FURIOUS nads! by The One True b!X

That would be the GOPresident commenting on death, torture, mutilation, terrorism, violence, and civil war in Iraq.

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

- The New York Times

In an update, Jack points to today’s Theo piece which includes further comment from the medical examiner.

“I said accidental mainly because there was no hint that they were actually intending to kill anybody,” Gunson said Friday. “They were intending to take someone into custody, and he died, and they didn’t intend that.”

Except that my understanding of the cause manner of death determination is that it has nothing to do with intent, which is the domain of later criminal proceedings, if any. The cause manner of death determination is meant simply to determine whether the individual died by accident, by natural causes, by killing themselves, or as the result of the actions of another person or other persons.

As I said in my last post, the “cause manner of death” phase of an investigation isn’t about intent, and any potential ruling of “homicide” by a medical examiner has nothing to do with motive or an intent to kill. It would not be a determination that a “murder” had occurred.

This is just further evidence (on top of things such as the District Attorney working to protect the officers in the Perez case) of officials taking advantage of any available wiggle room to keep the police officers involved safe from prosecution.

Addendum: One correction. What we’re all speaking of here isn’t cause of death, but manner of death, as defined by ORS 146: “the designation of the probable mode of production of the cause of death, including natural, accidental, suicidal, homicidal, legal intervention or undetermined.”

So, cause of death would be the blunt force trauma, I guess. It’s the manner of death which is being debated here and elsewhere.

Addendum: For example, the jury of inquest into the officer-involved shooting death of James Jahar Perez ruled it a homicide. Officials went to great pains to explain the difference and distinction between a cause/manner determination of “homicide” by an inquest jury or medical examiner and a “murder” charge in a criminal proceeding.

So, why is the state medical examiner in this case telling The Oregonian that motive and intent were taken into consideration in the Chasse ruling, when such matters are irrelevant to a manner of death determination by that office?

Picking up from a comment I posted over on Jack’s item, the issue at hand now is the medical examiner’s determination that the death of James Chasse was “accidental”.

“That’s interesting,” writes Jack, “considering that so far, I haven’t heard that anyone from that office was present when the officers were, ahem, ‘interacting’ with the victim.”

In the context of determining the cause of death, the medical examiner (and, I believe, a jury of inquest, as we learned during the one held in the officer-involved shooting death of James Jahar Perez) has six options under ORS 146: natural, accidental, suicidal, homicidal, legal intervention or undetermined.

(Oddly, the previously-linked page for the local medical examiner claims only four options: natural causes, an accident, or the actions of the decedent or another person.)

It’s important to note that in this context, “homicide” would not necessarily mean “murder” — it simply means (sticking with the local office’s stated four options) that the person did not intentionally kill themselves, didn’t die naturally, and didn’t die as the result of the equivalent of falling off a ladder while stringing up Christmas lights.

A ruling of “homicide” in this context would have meant, simply, that another person (or other persons) was involved in the death.

In this case, the medical examiner has said that the “broad based” blunt-force trauma to the chest could have been caused either by Chasse falling down or someone falling on top of him — either one of which would have been directly attributable to his being hassled by police.

Given all of that, one is hard pressed to understand how a death resulting from the actions of police officers towards a mentally ill man is considered by the medical examiner to be the equivalent of James Chasse falling off a ladder while stringing up Christmas lights.

Addendum: By the way, the “review by the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office” mentioned in a statement by the Portland Police Association? Forget it, because Schrunk loves the police, and will skew it however he has to in order to protect them.