I agree.* She hit first*. My Dad was a Golden gloves champ, and a woman sucker punched him once and he automatically punched her back. He stopped, horrified, but you dont get to go hitting men without repercussions just because of your sex. Claiming you are free to beat a male but a male cant raise his hands back is sexism.
But he was charged and she wasn’t. Explain that.
Because he’s a guy and he left marks.
Regards,
Shodan
A rigged investigation, no charges, no discipline. At best, a settlement with the city. That was the outcome here in Kentucky when a 19-year-old blond girl was gunned down by a policeman with very sketchy justification.
and it is Oklahoma and she’s white and he’s black.
Molitor’s friend probably wouldn’t have called him a nigger if he weren’t black (if that’s how it really happened).
But ISTM that most of the outrage stems from his being much bigger and stronger, and that a punch from a college-level football player is going to damage a small woman more, because he is a man, and therefore bigger and stronger. I doubt the outcome would be all that different, or the responses to the incident less heated, if they had both been white or both black.
I don’t know if the law could be written finely enough to parse out that a punch in the face is reasonable as a response to a push, or isn’t, depending on how big the puncher is vs. the pusher, or if the puncher is a man vs. a woman, or how much damage the punchee sustains. Violence can’t be calibrated that closely.
When I taught self-defense, I taught that fighting was an all-or-nothing response partly because of this. You can’t be sure that any response is going to turn out to be closely matched to the provocation - people get injured when you don’t intend it, or don’t get injured when you do. Therefore you avoid fighting until there is no other option. Then you have to hurt the other guy.
It’s really hard to be sure that you aren’t over-reacting, and therefore you only react when it is clear that significant damage isn’t an over-reaction.
Eric Garner died from what was supposed to be a non-lethal submission. Suppose Mixon reacted as I would have trained him to do - walk away. Then she follows him and keeps attacking. So he does the standard block-hit-clinch-throw-submission sequence that we drilled on a hundred million times. And she hits her head in the fall and fractures her skull, or he lands on top of her and breaks her ribs. People would say the same things - he should have reacted less violently.
It’s like people saying cops should shoot to wound, or “how come you emptied your gun instead of waiting to see if he fell”.
Should Mixon be legally required to walk away after she slapped and shoved him and called him names? I don’t know. Should he be legally required to only punch her hard enough to stop the assault, and no harder? I don’t think that’s possible.
“Don’t start fights you can’t finish” is a good rule of thumb. “Don’t hit girls” is another. But I am not aware that either is a point of law.
Regards,
Shodan
But he’s a star running back for OU and she’s a Texan.
Oh heck, this has degenerated to ‘he said, she said’ stuff.
No matter what the name calling, the issue is the initiation of violence, she starts it, twice mind you, not once - it does not matter how ineffectual her blows were - hers were the first.
He is not to know where this will go, is she going to keep going, are her friends going to join in, and of course, there is always to possibility of a gun in this incident.
Does he stand there and let her reach into her bag and pull out a piece?
Does he stand there and let others jump him?
One blow, a knock down more than anything, unintended injuries and he leaves, he does not deliver more blows.
So we end up with a 70/30 apportioning of responsibility, sure they are both part of it, but realistically hers was the initiating action.
I hoped she learned to keep her hands to herself.
If we as a society are concerned about discouraging women from slapping men, then the appropriate way to do so would be with assault charges, not by breaking people’s faces. Her actions can be totally wrong, without it making his response right.
For that matter, his anger at being the target of racial slurs and physical assault can be understandable, without it making his response right. Justified anger is not the same as justified violence.
I also think some of the responses in this thread are really piling on the maybes. “Maybe she was about to try to gouge his eyes out”, “maybe she was about to pull a gun out of her purse”, etc. Did he actually believe those things were about to happen? Did he have some justification for that belief? I’m no legal expert, but I don’t think you can just assume without evidence that a gun is about to come out when determining if the use of force was disproportionate.
Some posters in this thread seem to be so upset by the idea that a woman might get away with something that they, as a man, would not, that they think it makes a woman getting her face broken a good outcome. It doesn’t.
The fact that you might think she “had it coming” doesn’t mean he was in the right to give it to her. If I punched everyone who I felt deserved a punch in the face, I’d have been in jail a long time ago, and for good reason.
Do I have to choose one? I’d rather choose both.
