Understanding The Ferguson Decision

Darren Wilson wasn't indicted in the shooting of Mike Brown, a 17 year old unarmed black teenager. Unless you literally live under you rock you've seen the public outrage over the decision, be it the riots in Ferguson, or public rants on social media. Before anybody tries to justify the ruling by the grand jury in the case I want explain the legal aspect of it. Once you understand you simply cannot justify not indicting Officer Wilson.

An indictment is not a trial, an indictment is formally charging someone with a crime. It's a standard procedure before every criminal trial to make sure that the court system doesn't waste its time with a case that doesn't have any backing. How does the jury make this determination? They weigh the evidence presented against a standard of proof.

In a criminal trial, the standard of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt." It is by far the most difficult standard of proof to meet. Basically, if after hearing all the testimony and evidence, a reasonable person would doubt that the defendant committed the crime then the defendant should be exonerated. A more lax standard is the "preponderance of the evidence." This is used in civil trials and means that the evidence must be more likely than not, a far cry from beyond a reasonable doubt. To put it another way if 51% of the evidence says you're guilty, then you're guilty. Now ladies and gentlemen there is an even lower standard of proof that I'm sure you've heard before: probable cause.

Probable cause is one of the lowest standards of proof, second only to reasonable suspicion. All you need is a reasonable basis to believe a crime MAY have been committed. So to give you an idea, an empty beer can in the passenger seat of a car, is probable cause for an officer to search you on suspicions of a DUI. It is NOT enough to convict you of the crime, but enough to meet probable cause.

Can you guess which standard of proof is required to issue an indictment? Yup, it's probable cause. Now let's apply that to the Brown case. Let's look at the facts for a minute and see if we have probable cause, not to convict Wilson, but simply to see if we should bother finding out what happened that day.

• Brown was unarmed
• Brown was shot six times
• Brown was 17 years old
• Brown is dead
• Officer Wilson suffered no serious injuries

Do these facts make you believe that maybe, just maybe, Mike Brown's killing wasn't justified self-defense? If so then we have met the burden of probable cause, Wilson should have been indicted and the trial should have moved forward. Ask any attorney how blatantly absurd it is for a person not be indicted after putting 6 bullets into a kid and you'll see why everybody is so outraged.

It would be one thing if Wilson wasn't convicted after a trial, then you could make the argument that the evidence wasn't there for a conviction under "beyond a reasonable doubt" but that didn't happen. He was let off scott-free without any effort to find out what happened, and that's the worst part of this. The system proves time and time again that black people's lives are worth less than a white person's. No supposed petty-crime deserves being executed without a trial, yet Darren Wilson is free, and a lot richer because he killed a young black boy.

I'm not even going to get into riot aspect of it except by saying all my Maryland readers should remember in 2002 when Maryland won the national championship how much destruction was caused by drunk rioters over a college basketball game. And yet people want to complain about rioting when the justice system let's a murderer walk free without a trial? If you're complaining about the riots then you just don't get it. There's no other way to put it. Maybe it'll take another 50-100 years but right now, post-racial America is nothing but a child's fantasy.

Football, Sportswriters and The Stock Market

Stop me if you've heard this one before. X player plays well. Y analyst writes how he's the next incarnation of Jesus. Next week X player doesn't play well. Y analyst writes about how he's worse than Ryan Leaf.

The NFL is unique in terms of sports leagues. If a team loses a game in the NBA, NHL or MLB it's not the end of time. They still have a bagillion more games to play and fluke wins and losses don't usually play a huge factor in their final regular season record. There's only 16 weeks of football and every single game counts. That's why football fans go nuts on Sundays and sports media have so much to say after every single game.

We've seen the Kirk Cousins hype. He played two good games early on in the season and people we're quick to say he's a better quarterback than RG3, that the Redskins are saved and that RG3's career is over. He's now sitting behind RG3 and Colt McCoy on the depth chart.

More recently, as I spend most of football season in Pennsylvania, I saw last week's Eagles game. Quarterback Nick Foles, who led Philadelphia to a solid 5-2 record this year after finishing last season with 27 TDs and only 2 interceptions. Foles has been getting beaten up in recent weeks and went out of the game with a broken clavicle in the first quarter after throwing a touchdown and a pick-6 to keep the score even at 7-7. Enter disgraced ex-Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez. He comes and throws a slighty underthrown bomb to Jeremy Maclin for a 74 yard gain on his first play. He finished with two touchdown passes and two interceptions and, more importantly, an Eagles win.

"Sports analysts", even the "good" ones on NFL.com started writing about how Mark Sanchez is reviving his career and how the Jets ruined him. Some say that he's the replacement for Nick Foles and that he's going to lead the Eagles even after Foles is healthy. After 3 quarters of football people want to dethrone the most consistent quarterback Philadelphia has had since Donovan McNabb for a proven turnover machine that even the New York Jets didn't want. For those who forget, Geno Smith has a better career completion percentage than Sanchez, add-in the facts that Sanchez left New York with more turnovers than scores and the fact that he's from USC and you see why these so-called analysts are really quick to jump the gun.

Let's turn now to the news. You ever hear people freaking out on the news because the Dow fell by 7 points or the S&P 500 is down 5 points? Do you know why most investors don't really care? Because they aren't in the stock market for a single day. Regardless of any single day's gains and losses (even the 08 crash took more than an single day) investors are pretty sure that over the long run they will end up with some positive growth. The smart people realize that anything can happen in a single sitting and that they need to observe a stock or fund for an extended period of time before making extreme judgments on it.

Sportswriters and fans are like the people who get extremely upset or happy after watching the day's stock market activity. Too reactive and too stupid to see the big picture. Is anyone questioning Tom Brady's job security now? No. And someone call in me in about 5 weeks after we see what Mark Sanchez's career renaissance looks like. I'm betting nobody will want to see him under-center next season.

The NFL is an extremely complicated sport. Game-planning and learning offenses and defenses are so much more complicated than any other sport. Players need time to develop their mental abilities to catch up to their physical capabilities. Receivers need to know when to break-off their routes and sit in a zone and what their quarterback is expecting of them on every route. The quarterback needs to be able to the read the defense pre-snap, make adjustments and then see what his options are when the play starts. This isn't something that happens overnight. Experience is necessary to become a solid NFL player. Russell Wilson & Andrew Luck are exceptions to the rule but their play is getting even better than their phenomenal rookie seasons with some NFL experience under their belt. Teams, coaches and players take time to develop and a smart fan never reads too much into any single game or even a single season.