Saturday, April 4, 2015

Johnson's estimates of distances and times were absurd

Dorian Johnson's estimates of distances and times were absurdly wrong. Any of the following details in his stories are unreliable:

* Distances

* Times of occurrence

* Durations of actions

Examples of his absurd estimates follow.

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Johnson was telling the grand jury about how he and Michael Brown were walking past Darren Wilson's police vehicle and how Police Officer Darren Wilson told them to walk on the sidewalk. Johnson responded that he and Brown were close to their destination. 

Johnson elaborated to the grand jury that their destination still was undetermined. They were going to Johnson's apartment or to Brown's apartment but still had not decided which. 

A grand juror asked Johnson to estimate the distance to either destination. Johnson told the grand juror that either apartment was only 20 or 30 feet away. Furthermore, that was the distance from the leasing office, which was behind them. 
Grand Juror  From where you are going ... approximately how many feet, did you have -- a block to go? did you have like 20 feet to go? 10 feet to go? or what? 
Johnson  Yeah, like I said, we was just at the leasing office. Where my building is and his [Brown's] building is away from the leasing office is not a block away, probably 20, 30 feet away
[Page 64]
To appreciate Johnson's absurd estimate of the distance -- "not a block away, probably 20, 30 feet away -- study the below image.


Johnson told the grand jury that the distance from
the leasing office to either his own apartment building
or to Brown's apartment building was
"not a block away, probably 20, 30 feet away".
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An example of an absurd time estimate was Johnson's
statement to a detective that the shooting occurred at about 2 p.m. 
Detective  What time do you believe this all took place, when you met the police officer? 
Johnson  It had to be 1:45, 1:50, almost 2:00 or just getting 2.00. 
[Page 45]
The shooting occurred at about noon. 

Johnson said he got up at about 7 a.m. and met with Brown outside about a half hour later. If so, then he had to explain to investigators his activities during his perceived interval of about seven hours -- from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

He could explain his activities only for about two hours -- from about 10 a.m. to 12 noon -- which in his mind was from about 12 noon to 2 p.m. 

The first several hours of his day were a void of activity. Questioned repeatedly, he could not say what he did during those hours. My own guess is that he woke up at around 10 a.m., not at 7 a.m. It seems that Johnson lived his life with little awareness of the time of day.

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Another example of Johnson's absurd estimate of time  was his repeated statements that Wilson remained in his police vehicle for "two or three minutes" between the following two moments:


1) when Wilson first shot Brown from inside the police vehicle 


and 


2) when Wilson exited his police vehicle. 


In fact, this interval lasted only about 15 seconds -- a small fraction of "two or three minutes". The entire incident -- from the moment when Wilson encountered Brown and Wilson until the final, fatal gunshots -- 
lasted only one minute

Johnson stated this "two or three minutes" several times. For example, on August 12 -- just four days after the incident -- he said in two interviews:

And when he [Wilson] fired his weapon …. He [Brown] was struck in the chest or upper region. I saw blood splattered down his side, his right area.  
And at that time we both [Johnson and Brown] took off running. 
Now it was almost two or three minutes we were running. I was able to hide myself behind the first vehicle that was up on the scene. 
And the officer then got out of his car. 
[.....] 
… after the first shot went off, I stepped back and I looked at my friend [Brown] and I see the blood coming down his right arm, so I know that he was hit. 
…. the officer let go [of Brown], and that’s how we were both able to run at the same time. …. 
I could tell the officer was in shock, because it took him at least two or three minutes before he initially got out the car after the first shot …. 
.

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