Arbery Shooting in Georgia and Citizen's Arrest [& similar shootings]

Great Debates
502

But you see that’s not true. That’s not true of Zimmerman, that’s not true of Rittenhouse, that’s not true of O.J. Simpson. Juries do not arrive at a conclusion of guilt or innocence, they arrive at a conclusion as to guilt. Guilty or not. The criminal justice system is built around the notion that someone who is only probably guilty, but not undeniably (within reason) guilty may be acquitted. Found “not guilty.” That does not make them factually innocent, particularly as civil proceedings may yet find them liable for the death that the criminal justice system acquitted them of (which is why I like to throw in the reference to O.J. Simpson).

But the law makes no such claim. People do. You seem to be confusing what people will with the law.

  1. Depends on your standard of proof and who bears the burden. An alternative system might say that as Zimmerman deprived us of the only other witness to the encounter–an unarmed witness–then the burden of proof ought to fall on him to prove that he was defending himself.
  2. One might also argue that the question of whether or not Zimmerman (or Rittenhouse) was defending himself should be irrelevant unless he can first prove that he didn’t provoke the deadly confrontation.

Not only might perfectly valid moral systems differ on these points, legal systems within the very same country differ on these points.

My moral compass is not the law, but then neither is the law my moral compass. And the law in Florida and Wisconsin, as it pertains to what is allowed in “self-defense” is apparently even less so. And even if it were (even if I had one jurisdiction’s or another’s statutes written on my conscience as my moral system), I might still apply a lower burden of proof to the elements of a crime. Just because the law might demand proof beyond a reasonable doubt for a judgment doesn’t mean I must.

503

I like that you also leave out the last part of what you would need to do:

Find a black person who is willing to knock you to the ground and start punching your face repeatedly, so that when you are interviewed by police they can document wounds to your head, and so that at the time you shoot you can show through forensics you were prone on your back and the person you shot was on top of you. But yep, that’s all you have to do is create a scenario just like that.

504

The last part would be:

"Find a victim who tries to fight back but isn’t ruthless enough to kill you… …like you will kill him…

…because you are prepared, able, and willing to shoot to death an unarmed black child walking home at night"

505

Here’s my honest take on this whole morality vs the law thing vis-a-vis this message board. If someone would start a post that simply made it clear “this thread isn’t for people who enjoy discussing legal cases, constitutional particulars, facts of a case–this is a thread for people who are mad about something that happened, and have pre-selected who we want to be mad at and how we want to be mad about it, we aren’t interested in other opinions or hearing about the law, only ranting” then I would never post in it, I would never read it. In fact, I suspect many others would likewise abstain. But instead, we have a familiar pattern–a thread that is clearly started on a legal topic (note this thread was specifically started about the legal doctrine of Citizen’s Arrest in Georgia), has a number of people in it who make bad arguments about the law–are corrected, and then when it’s clear their legal arguments are defective, they start switching and saying “well we don’t care about the law, we’re just talking about how bad these people are.” It smacks of frankly people who try to assert bad legal arguments, are shown wrong, and who then hide behind the shield of saying “well I’m just expressing my opinion about how evil such and such is.” This cycle has been going on for years on these boards, with people who actually have studied the constitution and the law taking a legal based position in threads started primarily about legal issues, and then another side repeatedly saying incorrect things from a legal perspective for hundreds of posts before finally throwing up their hands and saying “oh, well we’re talking about morality, the law is bad.”

506

And I would have no interest in a discussion of law that did not admit a discussion of morality as well. Had such a strictly legal question been the scope of this thread, then it should have been started somewhere other than Great Debates.

507

Not relevant.

508

There’s a middle ground between “I’m just mad and utterly unreasonable” and “I want to talk about the legal aspects”. That’s an attempt to discover what we think the truth is. I can conclude I think it’s more likely than not that Zimmerman initiated the final confrontation with Martin, based on discussions about the case on these boards. It seems more likely to me that Zimmerman, known to be aggressive and looking for trouble, instigated the problem, possibly by brandishing his gun or threatening Martin in some way. I concur that it couldn’t be proven.

