Sorrell's Report

A Case Study in Deception by Corrupt Officials

Attorney General Sorrell's Woodward Shooting Report released at the April 2nd press conference is a tutorial in deception. Its superficial biases serve to distract from its deeper aims of hiding evidence of malfeasance. Some of those aims have only recently been exposed by Justice for Woody in the document:

The Robert Woodward Shooting
Evidence of a Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice

Most of the analysis on this site reflects a less advanced understanding of the official cover-up but remains valid. The Guide to Sorrell's Report describes the levels of deception in his report, and gives historical background about how the documents we produced reflected our evolving understanding of the engineering of Sorrell's Report.

Here are several pages analysis of the report hyperlinked to passages in the report itself. These pages date from the spring of 2002, and do not reflect our current understanding of obstruction of justice. A more organized critique of Sorrell's Report is provided in the Justice for Woody Report.

• Sorrell's report is internally inconsistent.
• It has strong biases that become apparent when compared to the eyewitness evidence.
• It draws conclusions that strikingly contradict the actual eyewitness accounts.
• It bases the narrow case for legally justifying the shooting on an implausable theory of the shooting.
• It misrepresents events in a number of known ways.
• It attempts to discredit the accounts of eyewitnesses other than those it selectively quotes to support its conclusion.
• It uses language to manipulate the reader and obscure the truth.
• It omits important information.

The report's DETAILED FINDINGS OF FACT shows perhaps the greatest opacity of whitewash. The shot to Woody's back finds not a mention in this 17-point polemic.

As citizens, we rely on the justice system to provide justice in situations of possible police misconduct. In cases where there are questions as to whether police actions were justified, our legal system provides the process of an adversarial trial in order that all facts may be aired and considered in a complete and fair manner. That the Attorney General prevented this from taking place by selectively reviewing and presenting the evidence is a short-circuiting of the justice system.