This whole “Zimmerman Trayvon Martin” case is a FARCE

The public outrage & dismay over the acquittal of George Zimmermann for the murder of Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old Sanfield, FLORIDA teenager is unprecedented in any case of its kind. While the public attention is fixated on the absurd two word final verdict of the mis-informed jury, I decided to take a step back to assess the Scenarios that lead to this devastating outcome and the aftermath.

I came-up with one and only one conclusion; the title of this article. From the Prosecution, the defense attorney, the testimonies, the media and the Jury, the entire trial was a farce. How does each of these parties play into what leads to a legitimate trial turning into a farce?

The prosecution break rule number one, they did what they tell you not to do “Never bring a witness to stand unless you are sure of what they are going to say”. The prosecution brought in Chris Serino, the lead homicide investigator of the case and his testimony helped the defense than it helped the prosecution, if it did help the prosecution at all. This is a really weird act, since it is my understanding that in Florida they have this depositions where the attorneys have the opportunity to cross examine the witnesses before they go on stand in the courtroom. If the prosecution couldn’t figure out that Mr Serino would say what he said, then shame on them, if they did know he would say what he said and still bring him to stand, shame on them. An entire book can be written about the role of detective Serino in this whole trial, obviously this article is not enough to discuss his role, but I will give a brief overview of him; He is the person who recommended manslaughter charges against George Zimmerman and at one point during his investigation he told Zimmerman, I quote: “Had you told this child that you were neighbourhood watch & you were just wondering what the hell he was doing when he came up to your car, you probably wouldn’t be here right now”. But During his testimony detective Serino told the court that he believe that Zimmerman was been truthful.

The ridiculous irresponsible knock knock joke made by the defense Attorney Don West at the start of his cross examination of Rachel Jeantel explains why I call the defense a joke, not to mention his irrational and dubious remark about the prosecution; Calling the prosecution “A disgrace” for pursuing the case, it’s an insult to the US Justice system to think that trying such a case was disgrace. You got to be really stupid to even think that any system will just believe, without trial in a story told by a man who has a long history of violence & trouble with the law after shooting an innocent unarmed teenager, and yep I just called Don west stupid, as a matter of fact if it only takes what he did to win this case, then just any unversed criminal lawyer could have won the case. I called Mr West a total joke because you could easily tell his expressions were filled with hatred and anger for no good reason.

With regards to the testimonies and specifically with the testimony of detective Chris Serino, something didn’t click to me. Here is the man who recommended a man slaughter charge against Zimmerman after investigating into the case and then he testify to the absolute opposite of that by saying that Zimmerman was telling the truth, why would you recommend a manslaughter charge when he was telling the truth all this time? I mean if he killed Trayvon Martin in act of self defense, then why are we here? The prosecution brought him in and he helped the defense market its case to the jury. Chris Serino concluded that Zimmerman was either telling the truth or he was a pathological liar, to Mr Serino I say “You’re either an absolute joke or you’re a pathologically inconsistent liar”. The fact that the defense counsel proceeded to ask him whether he has any insight from his investigation that Mr Zimmerman is a pathological liar give me the impression that the latter is the truth. The defense must have a pretty damn good idea what his response was going to be before taking the risk of asking him that question, my own question is how on earth didn’t the prosecution figured this out during the deposition? There can be only one possible answer; He must be a pathologically inconsistent liar.

These whole episodes of farce lead us to the most important group in the case, the people who made the call that George Zimmerman is free of the charges of murdering Trayvon Martin. The jury took 16 hours to come up with just two words, “NOT GUILTY” to close the case, 16 hours and they wouldn’t even say what wasn’t he not found guilty of, isn’t that creepy? I mean come on after 16 hours you ought to come up with something better. I know that the final decision comes down to whether he was found guilty or not, but in a case of this magnitude and the time they took to reach their publicly unpopular verdict, the jury have the moral responsibility of explaining to the public and the family of the victim whether the verdict was reached by unanimous or majority decision or perhaps to explain whether they haven’t just found the accused guilty of the “Murder” & “manslaughter" charge or they found him absolutely “NOT GUILTY”.

