Like many people here, I was outraged last week when a California jury returned a guilty verdict for involuntary manslaughter for Oakland BART police officer's Johannes Mehserle's cold blooded killing of Oscar Grant. I don't know the law, but that seemed like a bad verdict.
Something similar happened in Georgia. In 2003, police officers in Columbus (southwest of Atlanta) pulled over a car that was wrongly identified as belonging to drug traffickers from Miami. Even though the people in the car dutifully pulled over and exited the vehicle, one sheriff's deputy shot Kenneth Walker twice in the head while he was already restrained on the ground on the side of the highway.
But as you'll learn, in Georgia we didn't even get the partial justice that Oakland got. Here, the DA, a man named Ken Hodges, botched the arraignment. He "forgot" to swear in witnesses, refused to show the public the police dashboard video of the shooting, and after all of this didn't even ask for an indictment.
Even when the legislature voted unanimously for a bill that forced DAs to swear in all witnesses, Hodges didn't admit to his mistakes and re-open the case to seek out justice. Hodges wouldn't even "man up" to Kenneth Walker's mother and admit that he botched the case. And now he's trying to turn his failure into a promotion by running on his background as a DA and trying to be Georgia's next Attorney General.
Now, I know that many of you don't come from Georgia and have your own races that you care passionately about. But fortunately, we have a great TRUE Democrat running, Rob Teilhet. Rob has been a leading Democratic member of the Georgia House since 2002. In that time, he's contributed tens of thousands of dollars to other Democrats working hard to retake this state. This year, we've got an amazing opportunity to retake out statehouse with former Gov. Roy Barnes running strong in the polls, and the last thing we need is a drag on the Democratic ticket with Ken Hodges, a "Democrat" who botches police brutality cases and even gave hundreds of dollars to Saxby Chambliss the very same year Sen. Shameless was putting up ads comparing war hero Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden.
If Hodges somehow wins the nomination, his Republican opponent need only slap his disclaimer on the above ad and it could threaten the entire ticket and all of the gains we've been making in this red (now purple) state over the last decade. I have given $1,000 to Rob's campaign, and while I know that kind of commitment would be asking a lot for most of the people here, I wonder if you could spare $25 or whatever you can afford to help Rob keep this powerful ad on the air through Election Day, which is next Tuesday the 20th.
You'd be helping a great Democrat who is seeking higher office, and helping to make sure former Gov. Barnes isn't stuck with deadweight on the ticket as we approach an election that could mean the difference between a Democratic or Republican controlled Congress after the next redistricting, when Georgia will pick up at least one seat after the census. Thank you all in advance for any help you can offer Rob.
Here is the link.
You should also check out the full unedited police dashboard video and ask yourself: do you want someone who can't (or won't) convince a grand jury that this is murder to be elected dogcatcher, much less Attorney General?