DAS 15 - Anniversary of fallen cyclist Darcy Allan Sheppard - August 31 2024
You never ride alone.
Transcript
00:00I'm going to be talking to somebody today.
00:03I'm going to be interviewing a man named Scott.
00:06I'm going to be interviewing a man named Scott.
00:09I'm going to be interviewing a man named Scott.
00:12I'm going to be interviewing a man named Scott.
00:15I'm going to be interviewing a man named Scott.
00:18I'm going to be interviewing a man named Scott.
00:21I'm going to be interviewing a man named Scott.
00:24I'm going to be interviewing a man named Scott.
00:27.
00:37.
00:42.
00:56I'm hoping that the gatherings will continue for as long as we want to leave them doing it.
01:12I'm just inviting whoever is interested and can to maybe take a little more responsibility for doing it.
01:22I know and I want to acknowledge that Nicholas Fulop and Joel Henry and others have in the past while kept the flame burning.
01:35Sometimes only five or six people, but there's always been some kind of flame.
01:41And while I'm in the process of leaving the flames, I would like to recognize and remember someone I think nearly everyone here remembers,
01:50and that's Wayne Scott. Wayne is doing a delicious job. He was the conscience of this whole process in many ways.
02:04He was a motivator for me to continue pressing on. I know he said that I was a motivator for him,
02:12and that's probably a fair assessment of being a motivated person. With Wayne gone, it's been a little harder to push myself to do what has to be done.
02:24Joel has certainly been with me throughout the years, and he will be so in the future, I'm sure.
02:36Anyhow, thanks to Wayne, I'm not going to tell you how much I feel I must be.
02:41Beyond that, I don't have much to say. We all have our personal reasons for being here.
02:49Some people are here because of their commitment to RC personally, having worked with RC for a long time.
03:02And that may be the primary motivation of other people. Others are here because they feel that justice must not be done in this situation.
03:17The old saying that comes up from time to time, justice must be seen to be done.
03:24As I think all of you here know, the problem, of course, is that the general population's ability to see that justice has been done
03:37has been harmed by the fact that a special prosecutor took three courses in an hour, and the judge allowed an offensive argument,
03:47and it contained 15 minutes of open story that was accepted by most people as the truth, or justice being seen to be done.
04:02Over the years, we've discovered that a lot of that information that was presented by the special prosecutor was outright false, or certainly misleading,
04:14and that it was manipulated in ways that amount to, in the later days, cherry-picking in the legal sense, tunnel vision.
04:30The only story that the prosecutors appear to have considered, they say otherwise,
04:38but their behavior and what they said to indicate that they never gave any serious consideration to the story,
04:49other than the narrative that Mr. Bryant personally thinks.
04:54It wasn't a question of everyone else in the investigation discovering a narrative that suited Mr. Bryant.
05:02In this, Mr. Bryant was given an opportunity to tell his story to the prosecution,
05:09and the prosecution accepted that story without, I hope, any challenge.
05:15They simply went along with it, and that is where I see them making this case, which is Joseph's case.
05:23It's not unusual, as a matter of fact, I think it's probably standard practice for defense lawyers to try the victim,
05:31let alone the person who's on trial. We expect that.
05:35What you don't expect is for the prosecution to accept the defense's argument without question, totally, totally.
05:50I think if any of you have heard me speak, or have gone online to the Garciano and Shepard website,
05:59and I've maintained the blog, it gives me a crazy shock. I've lost my train of thought.
06:10You're talking about the website?
06:12Pardon?
06:13You're talking about the website.
06:14Well, it doesn't matter. I had a point that I was getting to.
06:19Luckily, when I was being interviewed, by the way, if you notice, there are some documentary film people here
06:27who are photographing and recording what I'm saying right now,
06:32on spec that they'd be able to put together a proposal to broadcasters here or in the U.S. or in the U.K. or wherever
06:43to put together a full-length documentary or a documentary series.
06:49There's no guarantee that it's going to happen, but we're hoping that it will,
06:55and I think, certainly, the film production company in that terms is dedicated to have the story told.
07:06Not just from our point of view.
07:08They will give the other people, including Mr. Bryant, an opportunity to tell their side of the story,
07:17but they will hear our side of the story, which is what the prosecutors did not do.
07:26There are people here that were very instrumental in the understanding that I developed.
07:34Ms. Doria was unseen within reaching distance of touching the car during the initial encounter at the crosswalk.
07:44She knows better than anybody from an outside perspective what the place looked like at the crosswalk.
07:58What Ms. Doria says happened was absolutely contradictory to what Mr. Bryant said happened
08:08and what Mr. Peck, taking his lead from Mr. Bryant, said happened.
08:13Also here is Kirstie Lee, the producer of the broadcast series that many of you have heard
08:22and I think recognize that it was a pretty fair representation of our perspective and our concerns and our point of view.
08:32I certainly want to thank Victoria, and I should say about Victoria, I know about Victoria because she made an effort to contact me.
08:46I didn't know she existed. I wouldn't have known she existed from anything that Mr. Peck said when he gave his statement.
08:55But she found me out one way or another and has been consistently supportive ever since.
09:05I certainly owe thanks to Victoria and to many others, including all of you who are here.
09:15We've all, in various ways, kept the candle burning. I hope we'll keep it burning until justice is served.
09:29That is, that this silent story, the silent story that had luck, gets to it, or we'll have to put it away.
09:43Which is the intention, and that was obviously the intention of the special prosecutors.
09:54They told a story that, in their view, could allow the whole incident to fade into the background.
10:04And in fact, it did. A lot of stuff happened in New England.
10:13Many dramatic things have happened in New England that have pushed my son's story, Mr. Bryant's story, off the front pages and even off the back pages of the public media.
10:28But there have been, unfortunately in this case, Christie picked up on the story in the podcast series.
10:41I thought maybe there is a story there that's incapable.
10:48And that's how they ended up joining us today. I welcome them. I welcome you. Thank you all for coming.
10:58Thank you all.