You’re mixing together citizen arrests and regular arrests by the police. There’s huge differences between the two and you really can’t meaningfully compare them together.
By trying to grab their guns, one could argue that Arbery was attempting to arrest *them *for threatening him. After all, he was in fact witnessing a felony in progress.
OP, if you’re just curious about Georgia citizen’s arrest rules, why don’t you open a GQ thread on the topic, away from this particular case?
Hi! I have a question about Georgia law. It was prompted by a terrible recent event, but this question is unrelated to that.
If I’m a regular Georgia citizen and I witness someone commit a felony, am I allowed to arrest them? How much force can I use? Can I block them with my car/truck? Can I hold them at gunpoint?
Is that what you’re trying to get at?
While your complete lack of cites and “just asking questions” rhetoric is unsurprising, I would certainly appreciate some cites for this allegation. I would also like it if you actually did some research, both into the law and the facts, and actually take a stance that can be debated about this shooting rather than just throwing out “questions” and unsupported conclusions. I’d also like a pony.
Yeah, the rest of us find that hard to believe that they had no reason at all, too. Yet when we make reasonable guesses as to what their reason was likely to have been, you get upset with us for making that assumption.
Or, if that was too oblique, let me make it clearer: Their reason was probably racism.
Yeah, the rest of us find that hard to believe that they had no reason at all, too. Yet when we make reasonable guesses as to what their reason was likely to have been, you get upset with us for making that assumption.
Or, if that was too oblique, let me make it clearer: Their reason was probably racism.
I will simply point out that it’s called citizen’s arrest, not citizen’s investigation. And it requires a level of knowledge of the commission of a felony that is more than “probable cause”.
To guess that their motive was racism doesn’t mean that one has to presume that their intention was ‘let’s go out and find a black guy to harass’ or ‘there’s a black guy, let’s shoot him’. The problem might be that they assume that seeing a black man running in a white or primarily-white neighborhood does, in itself, provide “probable cause”; because they genuinely think that a black man wouldn’t be doing that unless he were up to something illegal. So they might have thought they had a reason.
That wouldn’t make such a reason not racism.
Vitriol on both sides, very fine people on both sides, and here you are just asking questions and trying to be the voice of reason.
This seems really likely.
- A gun was stolen from their car a couple months ago. They figure it must’ve been a young black man, because that’s what criminals look like to them. They may not have fully articulated this idea.
- They see a young black man wandering around a construction site. One of them, an ex-cop who had to turn in his gun because he refused to complete use-of-force trainings and didn’t tell his superiors about it, knows that sometimes criminals case joints.
- Their racist stereotypes about young black men, coupled with rage over the unsolved theft of their gun, coupled with seeing this guy wandering around a construction site, leads to a conclusion: this dude is a thief!
- There’s no way they’re gonna let a thief get away from them. Neither of these fools is up on the niceties of citizen’s arrest laws in Georgia, but they’re sure familiar with how to wave a shotgun in the face of a bad guy.
- They murder their victim when he doesn’t fall to the ground in surrender.
Accusations of JAQing off are more appropriate to one side of a discussion where the “questioner” repeatedly avoids facts by proposing silly hypotheticals in response to numerous supplied facts.
Let’s not make such accusations (however worded) as a response to a single OP post.
[ /Moderating ]
I agree with this. I don’t have an issue believing that this could be this sort of racism, and if it is, these guys should be punished. I don’t know how many different ways I have to say that to keep from being accused of racism myself.
My point in asking to assume for the purposes of argument that it was a legal arrest was to address the idea that Arbery had the right to defend himself and that the two men were the aggressors.
The reason I said that is because if it was a legal arrest, Arbery had no such right, and if it was an illegal arrest, then he did and those guys are in the wrong regardless. So I guess my point is that whatever we see happening on the video as far as the confrontation is irrelevant as the whole question boils down to whether these guys had the privilege of arrest in this situation.
Also, the construction site. If these guys didn’t know anything about it, then it does not matter if Arbery had murdered someone at the construction site. The only question is the facts as presented to them when they decided to make an arrest. So the debate over what he did or did not do or what can be proven at the construction site is likewise immaterial.
And as I said, it doesn’t seem that these guys had the power to do what they did, but I started this thread to gather all of the facts available before joining in pitchfork carrying.
Also, and I guess I will be accused of JAQ here, but intent is what matters in homicide cases. If these guys thought incorrectly that they had the privilege to arrest here, then it is likely that what they are guilty of is some flavor of manslaughter or reckless homicide and not first degree murder.
But I have no idea, and that is why we have trials and a presumption of innocence. I guess that doesn’t matter when there are torches and pitchforks nearby.
