Eddie Duran is charged with killing an innocent civilian and i attended all 3 days of the hearing in attempt to get immunity defense to fail and have charges go to trial. context surrounding the case

i wanted to do an AMA to essentially help me write a memoir and get detail. i did make notes during the trial but flow might be to unorganized to follow along. i did color code it for high lights.

everything below will be my philosophy on how you should stand in solidarity for strangers in a courtroom setting. better to ask your question before reading all of that

so i attended this trial in solidarity of the family of Rodger Fortson. didn’t know who was family of Rodger and i tended to avoid the family because I could say something insensitive given that Rodger is complete stranger to me. like i felt that the witnesses are goofy, but i would want to share that with the family because the witnesses are testifying that Eddie Duran was in enough danger to justify killing but not enough danger to approach his door. yes there are some nutty people that just want cops to get away with killing and think “im afraid” should absolve them of killing innocent people. I see goofy, the family probably see people justifying the killing of their brother/son/cousin. when I did interact with the family i kept it small, commented on the uncomfortable padded chairs, the weather, and where the vending machines are. also i walked a family member to their car with an umbrella while it was raining (i was just helping a stranger)

So given i had next to nothing to do with the case, i tried my best to come off as a model jury member. I brought clipboard with pen and paper, i dressed up, didn’t wear any hats, and i look as attentive as i could. the pen and paper kept me off my phone, i knew it would look bad if my head was down a lot. I didn’t sit in the front row, i sat behind the family to show solidarity. I made sure to nod as judge communicated information to give a sense of reasonably so that the judge would be upfront with what they are trying to do. Looking at witnesses with a clipboard puts pressure on them (Eddie Duran did testify so putting pressure on him would get information than if they were comfortable). I believe that Eddie Duran doesn’t trust his lawyers. the results so far is that the decision of the immunity hearing got pushed down the road for some other cases to be decided; it sounds like it would have happened if i didn’t show up, but i do consider it a victory that the immunity wasn’t granted on the last day. **point being that in activism your not going to have clear and defined feedback you just have to be confident in what you know and the actions you take based on what you know. **

I did take an edible to the hearing, dont recomend btw.

i knew about his case for like 2 weeks at this point and I read one article and i only watch the footage twice. in my first viewing i saw the video i could tell that fortson was not going to shoot back as soon as the gun was drawn and pointed at fortson. fortson body language was too calm and clearly fortson did not even react to a gun being drawn on him. if deputy really get acquitted of charges then law enforcement can shoot you at your door basically if you arm yourself and apparently theres a bunch of code of conduct you’ll have to follow that’s not law just to answer your door for a cop and cop doesn’t need any code of conduct they can believe they’re responding to a domestic violence, feel you have a weapon, and just kill you and at best serve as law enforcement till their replacement get hired. one of the witness testimony that the defense requested said that fortson could have put his weapon down before answering the door.

I could rant about the pro police witnesses, there’s a lot of social commentary to be made. how the expert witnesses get paid thousands of dollars, but the witnesses relevant to the killing like the ones that called the police didn’t get paid. the pro police expert witnesses will most likely have there testimony thrown out. the pro police expert witnesses actually tried to say that Eddie Duran was responding to domestic violence and they were making up shit like “classic domestic”, “violent domestic”, or just “domestic” to promote the idea that Eddie believed that was responding to a domestic violence situation. expert witnesses credential to testify are weird. like the medical examiner that did the autopsy makes sense, but the guy that has a law degree, can practice in a federal courtroom, and trains ex military people to be cops, probably has very little to do with a police shooting case (seriously all he does is make recommendations didnt even say he worked with the sheriffs department prior to the case)