Talking about what we think really happened and why isn’t just raging.

509

I would disagree that a legal discussion has no place in Great Debates, that’s ridiculous. But I also never said morality should not be part of the discussion at all. What I did say is the people who just want a thread where they can rant and rave, and who are not interested at all in the law, should make that clear when they start a thread so that people don’t see it and think “hey, maybe an example to discuss the law and constitution.” Some of us actually find the law, court cases, and our constitution interesting topics, and when a thread suggests that will at least be the thrust of the discussion it seems strange for people to appear in it who attempt to make legal arguments, then when shown to be incorrect try to pretend the thread was never about the law in the first place.

510

It is to the crime of stalking, a crime with which Zimmerman was never charged–additionally there is not even a single point of evidence suggesting that crime.

511

Modnote: Stop with the making it personal with iiandyiiii. You already have a place for that.

512

Context should parse any difference. I’m don’t think its difficult. I will definitely not bowdlerize Zimmerman’s actions. He hunted and stalked Martin.

513

His behavior does not fall in line with the crime of stalking.

I’m also a hunter in real life–where we do use the terms “hunt” and “stalk” and his known behavior does not actually line up with either of those either. Hunters don’t call out and address their quarry, nor walk up to them within arm’s touch and start talking to them. Stalking is a hunting technique that specifically requires stealth, which the evidence from cell phone audio of Zimmerman addressing Martin doesn’t comport with stealth at all. But hey, you aren’t getting legal terms correct so no reason you can’t engage in incorrect English word usage too.

In any case though, I do not plan to discuss the Zimmerman case further in this thread. I have discussed that case in many hundreds of posts back when it happened, clearly established everything I needed to about it, and my interpretation of the law was proven right by the verdict. While I originally stated that I thought there could be some comparative value in contrasting the particulars of the Zimmerman case with the Arbery one (for example those differences are why the McMichaels and Bryan convictions were proper while a conviction of Zimmerman would not have been), I no longer think there is any such value since everyone appears to only be interested in re-litigating a case the board discussed more than enough back when it was fresh, and I have no interest in that.

514

Thank you. If I understand this correctly, then, we can really just set aside the aggravated assault charges altogether. As I mentioned, the assault with the shotgun happened after Arbery initiated physical contact, and the vehicular assault wasn’t the first felony committed.

What you’re saying is, and correct me if I’m wrong, as soon as the McMichaels used their vehicle to attempt to impede Arbery – an act which the jury used to convict all 3 men of false imprisonment (a felony) – at that point, they were no longer acting lawfully, and therefore their right to self-defense was massively curtailed.

Would you agree with that?

515

The is not a single point of evidence that @orcenio is referring to criminal stalking when he says Zimmerman stalked Martin. In fact, it is quite clear that he is using the ordinary, everyday meaning of stalking which is an accurate description of Zimmerman’s behavior toward Martin on the night question.

516

It would vary with the particulars–but the crime being committed at the time the gun was fired would be the most salient. What lead up to that would also factor in. The chain of events for the defendants in this case…were not great for them–the pursuit of Arbery just by itself was AFAIK not criminal and not charged as a crime. That pursuit or pursuits like it could cross into criminality based on things done during it, but the prosecution didn’t charge the pursuit itself as a criminal act.

In general, if I’m not breaking traffic laws or anything I can follow you around while you’re running on the public streets all day, even if you really dislike me doing it. I can even yell out at you “hey, stop, I want to talk to you”, repeatedly. There might be some point where being very nitpicky some form of harassment charge or public order charge might be summoned up, but that would be it. Now if this became a pattern of behavior it might be something you could get a restraining order over or etc, but we’re well afield of this case now in that scenario.

Stopping Arbery was unalwful.

Getting out of the trucks to then assault Arbery was also unlawful.

The fact that this was the sequence of events that occurred before Arbery’s scuffle with McMichael essentially means the McMichaels and Bryan were operating in concert as criminals at that moment, and when you are behaving unlawfully you have a massive curtailment to your right of self-defense.