But if anyone think race haven’t played any role in the final verdict of the jury, then you definitely need to go right back to Kindergarten, yep you definitely have the brain of a two year old. Its obvious Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon Martin, but there is not just enough evidence to suggest that his murder was racially motivated, it’s a tough call to say Zimmerman just killed Trayvon because of his race, who knows? He might just be another monster who should pay for the price of his actions regardless of the race of Trayvon. My theory though is that the final verdict of the case would’ve been different if the positions were swapped. I must say that I’m person who doesn’t let himself to be limited by this race issue, but we have to tell the truth and the best way to solve a problem is to discuss it, we cannot deceive ourselves that something doesn’t exist, when there is clear evidence that it does, this will just escalate the problem if anything. We cannot just let innocent kids go through what Trayvon Martin went through whether they are Black, White, Hispanic, Latino, Asian or Native American, with the perpetrators walking away free.

And let me make it clear that I’m not suggesting that the jury verdict was racially motivated; I honestly am not. What I think however, is that they let their perceptions, prejudices and stereotypes take the best of their judgement. I’m of the believe that the jury would have reached a different verdict if they just forgot about who gave what testimony or forgot about that character that the defense have made Trayvon Martin I.e. growing /smoking Marijuana, kicked out of school or what not.  I think the jury found it conveniently easy to believe in some witnesses than others, for example Rachel Jeantel, She represented her true self during her testimony, she act the way she would in everyday real life scenario you can tell, what people forget to remember is that cultural and racial barriers/differences exist and you will be surprised to find out how many grown-ups are out there who have no idea that there is a grey part to life where most people live as opposed to their perceived “Black & White” categorization. To the jury the tone of her voice, her language of expression, her body language or her outfit may represent an unreliable/irresponsible witness, but it’s her spoken words that should matter. Stereotypes exist & sometimes we all get caught up by this judgemental act without even realizing it.

I have no doubt or whatsoever that had the jury put themselves in Zimmerman’s position from the moment of the 911 call to the shooting & killing of Trayvon Martin, they wouldn’t have found him NOT GUILTY. If the jury had asked them selves what would they have done if Trayvon Martin had attacked them as Zimmerman claimed and they‘re as big as George Zimmerman, I’m pretty sure their actions wouldn’t include reaching for their gun. Zimmerman could have easily stepped back and avoid any physical contact with Trayvon the moment he realised that he was unarmed and innocent, but he didn’t because perhaps he knew he had a gun hidden that Trayvon didn’t knew about. The reality is that, we all know even if Trayvon had indeed attacked Zimmerman, he wouldn’t have done this had he known Zimmerman was armed. It doesn’t take a genius to tell that Zimmerman would have escaped from the altercation with Trayvon without any life threatening injuries if he wasn’t armed with a gun, he definitely would with his size compared to Trayvon’s. As a matter of fact he could‘ve avoided the whole altercation by telling Trayvon that he was a neighbourhood watch & just thought he looked suspicious. I’m pretty sure anyone of the six Jurors wouldn’t have got into a power struggle with Trayvon if he looked as suspicious as Zimmerman had claimed to the 911 operator, why would Zimmerman do it then? He must’ve known something that we all didn’t know & I guess will never know.

To add salt to injury, the media reaction after the jury verdict was ridiculous, it was a total joke to watch CNN and see the type of ill-informed people who were given TV space. People like Robert Zimmerman become a common face in America for the wrong stupid reasons, a guy who doesn’t know what he is talking about for one reason and secondly was just instigating public feud. Robert Zimmerman if he really cares should’ve been with his brother in the courtroom in Florida when the verdict was given rather than talking gibberish at some TV interviews in NY. He made some really horrendous comments & remarks that were just utter and blatant lies, like saying to Piers Morgan, I quote; “Trayvon had plans for George that night” , I mean isn’t that an insult to the intelligence of the audience? The evidence is out there that the kid was followed while walking home. He Robert Zimmerman told Don Lemon that he will like to understand what make people as angry as Trayvon was, to this I respond; He should first try to understand what makes people as stupid as Zimmerman was. I’m not taking sides here but let’s face it; Robert Zimmerman lacks the moral to give interviews to a global audience.

It irritates me when CNN vaunt about bringing some expert opinion to the audience after the commercial and next thing you know people like Buck Davis are on live TV, the guy who have no clue about the topic in discussion. Buck Davis is another big idiot; the guy thinks George Zimmerman had no idea about the race of Trayvon Martin when the 911 call evidence was all over the news, are you kidding me? Even the anchorman Don Lemon had to remind him that the 911 call was there for everyone to see, after which he had to change his story. When the story was about Trayvon Martin, he brought in how an African American was murdered in Chicago for refusing to join a gang; again the host had to remind him that was a different case and not the focus of the discussion, what a joke! People like Buck Davis should just save themselves the embarrassment and keep their opinions to themselves, but be it Buck Davis or Robert Zimmerman, blame it on the people who give them the opportunity to air their ill-informed opinions to the World.

