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The McCloskey Frameup
Falsified evidence? It’s only a problem if you get caught!
The latest on the St. Louis couple facing weapons charges for defending their home after protestors charged through their gates, from KSDK Channel 5:
The gun Patricia McCloskey waved at protesters was inoperable when it arrived at the St. Louis police crime lab, but a member of Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s staff ordered crime lab experts to disassemble and reassemble it and wrote that it was “readily capable of lethal use” in charging documents filed Monday, 5 On Your Side has learned.
I’m glad to hear someone is on our side. Also, the Missouri Governor has condemned the prosecution and said he would pardon the McCloskeys if needed.
Published in Law
A lawyer friend once told me, “If you ever get in an accident driving drunk, immediately take your keys out of the ignition.” That supposedly makes it difficult to prove you were operating the vehicle. I guess lawyers know that if that if you are suspected of a gun crime, that you should flip the firing pin/spring *before* someone comes around to collect evidence. Was that little silver gun operational at the time it was waved around? We’ll never know, but we have to assume it was not.
She didn’t even know how to hold it. What are the chances that she could have dis- and reassembled it?
These guys are in for some rough times. I hope they hold up. They are going to need a gofundme. This stuff costs a lot of money to stay out of jail on. Truth is they will most likely be perp walked for the cameras. In time when the public attention goes elsewhere they will most likely get off but a lot of damage will be done before hand.
Didn’t the state AG throw out the case? He did have something to say. . .
Isn’t this tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice? Shouldn’t someone be prosecuted?
Oh, no they aren’t. From KSDK, via Ace of SpadesHQ and American Greatness:
Hey Kim. Do me a solid and check your lawbooks to see if there is a law against screwing around with evidence, would you?
He has publicly opposed the prosecution, which guarantees that an appeal would succeed since he would be the de facto prosecutor at the appellate level.
Even better.
Run into a bar or drive home and take drink. They can no longer prove your were intoxicated while driving.
They fixed their gun for them. That was nice of them.
Talk about preference bias. I think the McCloskeys are innocent of any crimes, but this willful embrace of the ridiculous is embarrassing.
Suppose a lefty thug, who happened to be a lawyer, had waved a pistol around and been charged with a crime for it. Suppose later the pistol was seized and found to be mis-assembled. Suppose another lefty thug, also a lawyer, had waved a rifle around and also been charged. When the rifle was seized, no ammunition for it was found.
I, and I think most of you, would assume that the lefty thugs had hidden their ammo and mis-assembled the pistol to deflect the coming charges. After all, do you think they were really stupid enough to try to face down the mob with an empty rifle and disabled handgun? I do not.
I think that extending any other interpretation to the evidence in plain sight (sorry, Adam, but these things really are in plain sight) is to reach so hard that one risks discrediting other arguments. Let’s stick to the argument that the McCloskeys had every right, and a moral duty, to defend their home with their guns, and let’s hope that the courts don’t assume the obvious and take a hard line on them for trying to fool people.
Lawyers. The McCloskeys made a lawyer’s mistake.
Maybe the
persecutorsprosecutors should quit while they’re behind.So the local DA is going to have his show trial, to damage these people , knowing they are going to walk on the appeal.
The process is the punishment as Mark Steyn says.
I don’t see the point in hypothesizing about how the McCloskey’s might have conducted themselves subsequent to not committing a crime when we have a prosecutor caught purgering herself in court documents to make a case that the governor and the state DA have already condemned.
The DA’s office should have simply reported that the pistol was unable to fire. Done. End of story.
I don’t know if ACA Chris Hinckley had political aspirations before, but the only thing he should be running for now is the state line.
That’s the least problematic thing, assuming the prosecutor did not hide the fact of the repair. There presumably will be a dispute about the meaning of “readily”.
If this goes forward, we’ll get all sorts of legal theories for liability. I can easily imagine a theory that says she is criminally liable for casually waiving the gun around vs. carefully pointing it at the closest or otherwise most threatening demonstrator(s).
Like Clinton, Strozk, Holder, etc, etc,etc,etc…..
That is the Gardner plan, but will a judge let it get past a summary acquittal?
That would have been a dereliction of their duty, and an untruth. The pistol as they received it was able to fire. People field strip and reassemble pistols in the field, every day. Gun owners practice it. It is a normal part of gun operation. IANAL, but it looks to me that a pistol that requires nothing more than field stripping and reassembly is not unable to fire.
Guys, this no-ammo and mis-assembled pistol angle is a loser. Y’all are trying too hard.
So, the Ace of Spades report which states that the pistol “could not be test fired as submitted” is an untruth?
I don’t always field strip my pistol, but when I do, it’s in the middle of a riot.
What was their mistake? To protect themselves and their home when people were trespassing and threatening them with bodily harm?
And the cost of private security (and eventually, theft, vandalism, and arson of their home).
If you can’t do it when you need to, then more practice is indicated.
Watch them go after the guys law license too.
Morally, their mistake was to manipulate the evidence after the fact. Intellectually, it was to do so without knowledge of the context in which their manufactured evidence would be interpreted.
I don’t know that they did that, of course, nor do I believe it in the customary sloppy sense. But the evidence in context tells that story.
They had no reasonable expectation of being charged. The police chief said they were treating it as self defense against threatening home invaders.
Wait, you’re saying that, after the riot, the McCloskeys reassembled the pistol so that it couldn’t be fired?
That statement, I think, is true. How do you think it’s relevant? What would you think if the pistol had been received with a stovepipe jam?
I bet I could field strip and reassemble any of my pistols before the average person could clear a stovepipe jam, and I’m just a casual gun owner.
If I’m right about the gun reassembly, then one can make the case that it’s deserved. I wouldn’t touch it myself, but I’d find it hard to argue against it.
P.S. I hope I’m wrong. The McCloskeys are good people.