Is this a good thing? Does it set a bad precedent?
Does it go to far? Not far enough?
I generally disapprove of soft-on-crime stances, and am generally skeptical of allegations of racism, at least the way the DoJ counts it, so I say it’s a bad thing, sets a bad precedent, and goes too far.
Absolving criminals of their punishments only encourages future crime and thus will invariably lead to greater law enforcement violence in the future. Ferguson’s problems are moral, not legal. The city needs to stop its moral and cultural decay by enacting policies that create healthy communities with a strong sense of civic pride.
Considering the egregious nature of the findings of the DOJ report in Ferguson, this sounds like a reasonable response. I’m sure some actual criminals will get lost in the shuffle, but in this instance that seems preferable to all the innocent victims of Ferguson’s cash-building scam of arrest warrant issuing.
Doesn’t seem right. So we’re going to just throw justice out the window?
Say someone (we’ll say a white guy, for argument’s sake) committed a murder in 2012, fled, and a warrant for his arrest was issued in 2013. So now does the system say, “You are now absolved of your murder?”
Or can a new warrant be issued?
I guess Judge McCullin has been taking suggestions from this MB.
Horrible idea. Some good reasons have been mentioned. Also, it’s the opposite of helpful to send a message that crimes do not have consequences and that, "Hey, who knows, if we riot again 5 or 10 years from now, maybe we can get more crimes given a pass. What Ferguson needs lis more law and order, not less. If one wants to go back and look at specific crimes, or say, crimes tied to a particular officer or judge, fine. But this blanket forgiveness is dumb, dumb, dumb.
What criminals? They haven’t been convicted yet.
The state shouldn’t be in the business of sending messages of any kind to anybody. It should do what the citizens tells it to. It appears the citizens have told the Ferguson officials they believe the law is upheld in an incorrect manner.
And if it is true that Ferguson makes a considerable amount of its budget from, often trifling, traffic tickets and non-payment of those are the arrest warrants being withdrawn, as well as arrest warrants for unpaid alimony / child support, and other silly warrants, then justice has prevailed.
I could be mistaken, but I believe the municipal court only deals with with municipal ordinances and the like, not state crimes like murder:
So, we aren’t talking about springing killers and robbers, more like jaywalking and speeding.
Yep – the DOJ showed pretty definitively, IIRC, that minor violations like this were issued as a means of raising funds for the city, and they fell incredibly disproportionately on black residents of Ferguson.
Warrants for unpaid alimony and child support are silly? I think a lot of single mothers would disagree with you. That’s kind of a slap in the face to a lot of women who went to court and got a judge to agree that they were owed payment. How the hell are warrants issued for failure to pay “silly”?
'Innocent until proven guilty" doesn’t apply outside of the legal system.
Neither does criminality.
I agree with this sentence. We need more law and order, starting with the highest law of the land, the U.S. Constitution, and the fundamental principals enshrined therein, such as the idea that the burden of justice falls heaviest on the state. A government and a system of justice unaccountable to the people or the Constitution is a greater danger than an army of thieves, murderers and rapists. Conservatives preach this all the time when the government is collecting taxes, preventing bank fraud, managing public land, or ensuring safe food and clean water, but when the government is actually locking people up, spying on them, or killing them, it is suddenly beyond reproach and the danger of tyranny becomes nothing compared to the horror of a single crime going unpunished for anything as trivial as fairness, evidence, or due process.
As I type this, I am pretending that I am typing exactly what Alan Smithee wrote above, because it perfectly conveys my thoughts on this.
Disproportionate to their population or disproportionate to the number of crimes they commit?
IIRC, both, by a significant margin. Black drivers, for example, were much more likely to be searched than white drivers, despite being less likely to be found with contraband during the searches.
I really wish there was a like button.
In most circumstances, yes, I think so. if I’m not mistaken, this action basically requires prosecutors to resubmit, presumably under greater scrutiny.