Call me a sceptic or a cynic if you like, but for me the dots just didn’t connect in the whole Zimmerman trial and unless the missing dots are found, the Trayvon Martin murder will not change a thing, much like how the Connecticut, New Town shooting didn’t change a thing about America’s gun laws. Just two or less weeks of breaking news headline or a top story, whatever you call it.

Fixed Exchange rate systems; An Art of Mastery, Credibility or Positive expectations?

A discussion of fixed exchange rate system may sound outdated in an age when Financial news headlines are regularly dominated by sharp fluctuations in the exchange rate in major developed countries. But fixed exchange rate system is important for it is the first exchange rate system the World has seen, however it is not the importance of fixed exchange rate system that I intend to discuss today, instead it is the nature in which a fixed exchange system is managed that caught my attention.

Why is Hong Kong and more recently China doing great under a fixed exchange rate system, but Argentina, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico were forced to abandon the system after an unsuccessful trial? To keep an exchange rate fixed a central bank must always be willing to trade currencies at the fixed exchange rate. In it’s simplest term a fixed exchange rate means the Central bank must be willing to buy all the amount of its currency the market wants to sell and at the same time be willing to sell all the amount of it’s currency the markets wants to buy. Sounds complicated right? Well that’s what leads me to the topic of this blog, are central banks with more intelligent Economists more likely to be successful with managing a fixed exchange?

Given what it takes to keep an exchange rate constant infinitely, it is tempting to say that it requires a mastery of an Economic understanding where the Central banks policy makers have to be ahead of the market to keep the rate fixed. This was the view I had, but then I still had some questions about this ideology, how about if the market doesn't believe that the Central bank will keep the currency fixed? More specifically how about if Investors believing that the country will depreciate its currency starts dumping the currency for foreign currency in an effort to make profit out of nothing, A phenomenon known as “Arbitrage”, to Understand this suppose you are holding 100 Argentinean Peso currently fixed at $1=100 peso, but you believe that due to Argentina’s Balance of payment problems it will depreciate it’s currency to $1=200 peso. Now if you sell you current 100 peso for dollars you get $1, if the Central bank of Argentina go ahead and depreciate the currency, you can exchange your $1 back to pesos at $1=200 peso’s, a profit of 100 peso out of nothing.

What is interesting about the above scenario? In the above example for simplicity I used 100 pesos but in reality this could be in Billions of pesos. I just jump to how people can profit from the central bank devaluing the currency, but didn't exactly explain why would the central bank devalue the currency, remember from our definition of the fixed exchange rate system, the Central bank of Argentina have to be willing to buy all the Pesos the investors are supplying with Dollars, now if everyone believes that The central bank indeed will devalue the peso and start dumping it for dollars, as this process continues the question is how much dollars can the Bank of Argentina use to buy the pesos? The answer to this questions depend on how much dollars the bank of Argentina have in reserves, at any rate such a process can only continue for so long, because the Bank of Argentina doesn't print Dollar notes and as such can only have so much of it. By the time the central bank runs out of dollar reserves, it either has to devalue the currency or allow the exchange rate to float freely, a devaluation occurs when a central bank still keeps the exchange rate fixed but depreciate the fixed exchange rate (example from 100 peso = $1 to 200 peso = $1).

The above scenario demonstrates what is known as a “Speculative attack” or “Capital flight”, a situation where investors speculate against the devaluation of a currency and start fleeing that currency for foreign currency.

What causes speculative attacks or more generally currency crises? Krugman, Obstfeld and Melitz (2012) noted that often because a Government is following policies that are not consistent with maintaining a fixed exchange rate system over the long term, they gave an example of a central bank buying domestic Government bonds to allow the government to run large fiscal deficits.

After taking a class in International finance and dedicating so much time to understanding fixed exchange rate systems through research, I have come to the conclusion that, a fixed exchange rate system requires well informed Economist to work, however this is not the ultimate. The authority, perhaps the Central bank overseeing the management of the fixed exchange rate system has to be credible, and the public have to have belief in it, expectations have to be positive, but then positive expectations are based on credibility. If a central bank has a history of deviating away from its announced policies (targets), what will make the public believe that it won’t deviate this time?

