this event from his alleged (or possible) perspective and by limiting whatever judicial decision or bargain is arrived at to the strict minimum that an improbable but well-financed and well-promoted reading of his rights will allow.

Take care, folks: viewing this exercise of blatant privilege - the reconstruction of Bryant's innocence against all odds - is very damaging for our souls.

The field seems split between those who understand how the law works and denounce it, and those who understand what the law says and denounce the former.