Charges dropped against Michael Bryant

This will prove to haunt him as well. At least a trial with a acquittal could at least let him claim no special treatment, but this way it will always look like a special deal. A 'Jaffer deal' as someone earlier said.

So.

Do we have law in Ontario, or just tyranny?

This does not happen in a juristiction where responsible government is the rule.

The National tonight was pretty much a hatchet job on the victim. The worse kind. They found old footage of someone who was apparently the victim harrassing a car angrily that they timed vaguely "from the days and hours" leading to his death. Edited to add, they the National said there was 5 or 6 people who 'had come forward' to say he was always angry and standoffish increasingly up to his death, but I wonder how long Navigator spent digging these  people up. No trial so who know if they are even legit, or just just bullcrap here say.  They showed his widow in one blurb, but cut her out before she finished one phrase. Her and her four children aren't what's important to the news, it's whether Bryant will return to public life (edited to add)

Navigator is going to see business grow exponentially. The work they did on this case will no doubt go into their corporate textbooks, if not advertising. Maybe Bryant can get a gig with them. Spin needs legal I'm sure.

And the pit of my stomach makes it feel kinda like a 'tyranny' being played out, like Tommy said, but it's the very subtle Canadian type of course. As a working-stiff cyclist I wonder if this is going to make me reconsider. I end up injuring myself enough without worrying about newly emboldened well-connected rich folk prone to road rage (being facetious of course)...

Suck it up, nancie, they said on the Ray Romano show.

unionist wrote:

I'm still there.

....right beside stockholm.

Jeez, that government whitewash makes it sound like Sheppard deserved murdering.

They stopped short of calling Bryant a hero for saving Torontians from a public menace. What jokers! Charade they are.

Quote:

"You'll hunt me. You'll condemn me, set the dogs on me. Because that's what needs to happen. Because sometimes... the truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded." - Batman, Dark Knight

Unionist wrote:

I refuse to condemn an individual without evidence. I don't care how rich or right-wing they are.

You sure have a peculiar definition of evidence.

all the good status quo peeps here RP, are really starting to get annoying and still no answer on why rabble is hosted out of the USA....

time to take a break again me thinks... when good people like Polly B are driven away...by the likes of the status quoers pretending to be in solidarity with class struggles....

Ah yes. The "class struggle". Burning down a bank anonymously, and convicting Michael Bryant of murder. And woe betide the class enemy that asks whether this particular emperor is in fact clothed...

Unionist wrote:

I refuse to condemn an individual without evidence.

Who has demanded anything different?

A man is dead, having been smashed into concrete and asphalt by a vehicle. Is it wrong to demand an actual trial, open to the public?

BTW, Unionist, did you actually read that 'executive summary' you posted?

I did. It was sickening. It was filled with unsubstantiated accusations and innuendo, and seemed to have been a product of Navigator themselves.

Lard Tunderin Jeezus wrote:

BTW, Unionist, did you actually read that 'executive summary' you posted?

I did. It was sickening. It was filled with unsubstantiated accusations and innuendo, and seemed to have been a product of Navigator themselves.

 

That was my Charlie Brown quote in response.  I actually read it and was shocked that Unionist would proffer it.

Unionist wrote:

...[url=http://media.thestar.topscms.com/acrobat/b4/68/4efecd484031924da24123d5f... pdf file[/url], linked by Antonia Z. over at BnR, appears to be the Crown's detailed summary of the evidence they had collected and their reasons for not pressing charges.

It may all be BS, but it deserves to be read. I find it more convincing than rich vs. poor and car vs. bike arguments. At least it has the merit of not consisting of generalities.

I couldn't find any explanation for why Bryant was driving on the left side of the street, and why, even if he was frightened by the former threat, he would drive away and leave a victim he had killed lying on the road.

Banjo wrote:

I couldn't find any explanation for why Bryant was driving on the left side of the street, and why, even if he was frightened by the former threat, he would drive away and leave a victim he had killed lying on the road.

Well, I don't know what in the PDF is true or false. But it does say that the car "veered to the left" after Sheppard latched on to it and "continued west in the oncoming (eastbound) lane towards Avenue Road". It also quotes Bryant claiming he was in a state of fear and panic at that point. Once the car veered for whatever reason into that lane, it couldn't have gotten out easily, given that the two centre lanes were blocked by construction equipment.

Page 10 says the evidence doesn't support a charge of leaving the scene, because he turned left onto Avenue Road, stopped at the Hyatt Hotel (it says it's "nearby", don't know what that means) and called 911.

The whole document sounds as if the input was 99% "investigation" carried out, and no doubt well financed, by the defence. But the Crown claims they did their own verification of that "evidence". We can be skeptical and cynical and disbelieve it all - but to be outraged, or put differently to charge Bryant, there needs to be evidence.