It is of my belief that successful and unsuccessful Central banks under fixed exchange rate regimes don’t have great differences in the type of Economist tasked with managing the system; instead they do have great differences in their “credibility” and the “expectations” of the public on their future macro-economic policies. 

Journalism in the age of social media

Facebook, twitter! social networking sites that have re-defined news reporting and journalism. Today journalist are more concerned about what they post on their twitter accounts than what they 'read' to their audience in the main stream, my use of the word ‘read’ is not accidental, for today I doubt the existence of too many true ‘news reporters’. There are still a few true journalists out there, but for the majority of them they are just Government press release readers.

The advent of twitter provides an alternative to the traditional mainstream news reporting and Journalism, but the current state of it’s being used irritates me. It’s absolutely stupid, irrational and illogical why an individual’s twitter news feed should be of a great importance to the audience than the mainstream news reporting, or perhaps ‘news reading’; thanks to their stupid selfish campaign to gather followers on their personal twitter pages.

You see I don’t have any problem with twitter or Journalists having twitter accounts, but it becomes unfair when the people who pay their taxes to sustain the operation of Corporations like BBC are coaxed into following their reporters on twitter for the latest news updates. In fact at some point the BBC wanted to force all its employees to have the BBC subscript in their twitter user names. Since when has sitting in front of a camera and reporting news become so much less efficient than typing and posting a sentence on twitter.

Twitter and other social networking sites are great innovations and they provide an avalanche of opportunities for the media to reach the younger audience group, but when what username I use becomes an important issue or when TV news reporting is dominated by advertising campaigns for twitter following, then you begin to wonder if the customer’s satisfaction is at heart.

It is undoubtedly obvious that every journalist would want to be the first to break important news, and of course the best way to do this is through their twitter accounts, no wonder today most news we see in the mainstream media are already trending or perhaps archived in twitter and Facebook. It’s this latter selfish and stupid usage of the social media by journalists that irritates me, not because I cannot have a twitter or a Facebook account, but because for justice to the tax payer who cannot or doesn't wish to have a twitter account, for s/he deserves much better than the current state of selfish social media news ‘reading’. And yes news ‘reading’............again.

Spanish “La Liga: A league of two teams; Evidence from the FIFA/FIFApro World XI

I have said this before and I will repeat it again; The Spanish football (Soccer) league is a depiction of the Scottish premier league where Barcelona and Real Madrid (Like Celtic and Rangers in Scotland) put teams together to humiliate minnows.

Now before you start calling me out, I must reiterate that the Spanish league is a great league and of course I know there are structurally 20 teams in it like in most top leagues in Europe, but instead it’s the disparity in the Spanish league between Barcelona and Real Madrid and the rest that led me to the title of this article.

If you are a follower of the game of football you probably already know that 10 of the players in ‘2012 FIFA/FIFApro World XI’ are from Barcelona and Real Madrid. Technically what this means is that the best player of each position in 2012 is selected to form a team, call it the World’s best team if you like.  

Since all of the 11 players are from Spain, it is tempting to conclude that the Spanish league is the best league in the World, but if you are reader of my blog you are probably aware of my own thoughts on that, as a matter of fact it is not, unless if your own definition of best is to almost always predict the outcome of a game even before the ball is kicked, but if that’s you, you are probably already used to ingenuity.

But my discussion today is not centred around the question of the best league, instead I’m interested in whether 10 players will be from any two teams in any other league if the best eleven are selected from teams in that league. The answer is no, well not in Europe’s top leagues, You see if you are to select a supposedly dream team in Either the English Premier league or the Italian Sere A, you can guarantee that you will have players from at least five different teams.

I guess the question is why do we have pretty much all the players of FIFA World XI from two Spanish teams? The answer is because there is no parity in the Spanish league, Barcelona and Real Madrid put together ridiculously amazing players to demolish the rest. Personally I’m not surprised these players are from these two teams even though I have my own doubts about who is and who is not on that so called FIFA team, because of the disparity between them and the rest and the numbers of quality players they are surrounded by, these players have a better chance of a better performance than their counter-parts in other leagues even if they are levelled in terms of skills. To understand this think of a player like Robin Van Persie, you can be almost certain that he will be in the FIFA World XI if he plays for a team like Real Madrid or Barcelona in the Spanish League.

It is important for people to understand that the quality of players you are surrounded by and the team power of your opponents plays a great role in a players performance, been surrounded by top quality players coupled with a relatively less powerful team makes playing the game itself easy.

