Yes, I know. This isn’t a discussion about whether crime victims are justified in resorting to any legally permitted degree of violence against their assailants. We all appear to be in agreement that they are.
Nor is this a discussion about whether or what degree(s) of violence should be legally permitted to crime victims, and if so, whether or not that ought to include deadly force, etc. etc. That’s a complex issue that IMHO would warrant a thread of its own.
The only thing that Common_Tater and I are arguing about here, AFAICT, is whether crime victims should resort to illegal violence against their assailants, thus engaging in criminal acts themselves. I’m of the opinion, as I’ve said, that they should not.
Common_Tater, not having a persuasive rebuttal of that opinion, seems to be trying to spin the circumstances as though the crime victims in question simply have no choice but to resort to illegal violence because the situation is forcing them into it. I don’t agree.
Doesn’t matter. If their behavior was not in fact illegal, then the present argument doesn’t apply to them.
What we’re currently arguing about here is whether crime victims are justified in resorting to illegal violence, not whether a particular instance of violent behavior was in fact illegal. I personally am quite content to let the California courts sort out the question of who in this situation is liable to what legal penalties for what violation(s) of law. It doesn’t affect my stated position that crime victims should not resort to illegal violence.
I must have missed it-- Do you have a cite that they resorted to illegal violence? Certainly they resorted to violence, but that violence may or may not have been legal.
I managed to miss that fact that it happened in Stockton. The DA has announced in the local paper that they’re not looking to arrest the employees. Let’s see if this works.
Yes, we are. Look at the exchange that I originally responded to:
A “savage beating” of a criminal who is effectively restrained from further violence is not legal. Crime victims are legally entitled to use violence in self-defense, but not as punishment.
It’s not up to me (or you) to decide whether these particular storekeepers in Stockton actually were administering something that the law would consider an illegal savage beating to the criminal they caught. But since we are in fact talking about whether it’s okay for crime victims to administer illegal savage beatings to their victimizers—and if you don’t think we should be talking about it, then take it up with bump—then I repeat that I personally don’t think it’s okay.
Of course it is not legal to “savagely beat” or torture someone for vengeance or to teach them a lesson, though this does happen IRL. Even in Texas, one is only allowed to use “force… when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary” to prevent the theft or to recover the property.
You have to get it in your head, your “Angry Vigilantes”, if it can even be properly characterized as such, is the normal state of human affairs, and only reasserts itself in the absence of law and order and a justice system.
Why do you suppose the 7-11 employees decided to “take the law into their own hands”? Maybe they just need more training?
I’m not excusing anything, I don’t like this situation one bit. This was the third time in 24 hours they had been robbed, the guy is a career criminal, etc etc. When the rule of law breaks down, this is the kind of shit you get.
Exactly. I never said the shopkeepers beating the guy was legal or even close to it. I just said that in light of what had happened, it was reasonable, meaning that it wasn’t unexpected or out of line with how they should be expected to behave in such a situation.
And it’s that breakdown in law enforcement that makes it so. If the cops were expected to be there very promptly and that guy would reasonably have expected to be quickly apprehended and jailed for it, I bet the shopkeepers would have let that justice run its course.
But clearly that’s not the case, and they felt that in the absence of effective law enforcement and brazen theft and threatening behavior by the suspect, that they had to take matters into their own hands. And if you are the suspect and behave like that, you really(should) have two expectation if you’re caught- one, that law enforcement will arrest you, charge you, and likely incarcerate you, or two, that the shopkeepers will whoop the living shit out of you in hopes of dissuading you from repeating that behavior AND to dissuade others from doing the same.
I don’t think it’s reasonable at all for the shopkeepers to be expected to sit there idly and wait for law enforcement to show up whenever it’s convenient for them, while their store is ransacked, their store’s reputation as a safe shopping experience is trashed, and their money is effectively taken from them.
At no point does that criminal’s rights supersede those of the people who were literally minding their business, when he showed up and instigated the whole thing. I don’t feel any sympathy for the guy- he should know better, and he should expect that sort of behavior when he acts like that. It’s a sad state of affairs if society starts getting onto the shopkeepers for merely protecting their livelihoods and that of their families.
As far as I know, I — as a law-abiding citizen who engages in plenty of legal activities — am, like you’d maybe expect, currently facing no charges; the authorities just sort of let me go about my business, even as I keep on doing what I’m, uh, legally doing.
Are these shopkeepers facing any charges? Will the authorities just let them go about their business?
In the local paper, the DA said that office was not interested in investigating the employees. The shoplifter had other warrants out.
My DIL is worried that they’ll be fired for risking themselves and thereby opening up the franchise to higher workers comp fees. But that’s a separate thing.
There is a difference between what’s on paper as illegal, and what the cops/DA/etc… will actually pursue.
In some jurisdictions there are even formal dichotomies where the DA will announce that he won’t prosecute crimes below a certain dollar value for certain items. Like for example, they’ll say something like they won’t prosecute thefts of baby formula under $200.
Which sets up the situation where on paper that’s some sort of theft, but in practice, the cops aren’t going to bother, because they know that the DA won’t prosecute.
So in cases like this, I suspect the cops just look the other way, because they are fearful of the public outcry that would happen if they hauled the shopkeeper in for beating that guy.
I dont even think it is all that common in Texas for an intruder to be shot by the homeowner, so I am gonna need a cite here.
Smart DA.
Yeah, some jurist pointed out once that people constantly unknowingly commit crimes.
But in this case, the threat of great bodily harm or death by the knife display seems to put the dude with a stick in the clear. In fact, generally, you can shoot a dude dead if he threatens you with a knife.
Yeah, since a homeowner in Texas doesn’t have to actually wait for someone to enter their house before they shoot them, I think the claim of folks being dragged in the house after being shot is pretty thin gruel. It’s totally unnecessary to do it in Texas. All you really need to be doing in Texas is to be protecting your property, they don’t need to be in your house.
I’ve been removed from a jury pool for my views on this state’s castle doctrine.