Ahhh okay I’m with you - yeah, totally fair call. The question of whether Casey is more likely to go on to severely overreact in future because of the positive response he’s received online is one that I could only guess at an answer to. I am of the opinion that he did the right thing in a bad situation, but I hope that the collective message of the internet doesn’t come through to him as ‘That was good, but more is better’. I suppose time will tell. If I was a parent of Casey’s I’d be doing my best to simultaneously communicate to him that his behaviour here was justified and that he shouldn’t take any punishment for it to heart, but also that that response was more a necessary evil than anything else and that if he’d gone any further than he did, it would have been a very different scenario.
Hi Princhester.
I haven’t had a chance to see the video (I’m at work) but I read the description at post 11. I gather he is in NSW. Bear in mind, I am a Code state criminal lawyer and NSW is a common law state.
Generally in a case like this, the issues are consent, provocation and self-defence. I will spare you the excruciating technical details. Life’s too short. The law also varies across states.
Assaults require proof of absence of consent, and it is entirely possible to embark on a consensual fight, meaning that neither party is guilty of assault if the action of the “victim” (here, the first person to throw a punch) allows of the conclusion that he was implicitly consenting to a mutual exchange of blows. There are limits to that proposition, however. At common law, that argument about consent will not help an accused person if the injured party suffers “bodily harm”. In Griffith Code states, consent is vitiated in this way only at the level of “grievous bodily harm”. There may be statutory variation of the common law even in the non-Code states - I haven’t looked.
Provocation also has limits. In some states, it is not even a defence any more except in presently irrelevant circumstances. I think it still has application in NSW, but I am not sure.
One of the components of provocation is “proportionality”, so that even if one has lost self-control, there is still a requirement that one not go batshit crazy (technical legal term) on some relatively slight provocation. It is for the prosecution to disprove the applicability of provocation.
Lastly, self-defence is engaged. That too has upper limits.
These things are questions of degree. If the skinny kid suffered grievous injury, it is likely that consent and provocation could be put out of the picture altogether as defences, and self-defence significantly limited (you have to anticipate a very high order of injury to yourself to justify a high order of injury in self-defence). Once again, the prosecution has to negative the availability of self-defence.
Questions of mistake of fact on these issues can arise as well, but that’s a whole other can of worms.
Without having seen the video, I can’t comment on what might happen here.
Many thanks Noel, about as I thought.
I only tried the one. I only had the one. I suppose I could have gone to the principal, but that didn’t occur to me. It was made clear to me by the bullies that tattling was just going to get me more bullying, though.
What a bunch of bullshit. You lack the facility to make any plain persuasive statement, which makes you any good lawyer’s bitch in court.
What the hell?
Knock off the personal insults. You’re in MPSIMS, not the Pit.
No warning issued.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
Given the nature of the SDMB, it was inevitable that the Devil’s Advocate hardheads would eventually come out of the woodwork.
If your aunt had had any balls she’d have been your uncle.
How do you know this?
I’d say he has a right firm grip on it.
I am not trying to persuade anybody of anything. I have expressly not advanced a view about this case. The law is vastly complicated on these points, even if the issues seem simple to you. That is because it has to cover a wide range of circumstances beyond the present.
If you thought I was expressing a view about the present debate, you are mistaken. I was asked to comment on a proposition of law. I did.
That’ll learn ya.