Again it is obvious that gap between Barcelona & Real Madrid and the rest of the other Spanish teams is absolutely absurd and exclusive to the Spanish league. In fact no other team has won the La Liga since 2004 and given the current nature of things it doesn’t look like any team is going to break into that top two spot anytime soon.

By the way before you start calling my name, I’m conscious of the inclusion of Radamel Falcoa in the so called dream team, who doesn’t play for either Barcelona or Madrid, Falcoa is an amazing player, and he is a standout, however with no disrespect to him I think his inclusion in the team is highly debatable. Overall though I think he deserves some credit for his exceptional performance in 2012, hence fair play to him.

If you're the one who is obsessed with who is on the FIFA/FIFAPro World XI, it is worth noting that these players are voted by their fellow professional players and as such opinion plays a great role.

Below is that name of the players for the 2012 FIFA World XI.

IKER CASILLAS, DANI ALVES, MARCELO, GERARD PIQUÉ, SERGIO RAMOS, ANDRÉS INIESTA, XABI ALONSO, XAVI HERNANDEZ, CRISTIANO RONALDO, RADAMEL FALCAO, LIONEL MESSI.

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT BALANCE OF PAYMENT DEFICITS

Quite often I speak to people and they try to relate a country’s balance of payment to its standard of living, or more generally people try to think that a country with a balance of payment deficit is having economic troubles. Balance of payments is always a hot topic in economic and political discussions and many people seem to have the concept that deficits are unambiguously bad.

Well firstly balance of payments are always balanced because they are calculated based on double entry accounting, it is a specific category of the balance of payment that can either be in a surplus or a deficit e.g. the current account. In general people mean a current account deficit when they talk about balance of payment deficit. The current account is the part of balance of payments that records the value of trade in merchandise, services, income (from investments) and unilateral transfers.

Given what is recorded in the current account i.e. Exports, imports and investment incomes it is not surprising why it is the most important or may be the most talked about account in the balance of payment. Export and Imports are specifically very important because they make up most of the current account value. Exports bring foreign exchange (money) into the country and hence they are credits in the CA, Imports flow foreign exchange out of a country and they are debit transactions in the CA. A current account deficit occurs when debits are more than credits, which means that a country owes the rest of the World than it is owed by the rest of the World, in other words the country is a net debtor to the rest of the World.

Knowing what is recorded in the CA, we can now easily tell what causes a balance of payments deficit. For instance, since Exports bring money into a country and Imports move money out of a country, we often hear argument for policies aimed at increasing Exports and reducing Imports. The last sentence lead me to the title of this blog, we need to know what caused a BOP deficit before we can make any conclusions about whether it is bad or good.

Consider this; How about if a country is running a current account deficit (Imports more than exports) because it is importing capital and technology for developmental purposes? Of course this country might need the capital and technology in order for it to increase its future long-term exports and run BOP surpluses. From this we can see that short term BOP deficits are not always bad & they are sometimes an intermediate step towards future BOP surpluses. Sometimes nations also run short term BOP deficits because of high imports of intermediate goods to be processed into finished final goods for export.

Husted & Melvin give a simple hypothetical example about BOP deficits; Consider country A and B, A is a wealthy creditor that has extended loans to poor country B. For country B to repay these loans, B must run trade surpluses with A to earn the income required for repayment. Would you rather live in rich country A and experience trade deficits or in poor country B and experience trade surpluses? Perhaps this is a simplistic example; there are real World analogues of rich creditor countries with trade deficits and poor debtor nations with trade surpluses. For Example the U.S has had a trade deficit every year since 1971 (except 1973 & 1975). If you follow the last US election you might have realised that the US trade deficit was a hot topic, the US trade deficit is of a great concern because its causes are largely due to high consumption, which is not good because this means people (and firms) are spending more than they are earning. We see that if the cause of a BOP deficit is rooted in consumption it is unambiguously bad.

“Sometimes governments simply spend more than they earn simply due to ill-advised economic planning. Money may be spent on expensive imports while domestic production lags behind or it may be deemed a priority for a government to spend on the military rather than domestic production.”

In a nutshell it is not generally obvious if a country is better off or worse off running payment surpluses rather than deficits.

When discussing the BOP or the current account it is important for people to understand that it is practically impossible for every country to run a surplus, since one country’s imports is another  country’s exports, therefore a deficit in one country’s current account is surplus in another country’s current account.

KEY:

CA: Current Account

BOP: Balance of Payment

The Student.

Obamanation or Obamabarter?

