Help Matthew Stewart
Yesterday we told you that police testimony has already revealed everything you need to know to conclude Matthew acted in self-defense. This morning’s testimony revealed everything you need to know to conclude the police were wholly unprepared to invade Matthew’s home, making the situation even more dangerous and unpredictable than it might otherwise have been.
Sgt. Jason VanderWarf testified that officers knocked on Matthew’s door on three occasions but never talked to anyone. A few times they drove by the house without stopping. They also did a criminal background check on Matthew and a query into the driver’s license database and found nothing. They did not look into property records, work records, or even professional license records. They could have easy determined Matthew’s work schedule and confronted him peacefully.
Each of the agents that were in Matthew’s home testified to roughly how many home-invasion style raids they have conducted. The answer has ranged from “more than 100” to “10 to 20” in the last few months. If Matthew’s case is representative of how the Weber Morgan Narcotics Strike Force conducts itself that is hundreds of victims and instances of violence that the police themselves created.
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“Set aside for a moment that marijuana should be legal”
I pray that justice is served in this case. However, I hope this quote is not your legal teams strategy. Trying to fight to many battles at once will not only dilute the importance of the true issues at hand. IE- Police Violence, Rights to defend yourself, etc. Implying that marijuana should be legal will only hurt Matthews case, both in court and in public opinion. The Fact is, it is ILLEGAL. Questioning the tactics of enforcing these laws IS a legitimate concern.
One major aspect of this trial that has been of concern to me, and I was wondering if you could expand on it is: I feel Matthew’s 6th amendment rights are being broken. Why has it taken 11 months to get to this point? That is RIDICULOUS. I know he was injured, is this delay because of the time needed by Matthew to recover, or is this typical Stall tactics by the State to drain Defense funds?
I don’t pretend to know all the details of this case, so in no way can I side with either party. However, I know two things.
One) If I thought someone was breaking into my house, I would defend myself with all my available assets.
Two) The police constantly don’t abide by the laws they have sworn to protect. We as the people in the community, need to hold them to a higher standard.
I have many thoughts on other aspects of this case, but I will leave my comment with this thought. From the amount of shots fired; If their were no instances of friendly fire, it would be a statistical MIRACLE.
To answer your first question, No, no one is going off of the fact that Marijuana is legal. The post was purely hypothetical.
The reason it has taken this long to get where we are is a number a of reasons. First, yes some of Matthew’s hearing were postponed due to emergency surgeries. Another reason is that the state took an irregular long amount of time to produce Matthew’s defense with ballistics.
It is good to question these tactics as we all know they are too dangerous and leave too many opportunities for human error. I thank you for voicing your concerns.