When liberals don’t like the courts

Conservatives have spent years railing at the liberal propensity to by-pass the legislative process and head straight for the courts.  It turns out, though, that there are situations in which liberals prefer to avoid the court all together — and will take legislative action to try to avoid it.  Those situations arise when a decades old murder trial might implicate some of the President’s friends.

The background here is a bit complicated, so stick with me.  In 1970, a bomb exploded at the Park Police Station in Francisco, wounding several people and killing one police officer, Brian McDonnell.  The most likely suspects were members of the Weather Underground.  If that name seems familiar to you, it should.  The Weather Underground was, of course, Bill Ayers’ and Bernadine Dohrn’s domestic terrorism creation.

In 1971, another police officer, Sgt. John Young, got killed in an attack on the Ingleside Police station.  That murder remained unsolved until 2007.  In that year, things suddenly changed:

Interest in the incident was reignited in 2007 after federal prosecutors charged a group of alleged former Black Liberation Army members in the 1971 murder of San Francisco police Sgt. John Young at the Ingleside Station in San Francisco.

The grand jury that investigated the Ingleside case also looked at the Park Station bombing. But the results of the probe were not released. No one has ever been charged with McDonnell’s death.

Although Ayers denied any connection between the two bombings, an informant claims that there is indeed a connection:

But Larry Grathwohl, a former FBI informant, who infiltrated the Weather Underground in the 1970s rejected Mr. Ayers characterization of nonlethal bombings of buildings and police stations.

“That’s simply not true,” he said during Thursday’s press conference. He claimed that the [1970] bombing was allegedly done by Bill Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn.

Mr. Ayers has repeatedly denied any involvement in the bombing. He has called Mr. Grathwohl a “paid dishonest person” in a newspaper interview.

But Mr. Gratwohl insists that Ms. Dorn was involved and said he has testified under oath to this. He said in early 1970, Mr. Ayers visited him and other operatives in Buffalo, N.Y., and said Mr. Dohrn had been forced to plant the bomb at Park Station because others were not active enough in committing violence. Mr. Ayers also knew the composition of the bomb and where it had been set.

The possible connection between the two cases — two Left wing groups bombing two police stations in two consecutive years — means there is a chance that, during a trial against the BLA members for the 1971 murder, something might come out implicating the Weather Underground and Bill Ayers in the 1970 murder.  And it’s a really, really bad thing when the President’s good buddy, the man in whose living room he started his political career, turns out to be at the center of a cop killing.

All of which gets us to today’s story.  This coming Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Stupidvisors is going to vote on a resolution calling for the Feds to drop the case against the seven members of the “San Francisco 8” for the 1971 murder of Sgt. John Young:

The full Board of Supervisors will vote Tuesday on a controversial resolution calling on the state to drop charges against seven men accused of murder in the death of a San Francisco police sergeant in 1971 — a measure that has angered current and former police officers to no end.

The resolution, authored by Supervisor Eric Mar and co-sponsored by supervisors Ross Mirkarimi, Sophie Maxwell and Chris Daly, urges Attorney General Jerry Brown questions how evidence was obtained and urges Brown too drop the case entirely.  [Sic]  The resolution contends that the only evidence in Sgt. John Young’s murder case was obtained through torture, and that “the case was reopened based on questionable claims of ‘new’ evidence.”

As you can imagine, San Francisco’s police department is very upset about the Stupidvisor’s proposal. Some San Franciscan’s are upset too.  Here are excerpts from just a few of the reader comments:

Hey…BOS [Board of Stupidvisors] and Mar, Mirkarimi, Maxwell and Daly in particular…WHAT do you think you are doing? If there is any “wrong doing” or “ill-gotten” evidence in this case, it WILL come out in a court of law.

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It is not the job of the BoS to acquit someone of murder charges or to make public proclamations that they should be acquitted based on ignorance of the evidence. If my supervisor comes to my house and I throw him in my trash, will I get fined because he’s compostable?

***

It is not the job of the BoS to acquit someone of murder charges or to make public proclamations that they should be acquitted based on ignorance of the evidence. If my supervisor comes to my house and I throw him in my trash, will I get fined because he’s compostable?

Most of the 29 comments left (so far) are in the same vein.

Many of the comments attribute the Stupidvisor’s attitude to the kneejerk Progressive hatred for cops and its passion for politically motivated cop killers.  (Does the name Mumia Abu-Jamal ring any bells?) As I said at the beginning of this post, though, I think this one goes deeper.  While liberals generally kind of fancy politically Left murderers (“Tookie” Williams, anyone?), I don’t recall the Board of Stupidvisors ever before getting between a defendant and someone charged with murdering a police officer.

The difference here is that the trial has dangerous implications for President Obama.  Much as liberals adore having the courts make public policy, they fear the fallout when criminal courts are charged with finding facts.  And so you have the unedifying spectacle of a local legislative body trying to short circuit a criminal trial against men against of murdering a police officer, just because there is the faint possibility that the trial could prove embarrassing to the President of the United States.