Is this actually the case? If someone has the right to make a citizen’s arrest, but they do it in an inappropriate way (e.g., by brandishing a shotgun when they don’t have the right to do so), is there no right to self-defense? Like, I steal a pack of gum, some SCA idiot whips out a sword and holds it up to my chest, if I try to knock it away he can kill me?
If they didn’t know about it, it’s immaterial. If they did, and if that’s the basis for their arrest, it’s material whether he murdered someone there or whether he wandered through the site for a few moments and then left.
Felony murder.
Petulance.
Or:
- A young black man was captured on video on several different occasions trespassing in someone’s under-construction house.
2.) A young black man was seen entering the house by Travis McMichael himself on the night of Febuary 11th, when he called 911.
3.) On the day of the shooting, Aubrey is caught on two seperate surveillance cameras entering the house, while one neighbor calls 911 to report him and another neighbor is seen on the external security camera standing and watching him.
4.) And the homeowner had multiple incidents of tresspassing in his under-construction home and was told by a police officer to inlist the McMicheals to help watch over his property.
And on the day of the shooting, a young black man was executed for being a “suspect” in a trespassing incident without the benefit of trial, without any evidence, without any witnesses.
You may use reasonable force to effectuate an arrest. Although the police and private citizens are held to different standards as to when they can make an arrest, the standard is still reasonable force.
During felony stops, the police routinely point weapons at people, so I’m not sure why this (again assuming it was a legal arrest) would be excessive force to point a shotgun at a person.
Stealing a pack of gum is not a felony so I would offer that the force would be excessive, however, in some jurisdictions police pull guns on johns after a prostitution sting, so I guess it would be case by case for misdemeanors.
Right, I was going on the facts presented as true that they knew nothing about this construction site. If they knew nothing about it, it is immaterial. If they did know something about it, that changes things.
Those underlying felonies are intent crimes. And although it is true that an unlawful arrest is a battery, it is an open question as to whether a mistaken use of force constitutes these underlying crimes because of the lack of intent.
No, the issue I have is being called a troll and a racist for trying to explore this topic. It is an interesting one from a legal perspective (not to take away from the terrible personal loss suffered here) and the doctrine of citizen’s arrest.
If I see the police roll up and point guns at me, I see the flashing lights, the uniforms, the badges, etc. I know to stop. If I see two yoyos in a pickup truck, even if they have developed sufficient probable cause to think I did something and are legally making a citizen’s arrest, how do I know that they are doing what they claim they are doing?
I’ve seen very little case law on a person’s duties to submit to a citizen’s arrest and if there is such a duty, that seems to give every kidnapper or armed robber an easy target. Just claim that you are performing a citizen’s arrest, the person must comply, and then you rob, torture and/or kill them. That can’t be the right answer.
Intent doesn’t mean that you know what you are doing is a crime. It just means that your goal was to do the thing that is a crime.
If the accused murderers planned on kidnapping Arbury and believed it was actually legal because it was really a citizen’s arrest, not a kidnapping, they still intended to kidnap him. If they intended to kidnap him and screwed up and ended up killing him (which is what happened) it is felony murder. They killed someone while in the process of committing a felony. It’s a simple as that.
That would depend on the precise wording of the various statutes in Georgia. In Texas, for instance, I initially thought manslaughter might apply to Amber Guyger, but on reading the letter of the law, it clearly didn’t. Whether or not she meant to break the law didn’t matter, whether or not she was mistaken as to fact didn’t matter, all that mattered is that she intended to kill someone or did something that posed a significant risk of causing death (here I don’t recall the precise wording—but the point is it really wasn’t all that significant that she admitted under oath that she intended to kill him, the fact that she shot him and he died was enough to constitute murder). Self-defense or castle doctrine-type laws (still in Texas, as an example only) required that she actually BE in her own residence to call the killing justified, not that she believed she was in her own dwelling, and if she wasn’t in her dwelling. Being mistaken didn’t make it manslaughter, even if your or my gut-feeling might make it seem like it ought to be.
So… what’s the law say about mistaken/imperfect self-defense in Georgia? Does a person have to believe they are right, or actually BE right? And does manslaughter in Georgia encompass confrontations initiated under mistakes of fact, or does the fact that the guy intentionally shot the victim make it murder if lawful self defense doesn’t apply?
It’s not routine. There are specific rules of engagement–which the ex-cop didn’t know, because he kept skipping those trainings. What are those rules?
Nice guess. There are specific rules. What are they?
I think Ultravires is profoundly wrong about the intent principle. There’s another principle, ignorantia legis excusat neminem, if I remember my junior high Latin correctly: ignorance of the law excuses no one.
The intent that matters is what you intended to do with your body to another body. It’s not your intent to interact correctly with state statutes.
If you plan a murder of your ex-wife’s lover, thinking that in your state that’s legal, you can be tried for murder. If you feed a peanut butter sandwich to your kid’s friend and he dies from an allergy you didn’t know about, you can’t.