I always like to avoid getting too far into the weeds of what is meant by “massive curtailment”, I’m mostly avoiding saying you void that right entirely, because there are circumstances where even a criminal still has a right to defend their life. The simplest such scenario is one in which a criminal’s crime has been stopped and the person who stopped them was crossing over into illegality themselves. As an example, imagine a homeowner catches a thief in his shed, and draws a gun on him–telling him to get on his knees and not move. In some jurisdictions the property owner wouldn’t have the right to perform such an armed detention, but in many jurisdictions in the United States they would. Now let’s say the property owner says “I’m tired of thieves out here, so I’m going to blow your brains out”, now let’s imagine we’re in a John Wick or Jack Reacher movie and the thief has reflexes of lightning, hearing that, he whips out his own gun and shoots the property owner dead. At that point the thief is actually acting in lawful self-defense because he had surrendered and the property owner made plain, he was planning an illegal execution.

Now, because the thief started the chain of events that lead to this, he almost certainly still has criminal liability for a number of things. Also in the particulars I laid out, a jury would likely be highly unlikely to believe the thief’s fantastical story, and would likely believe the thief simply shot a property owner attempting to stop his theft. But imagine there was a security camera that got it all on tape–I think the thief would be acquitted of murder if he was so charged.

517

OK, so go back and re-read post #401, especially the last 2 paragraphs.

518

Yes–absolutely, the major legal difference is we have unequivocal proof of the shooter’s criminal behavior leading up to the shooting. All we have with the Zimmerman case is people who speculated that maybe Zimmerman had attempted to illegaly detain Martin or assaulted him, but there’s nothing like evidence to a reasonable doubt standard that he did.

It is not legally incorrect to say that the video recording was also one of the biggest differences. The criminality of what occurred isn’t affected by it being recorded on video, but the ability to convict someone in court was certainly increased via video.

I will note that in the Arbery case, I think it is possible convictions would have still been secured even without the video, but the video was a real boon to the prosecution. Why do I think that? Because the McMichaels and Bryan are very, very stupid. They basically gave statements to the police that quite literally indicate they behaved criminally, because they admitted they did not really know for sure that Arbery had committed any immediate crime [under the then extant Georgia citizen’s arrest law, you can’t just say “well I think he might be behind burglaries in the neighborhood because I think I saw him on a camera the other day”–that isn’t cause for a citizen’s arrest when you see him running on the street randomly at a later time], which voids their decision to detain him. The police who actually did the initial investigation wanted to arrest the McMichaels that very day, which should tell you something–the police in the Zimmerman case seemed to think Zimmerman may have committed a crime but were much less certain, the fact that the police were specifically told not to make arrests by the local prosecutor is a big part of the reason this case got so much national attention.

519

And, as I’ve pointed out, the relevant criminal behavior amounts to pulling their truck sideways across the road.

So, obviously I was playing devil’s advocate with Steophan when you walked into the exchange, but I stand by my points. One, there are a LOT of similarities between these two cases. Two, while the evidence supporting the false imprisonment charge made a HUGE difference legally, it seems unfathomably strange that it resulted in such a massive difference in political discourse. Zimmerman is a conservative hero, and the McMichaels are going to be quickly forgotten. All, it seems, because they pulled their truck across the road while trying to get their black “burglar” and Zimmerman didn’t.

520

I think two-fold things. One, I think you’re downplaying the importance of the illegal detention. It may seem a small thing, but in no small part it’s why three men are highly likely to die in prison over this. If you think that using force to stop someone’s freedom of movement is a minor thing, you should realize that it isn’t. People should realize that before engaging in such behavior. That’s exercising police power, ordinarily reserved for the State, and when exercised by a private individual you had damn well know you’re in the right.

Two, the detention / stop with the truck wasn’t the only thing that got them in trouble. Let’s say they had not done that, but just stopped and got out and pointed guns at him–that also would be assault as well and any subsequent shooting would be criminal, even if Arbery had tried to resist. There was a chain of felonies that lead to the shooting, you have to remove all of their felonies prior to shooting him to get them back into a place where they can easily argue self-defense.

521

Rather, all because we can prove they did. Zimmerman may well have done something similar: grabbed Martin’ brandished a gun at him. We just don’t know.