I don’t know how long she’s been assaulting everyone who she felt deserved to be assaulted, but it’s entirely possible that she should’ve been jailed a long time ago.
You’re saying… breaking people’s facial bones is the appropriate punishment for a slap? How do you feel about theft, Hammurabi?
Maybe so. I’m not defending her at all. As I said, she can be in the wrong without making his actions right.
Who said anything about punishment? If someone criminally assaults my face, I’d like to think I’d act in self-defense with a strike to the face. I’d like to think my assailant would then face appropriate punishment from the authorities, and that I’d then be able to press charges, and that I’d possibly be presented with a medal.
I’m against it, such that I’d sure like to think I’d use force to stop it – after which (a) the thief could then face appropriate punishment from the authorities, and (b) I’d sure like to get a medal for forcibly stopping the theft, because, again, I sure do like medals, in much the same way that I sure don’t like theft.
I don’t think anyone was saying Mixon was “RIGHT” to punch her, but rather than it is understandable. He shouldn’t have done so. Especially not with the force he used. However, we can comprehend why he reacted that way.
It’s a fine line; if someone gets criminally assaulted, it’s “understandable” that he’d have a hard time precisely gauging the amount of force to use in response – such that folks can “comprehend” why he’d react one way instead of another – because, y’know, he’d just been struck in the face. In which case, would it be fair to say I’d give him the benefit of the doubt, while refusing to extend the same to the assailant who made a decision before getting hit in the face? Would it be fair to say I’d find him not guilty, and that I’d call for the prosecution of his assailant? And so on?
Is there some point where that becomes functionally indistinguishable from right?
OTOH: She shoved him then after a beat assaulted his face after he tried to walk away. As aggressive as she was acting why would anyone believe she wouldn’t have done something a lot more serious?
Whether his actions were ‘right’ isn’t what needs to be determined. Were his actions, in some sense, understandable or explicable? If you put 10 people in that situation, maybe some don’t punch back, but among the ones who don’t, probably many would understand why others would. That’s ultimately what it comes down to.
I think I read somewhere that when law schools teach textbook ‘self defense’, it can be explained by saying that if a passerby thinks he spots a bumblebee near your head and tries to swat it (to protect you), you actually could punch him in the face and claim self defense. All you’d need to assert is that you thought you were being physically assaulted by the Samaritan. It wouldn’t matter whether a third party, in fact, later caught a bumblebee on his iPhone. If, in real time, any reasonable person could look at your situation and, putting themselves in your shoes, understand why you reacted or overreacted, then that’s ‘self-defense’. Of course, in the real world, a jury of white jurors looks at a big strapping black man ‘defending’ himself against a white belle, there’s no guarantee they’d be sympathetic.
She assaults him twice first. He swings back with the same type of closed fist, and he’s charged with assault and she’s not … then sues him ? oh jezuss.
Something isn’t equal considering; if she hypothetically punched another female first, in the same scenario. She and the defender would be both charged with assault.
Racism, feminism gone wild or a mix of both ?
I’m genuinely curious about the charge “assault resulting in injury”. It seems (to me, at least) that the charge should only be applied when the injury is from the implement used in the assault. The (alleged/apparent) aggressor, the woman, chose the setting, the venue, and it really beggars the imagination to assert that Mixon knew she would hit her head on the table edge.
Am I wrong on this? I really would welcome some legal beagle types explaining the rationale of the charge here. Thanks!
Snowboarder Bo - I’ll admit to not closely following the case, partly because the feminist opinion sites I go to haven’t covered this for some reason, and partly because I really do not like getting into protracted hot-button debates, especially here.
Nonetheless, even if the friend did call him a nigger (Which of course begs the question of why he didn’t simply try to deny it when Mixon confronted him… “Oh, you misheard, I said ‘I wouldn’t buy that for a nickel.’ No offense intended.”), he was under no obligation to dive into the sewer with him. Any member of a football program as prestigious as Oklahoma should know he’s under the spotlight and cannot, cannot allow himself to be goaded by some random snotnose punk. One, there a lot of snotnose punks out there, two, he has far more to lose then they do. He needs to have a thicker skin than that, and yes, that royally sucks, but that’s the reality. If he had to say something, a simple “Don’t go there”, “Don’t start with me”, “I wasn’t talking to you”, or “Whatever” would’ve allowed him to keep the moral high ground.
Gah…plenty of dirt to go around. For my own health’s sake, I’ll just leave it at that.