Shadow Trial: Prosecutors in Ferguson violated our right to an open criminal justice system.

[woolldog]

37. You are completely missing the point.

which is not whether or not he was "examined," but whether a proper cross examination, the kind of examination that would occur for any other defendant, which would be conducted using leading questions, and in which he would be confronted with his prior inconsistent statements, was conducted here. It wasn't. Instead the witnesses were effectively the ones who were cross examined. You won't argue the substance because you know that no other Defendant would get that kind of preferential treatment. You want badly to believe that the system worked. It didn't. The result was preordained because the system here was rigged. It wouldn't work that way for anyone else.

The Defendant can be called but it is extremely unusual. And in a state like Missiouri where you don't need to put on exculpatory evidence you would not normally call the Defendant.