I don't think he was paid off. I think he just used a strict interpretation of the applicable laws. As for why there was no jury: A jury trial is a right, but not a mandate. A defendant can waive that right and have the judge alone decide the case. This is called a "Bench Trial". Of course, the presiding judge must agree to the waiver. While there have been several attempts to amend state constitutions to allow the prosecution to demand jury trials, to my knowledge, none have passed referenda.

I think you're confusing the Diallo case with the Bell case. As for the rest, I have no idea.

The defendants opted for trial by judge, which is any defendants right. The judge insists the Police testimony was more credible, and in the end the decision lay with him. Jury trials are ususally chosen by defendants because it is the jury of their peers that may actually get them off the hook. Only one of them has to be unconvinced. In this case, those peers could have sunk them, because of the media exposure and high-profile nature of the case. Judge trials give people in such cases a better chance to present their case, to a supposedly neutral party who by law is not allowed to take personal feelings or public sentiment into account.

I paid the judge personally! $100,000,000 dollars. OK? Now you have someone to blame for everything in your confusion of two cases. And by the way, if you ask the same question again, I will start flagging it.

I think there are a few crucial aspects to the trial that we need to recognize. 1) According to news reports, Sean Bell did (deliberately or accidentally) run his car into one of the officers. So they had reason to feel threatened. I don't think this excuses their excessive use of force, but it was a factor. 2) Testimony in trials tends to distort the reality of these incidents. Courtroom accounts about decisions made and actions taken while in a stressful, panic-ridden situations sound far more rational and considered than the reality. 3) Judges tend to come from the upper crust of society (fancy colleges and law schools cost big money). As such, they tend to have not personally experienced the stress and panic of life-threating violent street situations. Hence, when an officer testifies "I ascertained that the suspect was not complying with our commands, so I unholstered my weapon and commenced firing upon the vehicle", the judge buys it. Nothing in the judge's experience informs him that the truth is closer to "Officer X was already shooting, so I whipped out my gun and started firing in the same general direction". 3) People in these sorts of violent stressful situations tend to make bad decisions. Malcolm Gladwell discusses this (using the Amadou Diallo case as a prototype... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Diallo ...in his excellent book "Blink" http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0316010669/ In short, Bell panicked, then the cops panicked and started shooting without adequate provocation, or a strategy for how their use of force would improve the situation. Then the built-in biases in our justice system failed to adequately deal with the reality of the situation.

New York has seen Amadou Diaollo.... cops aquitted. Then there has recently been the case of Christopher Ridley who himself was an off duty cop... cops not charged. Now, Sean Bell shooting.... cops aquitted of all charges. This tells me something. The criminal justice system does not always work and this is evidence. There are innocent people that are executed, there are innocent people rotting in jail for decades while the real criminals are still running loose. The law protects it's own, namely law enforcement officials. If you think this would have any different outcome than in the past, you are living in a dream world. The only comfort I can take in all of this is that these three men will live again because God hates injustice and murder. Yes, I said murder because there was no need for these men to be shot up like a target in a shooting gallery.

Just goes to show you should never threaten to go get your gun outside a nightclub, or give the impression you are going to run over a police officer. Bad things will happen.

Well, what about the cops in Lompoc, California who refuse to do their jobs and only pick on certain people and let 99 percent get away with murder. Why don't they enforce the laws equally? Is this too much to ask? Were they trained by the same book Rothmiller was, in the book L. A. Secret Police. Check it out.

No wonder we all hate cops.

Well, why don't the cops ticket all the millions of vehicles in California with no front license plate when California law requires them? Maybe all they want to do is beat people up and show force and control and not do their real job. A lot of people are fed up with this and it is coming out more and more because of video cameras and cellphone cameras so they are being filmed more now doing these awful things and they don't like it, They even do this stuff in front of their own cameras on their patrol cars. Not the brightest bulbs on the tree. When is something going to be done about this? And when they are charged with these crimes, they get away with it anyway. The courts don't find them guilty or sentence them. They are all in on this together.