watched a documentary called "Better This world".
Its about 2 kids that were essentially charged in planning a terror attack at the 2008 republican national convention.
Its pretty thought provoking, and I am no lover of hippy protest BS, but I think these kids got handed a raw deal.
Basically these kids David McKay and Brad Crowder(both 22 at the time), assembled fire bombs but never actually used them.
The kicker of it is, the FBI's informant (Brandon Darby) that led to their arrest, was the "leader" of their activist group, and they claim he pushed them to build the fire bombs. (which would be entrapment). The informant was a known Left wing activist, who had participated in militant activism in the past. To me it almost seemed as if he A. Wanted to use these kids to push his agenda using his informant status as a shield or B. just wanted to be part of making an arrest and sewed the seeds.
i just found it rather dubious that the FBI would use someone as informant, who would essentially be informing on people that were his own proteges so to speak (he was a decent stretch older than them and experienced in militant activism, whereas Crowder and McKay had none). There were other members of the group that were no prosecuted, that also backup McKay and Crowder's claims that at the time Darby was preparing and pushing the group members toward militant activism.
So they raided the apartment the firebombs were in and arrested Crowder and McKay. What they wanted to get them for though was the intent to cause bodily harm.
All they had on them was hearsay. without going into a terrible amount of detail crowder was offered a plea deal of 2 years and took it. McKay was pegged as "the ring leader" and offered a deal of 7 years, but chose to go to trial which resulted in a hung jury, because (as one of the jurors states in the doc, the entrapment by the informant seemed likely) so before the new trial they offered him a lessened plea deal of 4 years and of course he took it.
why wouldnt you. You are faced with potentially 30 years if you lose, or 4 years guaranteed. the catch is in the plea he had to recant his claims of entrapment. toward the end an fbi agent is interviewed saying their testimony in their plea deals says they werent entrapped so they werent.
that is such BS. If I was in a situation where I could potentially face 30 years if I lost or 2-4 guaranteed, on a charge I didnt feel I was guilty of, Id take the deal too, taking what those kids say in their plea deal is tantamount to believing a person saying they were a witch after the spanish inquisition had their way with them.
The kids admitted their fault in creating the firebombs and intent to destroy property, but said they never intended to target people and furthermore they were encouraged to do what they did do by the fbi informant.
As one of the kids says at the close of the doc, "I cant say I wouldnt have eventually done the same thing sometime down the road, but in this situation it would not have happened if not for Darby's influence")
The whole thing just sickened me on the justice system and practices of the FBI.
Heres a quote from the film about Darby:
[3] Specific claims by others in attendance at the protest (e.g., Ms. Gabby Hicks) state that FBI informant Darby was "...the one to suggest violence, when the rest of us clearly disagreed..." and that "[a]s an older seasoned activist, Darby had a lot of sway over Crowder and McKay, making them susceptible to his often militant rhetoric"[7] i.e. that he acted as an agent provocateur. As well, a former Darby girlfriend and various former colleagues attribute self-serving rather than altruistic or patriotic motivations to Darby's decision to act as an FBI informant.
I mean in my opinion, if the FBI uses an informant thats just an observer and they catch people intended to commit a crime im fine with that. But in this situation it seems that the FBI (or at least their douchebag informant) created a crime to prosecute.
the bottom line is, without Darbys influence, you cant say one way or the other these kids ever would have done anything wrong in their lives. Now that dirt bag runs the table on conservative talk shows like some sort of hero.
