I agree. It would be nice if the judge weren’t so chummy with the defendant, but I expect a different judge would have OKd the travel too.
Bates is not a flight risk. He will appear for trial, especially since he is more than likely to be acquitted.
Question for our legal folks: IYO, what is the likelihood for a conviction on manslaughter charges? To sustain manslaughter, don’t they (the People) have to show intent? I mean, for it t be manslaughter, he had to INTEND to shoot the victim. Seems like the ‘I got confused and thought I pulled the taser’ will play just as well. Particularly in light of the fact that he is an elderly, poorly-trained wannabee.
I’m not saying he didn’t intend to shoot the victim, I’m just saying it seems difficult to prove when a more plausible explanation is available.
I expect he will be acquitted, then the department will sued into oblivion.
While I have no doubt that Bates will appear at trial, I doubt that the thought of losing a $25k bail bond would deter him. Murder bails that make the news tend to be in the 100k or million range, and those are for people with no reasonable chance of actually coming up with that kind of money.
I miss the old days when no one had cameras so the police had prettymuch free reign to do whatever they wanted to and could just back each other up with their tailored accounts of what went down.
Not likely to make a difference with the redneck jury he’ll probably get, but how do you think it looks from the POV of the victim’s family and friends? Or even the casual observer…
“Yeah sure, I killed some black guy by mistake. But hell’s bells if that’s going to ruin my vacation in The Bahamas.”
Gosh, we should feel so sorry about this horrible thing that happened to him. He might even still be feeling bad about this horrible thing that happened to him. But maybe his vacation will help him feel better about this horrible thing that happened to him.
[Quote=Sterling Brown]
Let us pity Ty Kendricks.
He has been through enough,
Standing there, his big gun smoking,
Rabbit-scared, alone,
Having to hear the wenches wail
And the dying Negro moan.
[/quote]
I think that a lot of these cops don’t really see blacks as people. For Bates, he probably feels as bad as if he hit a dog with his car, it’s sad, but no reason to ruin everyone’s vacation.
I like to think that if i really, truly killed someone accidentally, due to a complete and total fuckup on my own part, i would find it within me to convey some of my own shame and horror and regret about the matter in my public statements about the issue.
Nothing wrong with people protesting actions of cops. But sometimes it goes way, way beyond protests.
For example the Rodney King LA riots killed 53 people and injured 2000+. I don’t know how many of those killed were cops or people who worked in government but I don’t think many were.
It seems to me the punishment for cops found lying in testimony should be especially severe. A huge foundational part of our system of laws is on being able to trust the testimony of cops. All of the recent evidence coming out of cops systematically lying and tampering with crime scenes severely erodes that trust. Good cops are caught in the crossfire when we become automatically suspicious of all cop testimony.
If anything, the events of the past year or so make it clear exactly why things like the Rodney King riots happen. They are no Sui genetics events that you can simply tut-tut and use to blame the black community. They happen because our society is squeezing black people so hard that there occasionally will be an explosion.
