From: An Anonymous Legally Minded Reader [Email him]

I visit your web page now and again to keep up with things; and I like your coverage of the events in Missouri.

One point your writers should make: much of this activity out there is designed to lay the foundation for a large—$100 million—wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Ferguson and the state of Missouri. That is why Sharpton and Jackson are out there; why they had their separate autopsy; and why they are demanding that the prosecutor recuse himself from the case.

They think they have to railroad the policeman in order to lay the foundation for the civil lawsuit; then the money will be split among the family, the lawyers, Sharpton and Jackson; and there may be a federal lawsuit as well. That's where they are heading with this; and the threat is for more riots if there is not an inducement; and more if there is no conviction.

James Fulford writes: History repeats itself—in the case leading up to Miami’s 1982 Overtown riots, in which a Hispanic police officer committed a justifiable homicide on the usual “unarmed” black criminal. (Newell Johnson Jr. had a gun, he was trying to draw it—oh, never mind.) Officer Luis Alvarez, who shot him, was found not guilty in a criminal trial, and the Miami authorities settled out of court on the civil suit, paying $1.1 million to Johnson’s family—because it was cheaper to pay off the family than have the riots that would have occurred if they won the suit.