If I'm understanding you correctly on the testimony thing, you are saying that immunity/clemency cannot be granted unless there is supporting evidence. I suppose that might be the case, but can you provide me with any legislation that backs this up? With regards to Mayor Zimmer's allegations, it still seems to me that if you need to rely on someone's testimony, you obviously do not have enough evidence to support the facts already, and by its very nature, an unverifiable story is hearsay. Having notes taken by the same person who is making the claims hardly adds much weight especially if the chronology of when the notes were made can't be verified; I mean, she could have made those notes last week, right? Obviously testimony has a role, but without harder facts backing it up, it seems like a tenuous basis for a conviction.
ItÂ’s not a matter of law but rather a matter of value. There is no legislation that can be pointed at requiring what Derideo states but it is how this is practiced. Your statement at the end sums it up actually: testimony alone is a tenuous basis for conviction.
Let’s use an example; if you had 2 people that you were looking at putting away, 1 a small time cocaine dealer and the other a major manufacturer who supplied that dealer and 50 others in the state you are obviously going to mark the manufacturer as a higher priority. The small fry dealer is expendable – the manufacturer will replace him by the next day whereas taking him down would have a real and appreciable effect on sales in that area. If all you have though is the testimony of a single dealer then there is nothing that is gained in giving him immunity – you are going to lose the case against the other anyway. In that case you take what you can get, decline to give him immunity and prosecute the one person that you have the evidence for. If you have sufficient evidence to convict both then you won the lottery and you can convict all guilty parties involved. Best case scenario.
However, should the evidence not be sufficient for the larger target and such testimony can add enough weight to the case then that is what immunity is for as well as why you need some corroborating evidence or you simply are not going to get that immunity. Why would the prosecutor offer such a valuable thing if there was no ‘payback’ for them?
I understand that such seems like a bad thing because, as you stated, someone is getting away with a crime BUT this is a matter of allowing someone committing a BIGGER crime getting away. If you know that one is going to get away with it, you are better off getting the source of the problem rather than some outlier that actually solves nothing. In this case and running under the assumption that Christie is guilty, jailing some of Christies aids/staff does what? Nothing. Absolutely zero gets accomplished because the SOURCE of the problem is not only still in office but also empowered by the fact that he got away.
The reason I mention Hillary is not to suggest that she set Christie up for the scandals but rather that she instructed her friends in the press to move on the Christie scandals. If Christie is half as corrupt as he currently appears, then there must have been stories being given to the press constantly about his administration's abuse of power. With the information about Sandy funds being withheld for instance, this is by know means a new development and a Mayor should have the clout to be heard, so why didn't either the Mayor make a stink earlier or the news media cover these allegations? You yourself said Christie has been fast and loose since the beginning; I know investigations take time, but it takes three years to uncover a single scandal from somebody who is corrupt from the start? I don't buy it. Why is the media in a frenzy over this story and refusing to let it go? It's not as if there is nothing else going on in the world. Christie was getting lots of love from the media until right after Christie beat Hillary in a straw poll, and now much of the media does their best to eat him alive? It could a coincidence, but it would not surprise me at all if the Clintons said, "Get him."
Interesting take. I don’t believe that the media sat on this though primarily because Christie is such a large figure in politics. The media’s prime directive is to make money and that is accomplished through viewership. He was a shining star before because he broke from the republicans to help Obama during the election. It was a rare example of someone not playing hard partisan tactics during that time. I think that he made a good ‘positive’ story for them for a while. Then this comes out and now they have some red meat.
The media has no loyalty to anyone. They will eat you alive if they think that story is going to be a winner over the positive one in a heartbeat and I believe that is what happened to Christie here. Having a story like this is something that they would be all over. The mayor OTOH might very well have sat on this until it was politically viable to release. That makes sense to me tbh. Political figures keep thing ‘in the bank’ all the time to propel their careers.