After reading the US president Barack Obama’s public announcement of his support for Gay (same sex) marriage last month, I said to myself; is he giving away his personal conscience for the votes (Obamanation) or is he selling votes for votes (Obamabarter), hence the title of the blog.

Now if the president just made such public announcements for purely political reasons, then that will just substantiate my personal (sometimes) cynical believe that most politicians are selfish, which will be what I would like to call in this case “Obamanation”.

On the other hand if the president did made such statement’s out of true conscience and as he claimed with influence from his family, friends and neighbours, then it will be what I would like to call "Obamabarter".

Trade by Barter means exchanging goods for goods in the ancient days before money as the means of exchange was introduced. As predicted by the political pundits Obama is going to loose votes on the religious and anti-gay marriage category whilst he is going to gain votes on the gay marriage activists and among gay people category. In fact some statistics goes to show how on average he will either loose or gain votes (in general) for his statement.

My problem is that are there just so many people out there like me who don’t give a damn about who marries who? So long you don’t bother us with your marketing campaign about your sexuality! Will the American people just beat the odds and cast their votes based on who's political manifestos matches their beliefs and hope, rather than based on their personal views on who marries who?

After all President Obama has beaten the odds before and if he’s taught us something in the past it is that he is indeed genuine and a true believer and goes for what he believes in.

Remember he Started with “personally I think”, not “personally we think” or “They should”, I hope people are able to make a difference between the two.

Complexity of the law

I read this book called “Judge & Jury” by James Paterson and Andrew Gross. Even though the book was fictional, there was one question that led me to searching for answers since reading (about 10 months ago). Before stating the question I think it will be more helpful if I explain what led to the asking of this question in the book.

Judge & Jury by James Patterson and Andrew Gross is a thriller about a mafia boss on trial. Nick Pellisante was the FBI agent who tacked down Dominic Cavello (Mafia boss) for years.

Dominic Cavello has committed all sorts of gruesome crimes you could imagine; from murder, bribery, distortion, robbery, money laundry, drugs, rape to shooting and killing of two federal officers.

On the trial of Dominic Cavello, Nick pellisante’s biggest obstacle was to convince the Jury that Mr. Cavello was a criminal and the head behind numerous cold case killings. Pellisante in fact witness Cavello shoot and kill two of his federal agents, the problem for Pellisante though was to get witnesses to make sure Cavello gets what he deserved. But even though Cavello was in prison at the time he made sure all Pellisante’s material witnesses are taken down before they could testify against him, thanks to his mafia mob network who will do any thing to make sure the boss is not sent away, well at least not easily.

Pellisante had to later turn to Cavello’s own men who were earlier been sentenced for crimes committed while working for Cavello. Now, Nick Pellisante get this people to testify against the mafia boss by promising reduced sentence terms if they tell the truth about their boss, but the defense counsel will argue that this people are known criminals and liars, who themselves admit in front of the jury that lying was part of their job, even though at least now they are telling all but the truth.

At this point, Nick Pellisante was irritated by Cavello’s attempt’s to interrupt the trial by blowing up the jury bus, sending threat messages to the judge and killing of witnesses and their families through his mob network. Nick went to visit Cavello at prison, out of anger he personally abuse Cavello by physical means with counter threats that his (Cavello’s) threats won’t in anyway stop this trial.

After that Nick was sacked from leading the case, that he was too enthusiastic about the case and that he is taking it personal, he was transferred to a lower FBI department. Out of devastation knowing that he is loosing a case he thought he has already got, knowing that Cavello was guilty of all the charges, knowing that Cavello might get away with shooting and killing two of his closest FBI buddies, Nick decided to take an indefinite career break from the FBI and started teaching a law course at a University where he asked his student’s the following question, I quote;

Can anyone tell me why the law permits law enforcement agents to use deceit (concealing of truth) at the investigative stage, when they are not even sure of a Suspect's guilt, but strictly forbids them from lying during the testimonial stage, When they are absolutely sure that the accused is a Criminal?

One Student responded; “It’s the means to an end” Mapp and United States versus Russell allow the police to use deceptive procedures to obtain evidence, without it they might never make a case. It’s deception for the greater good.”

Nick Pellisante counter questioned; but what if the police have to lie about those procedures during testimony in order to protect their case?

At which point the book didn't go any further about what happens, indeed it’s a fiction or perhaps they leave it to the reader to figure out the rest. I will be very much interested though in finding the answer to this question, for that reason any knowledgeable opinion is very much welcomed!

Peace!