An RRSTAR article (read here) reports Oct 8, 2010, that the two Rockford Police Department officers who were involved in the August 24, 2009, shooting death of Mark Anthony Barmore of Rockford, are suing Kingdom Authority International Ministries, 518 N. Court St., Rockford, (where the shooting occurred) and it’s pastor, Reverend Melvin Brown, for defamation in excess of $75,000 for terming publicly terming the shooting “murder” and damaging their reputations.
This is certainly a weird turn of events in this legal saga. Poole and North are being represented by Rockford Attorney Dan Cain (generally regarded as the “best” local criminal attorney and an expensive attorney to hire). To our knowledge, Cain is generally on the other side of the fence in cases representing claims against the Rockford Police Department. Perhaps he is attempting to take a case like this to even the books? That’s just our speculation, of course. Who knows what his motivation is. Of course the RRStar article mentions that attorneys were appointed for Poole and North, so we think that we, the public, are probably paying for Cain in this situation.
Still, in our opinion, this lawsuit is something of a farce. In all the verbal and written public mud-slinging that has occurred as a result of the Barmore shooting, we think this may be a pretty tame example of the reputation-damaging jargon applied to some of the parties involved, particularly the victim. “Murder”, in our opinion is a pretty subjective term. There may be a legal description of it, but depending upon the emotional attachment to the individual who ceases to live as a result of any particular action, even state-sponsored executions are sometimes regarded as murder to some persons when giving expression in protest to their civil rights views.
There are also two-sides to this legal weapon. As mentioned before, plenty of public comments have been made of a personal and objectionable basis and directed towards Mark Anthony Barmore, his relatives and the Browns. I think that if every involved party to the case and public commenter on the Barmore shooting reviewed the public comments they have made to date on forums as public as Facebook, Craigslist, & the media, that many more individuals could be open to being sued and cross-sued for defamation by somebody. Especially those made persistently by non-involved persons. Some of those comments and actions could possibly even be interpreted as “harassment”.
So where will this (in our opinion) legal litigation insanity lead? Probably to more legal litigation insanity…
RichardWanke.Com 