Sorry, U, to be blunt, your stand is sickening.  He could've stopped the car, I would've, you haven't answered that question.

aka Mycroft wrote:

What I found most troubling about this story last fall were the reports of Bryant acccelerating and going at a high speed apparently trying to shake a cyclist clinging on for dear life. The evidence that he was travelling at 35 km/h rather than 100 and did not climb on to the curb does paint a somewhat different story and I don't see any reason to doubt the speed analysis. It is an established fact that eyewitness reports are often unreliable not because of malice but because of how memory works. I don't know what to make of reports that the car "lurched forward" as a result of stalling rather than a deliberate action by the driver. Is that established forensically by a mechanical examination of the car and a determination that the engine was behaving in this way or just a theory? I don't like Bryant, his attitude or what he stands for. But I don't want to see anyone wrongly convicted or to assume guilt because it fits a moral narrative. Of course, it is doubtful that an ordinairy person of another class would have received the same extra scrutiny of the evidence by the Crown (or have been able to afford the defence resources) to tear down the case against hikm and achieve this result. It's certainly nice to think we live in a society where crown prosecutors really do go out of their way to find the truth rather than secure a conviction. Usually, when the Crown finds that their evidence is shaky they prefer to seek a plea bargain of some sort for a reduced charge rather than drop the charges entirely. So what disturbs me now about this case isn't that the charges against Bryant were dropped but the suspicion that anyone from a lesser class would have either been wrongly convicted or have been forced into a plea bargain where they would have to plea guilty to a lesser charge.

Dude, those speed things were conducted by police not witnesses.  Why not go to trial?  How much benefit of the doubt do my friends get?

Well yeah, anyone else likely would have had to prove their case at trial or had to settle for conviction on a lesser charge.

In the criminal justice system the Crown really should be trying to seek the truth, even if it means they have to drop the charges. I doubt that, in most cases, the Crown would have been quite so concientious as they were in this case. Just ask Guy Paul Morin.

Unionist wrote:

Banjo wrote:

I couldn't find any explanation for why Bryant was driving on the left side of the street, and why, even if he was frightened by the former threat, he would drive away and leave a victim he had killed lying on the road.

Well, I don't know what in the PDF is true or false. But it does say that the car "veered to the left" after Sheppard latched on to it and "continued west in the oncoming (eastbound) lane towards Avenue Road". It also quotes Bryant claiming he was in a state of fear and panic at that point. Once the car veered for whatever reason into that lane, it couldn't have gotten out easily, given that the two centre lanes were blocked by construction equipment.

Page 10 says the evidence doesn't support a charge of leaving the scene, because he turned left onto Avenue Road, stopped at the Hyatt Hotel (it says it's "nearby", don't know what that means) and called 911.

The whole document sounds as if the input was 99% "investigation" carried out, and no doubt well financed, by the defence. But the Crown claims they did their own verification of that "evidence". We can be skeptical and cynical and disbelieve it all - but to be outraged, or put differently to charge Bryant, there needs to be evidence.

Well gee, get me some evidence that people are actually getting shot in Afghanistan. All I see is what we read in the paper, doncha know.

This ridiculous whitewash of what is an overt case of prosecutorial favouratism. There is more than enough evidence, right in front of us to warrant a trial. For the key witness testimony to be measured in court. Bryant and his wife and whoever else was there. In fact, the whole purpose of court is to weigh conflicting evidence and for a fact, this kind of thing is heavily weighted in terms of how the judge or jury interprets the evidence.

What is really going on here? A bunch of lefties put theri foots in their mouths a few months back, talking about waiting to "hear the evidence", and for the whole thing to be "put to a legal test". talking about "due process" when this thing went down. As we were trying to tell you then, there was not going to be any "due process".

In fact, it turns out, there was no process at all. Are you ready to back from you 1977 time machine world, where there might have been some hope of this thing going to trial? Its really trying to see you try and keep that argument alive out of pride, after the bald-faced reality of overt corruption put its fist through it, like we told you it would.

Exactly.

Didn't know about that, too young.  Any links?

:) @ Fidel.

Murder is against the law. For most of us that is.

Road raging, borderline psychotics everywhere should now be able to point to the Bryant case for leniency. I can see it all now...

Sorry, Judge Reinhold. I had few choices but to horse-drag that half-breed courier with my beemer convertible. It was either him or my uppity class, white male privilege to own the road. 

Okay, Johnny. But keep 'er between the ditches, er, steel mailboxes and lamp posts next time. Bloody mess that.

Wahooo!

Touche, pardon my keyboard.

And let's give them more credit than that.

So you don't think Levesque got special treatment in 1977?

I don't know. But I do know that no one even needs to speculate on Bryants drunkeness, or wether he was driving the car or not, his overt witnessed actions all on their own warrant a trial to reveal the facts. So this therefore means, that even if I do not know if Levesque got special treatment, I do know, prima facie that Bryant did.

And that is the point we should be hammering away at, not filly-faddling around, coming up with excuses for the fact that the charges were dropped.