cb400bill

Threads merged.

no motor?

Yes, but one too many calls about a dangerous driver like his is better than no one calling.

cb400bill

Hearing delayed until Nov. 7 in Kalamazoo bike crash case

KALAMAZOO — A preliminary examination for the Battle Creek man charged in a June bicycling accident that killed five cyclists is rescheduled for November.

Charles Pickett Jr., 50, was scheduled to appear for the hearing Wednesday, but it will be held in a full-day session Nov. 7.

Kalamazoo County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Carrie Klein said the hearing was delayed to allow for more than just a half day. The examination, set before District Judge Vincent Westra, will determine if enough evidence exists to send the case to Kalamazoo County Circuit Court for trial.

rydabent

What ever become of the law that says a person should have a speedy trial. Criminals and their lawyers try to delay trials as long as they can hoping people will forget the crime, and will have moved on to something new.

canklecat

Speedy trials are advantageous mainly to folks who are innocent, or for whom the evidence is lacking, and who can afford good attorneys or luck into a good public defender.

Trial delays can help prosecutors build a better case. Delays can also be abused by prosecutors to squeeze a plea bargain out of a suspect who might be innocent of this particular crime but has a sketchy past and can't afford a good attorney.

It shouldn't matter whether the public and media have forgotten about a crime. Juries are supposed to be tabula rasa coming into trials.

Personally I think Pickett is a miserable excuse for a human being, a ticking time bomb, probably an unsalvageable addict, apparently unrepentant about this accident, and should never see the free world again unless it's to work toward restitution to the victims' families. But he's still entitled to a fair trial.

CliffordK

The state won't "forget" the crime.
And, perhaps one's trial is best if the jury is filled without people with prior opinions about the events.
The biggest issue might be whether witnesses will forget details about the event, or conflate details.

Nonetheless, it isn't just the defense that delays trials, and some judges will play games with hearings, often in favor of the prosecution, to the point of biasing the trial and actual corruption.

Milton Keynes

No, that's just what you don't want. You don't want a bunch of people on the jury with the attitude of, "I remember how angry I was reading about this story, let's convict him and get it over with." I guarantee if we allowed jurors with prior knowledge of the case we'd have a very high conviction rate of innocent people. Not to mention it could even go the other way having people with preconceived notions of the defendant's innocence.

No, I think it's best to have jurors who are unfamiliar with the case and just listening to the facts as they are presented, then making up their mind. It's not a perfect system, but it's the best we have.

Rollfast

One would think that plenty of testimony was recorded at the time of the incident, and memories do not fade as much as you are led to believe, even if they are repressed some. Unless your nervous system is being progressively destroyed by a cognitive disease/Alzheimer's, you would be amazed at what can still be found in there. While it's true that you are going to recall most of the mundane and automatic things your body does, it's the cognitive associations of an event that reconstruct it in your memory, much like your computer finds X and goes to Y unless n=0 perhaps.


Some people have 'better hard drives' than others too. Still, 'photographic memory' is a misnomer if you think they can recall every second and thing that happened to them, it's only an advanced cognitive reconstructive process.


And yes, you can train somebody to believe what they are told is a memory. that too is supposed to be looked for in a trial.


One hopes we are far past the Salem witch hunts.

CliffordK

Sorry, I must have mistyped. (fixed above).

Give a little time, and all the boiling rage about the event dies down.

Then one can present the facts about the event in the trial, and hopefully the jury makes a decision based on what is actually presented in the trial, not what they feel their neighbor's opinion is.

jeichelberg87

This story is also bull cookies.

Why would you subject Pickett to a psychological examination to determine fitness for a trial if you have not yet determined there is enough evidence to go to a trial?

CliffordK

For something as major as a car running off the road and smashing 9 cyclists, I would think the memory would be pretty good. Still, with time memories may evolve, or one might fill in facts.

Then... say one delays the trial for 5 years. A witness might claim he say the truck sideswipe tree X. But, if forensics and photographs actually indicate that the truck just came close to tree Y, then the whole testimony could be discredited.

I wonder a bit about police officers. Say an officer is out writing 100 citations a day. It becomes a major event for the recipient. But, a couple of years later, will the officer even remember writing the ticket by the time it makes it to trial?

KD5NRH

Exactly why, when I worked security, immediately after any incident, we'd write out every little detail of what we saw/heard/did, then condense that to relevant facts for the actual incident report. The long form, we'd pocket and stash where it would be safe for as long as necessary...usually with the company's attorney after making a copy. IIRC, I still have a couple of them scanned on a backup drive somewhere.

CB HI

Where do you get this. Defense is constantly requesting continuance, hoping that witnesses won't show up at the next date or flat out move away.

This was the situation in all four cases that I was a witness at.

Rollfast

Five years is as improbable as me being able to buy a Madone tomorrow morning.


We're all mad about this but let's try not to get paranoid about the trial proceedings. Justice is best left to run at the proper speed so it's not messed up.

mconlonx

Delays are part of due process. Hate the legal system? Change it.

Rollfast

It involves you and your army.

rekmeyata

Exactly! And lots of money.

cb400bill

Hearing planned for suspect in bike tragedy | News | WIN 98.5

KALAMAZOO (WKZO-AM) -- The Battle Creek man charged with causing the deaths of five cyclists in Cooper Township this summer is due in court Monday.

Barring any last minute motions or delays, Charles Pickett Jr. is scheduled for a preliminary hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to bind him over for trial.

jfowler85

You don't either, you're assuming intent. If the drunk in question was chucking beer bottles into a crowd then your analogy would hold up, but it turns out you're just groping for an explanation for a weak position.

rydabent

I agree 100%!!! I believe in personal responsibility, and a person that drives drunk has none. He or she should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, as a sign to others that society does NOT condone that kind of behavour.

njkayaker

Oy!

That you imagine the legal system works this way doesn't mean it does.

rekmeyata

There is no assuming, did he or did not get drunk? did he or did not intend to drive his car afterwards? You're just sympathetic towards drunks.

jfowler85

Intent is exceedingly difficult to prove and is often built out of circumstantial evidence, of which you have only what you so diligently gathered from this thread. Getting drunk in itself does not even predicate its own intent, genius.


I've made no commentary on drunks at all, so there you are assuming again, with emphasis on the ass.

B. Carfree

And there's where the problem lies. As it currently stands, we just don't prosecute impaired driving as a serious deadly crime in spite of the fact that roadway deaths are one of the largest causes of preventable death in America. I don't see this changing any time soon.

KD5NRH

It depends; Arizona's gotten pretty serious about it from the looks of things, though they still fail to work quickly enough IMO. An associate just got picked up on a DUI there from 1994 - she'd bonded out, packed up and left the state. Two days after the new arrest, she'd bonded out and was driving again. (Not really an issue in this case IMO, as she quit drinking 10+ years ago, but the same would apply regardless of that fact.) Current penalties call for a 90 day suspension on first offence, but there's no emergency hearing to suspend immediately in case the driver bonds out before trial. (Granted, this may be partly because she's on an out-of-state license at the moment, having just moved back there a few weeks ago.)