And this fatal shooting, by a former cop, still hasn’t even gone to trial; put off last year due to covid.
Hey, you distract me from those dancing snacks singing “Let’s go to the lobbbb-yyyy”, and it’s on, mon.
Bumping this thread because a jury was seated last week and after 8 YEARS this case is finally going to trial.
This is the biggest thing wrong with our justice system, but more importantly, with Law and Order!
During the real world chung chungs, the cast would have gone from Shiff to Lewin to Branch, Stone to McCoy, Lennie to Ed, Logan to Curtis to Green, Claire to Jamie to Abby to Serena, and STILL they wouldn’t even be at trial. Lennie would have to be brought back from the dead to testify.
This guy should be held without bail, if they aren’t going to actually have a trial.
Thanks for the update. I’ve been checking every now and then. Interesting that it’s finally going to trial.
After 8 (count them EIGHT) years, let’s hope the relevant witness(es) are still alive, and can be found, and still remember details like that.
I agree that 8 years is ridiculous and an embarrassment to the legal system and all parties in it. But if IIRC there is some argument about early onset dementia for this old guy. And as a defense attorney, I have always thought there was an unfortunate gap between “Not legally responsible due to mental illness” and “a guy still suffering enough from a mental disability that we don’t bring the full force of the law down on him.”
Obviously he should never own or possess a gun again, but again, IIRC, the parties keep trying to work out something to be fair. Yes, the victim is dead, but we still don’t impose worthless punishments on people who really don’t understand why they are being punished.
So, take his gun(s) away and we’re good?
The victim showed a lot of anger and aggression. His wife has even said she had her hands on his chest holding him back. Her finger got hit by the bullet.
I completely agree popcorn isn’t a weapon. It’s the motion of the hand that matters. You have a big dude, 6 ft 4" cursing and lunging at you. The hand swings in your direction. Is it going to stop? Will slinging popcorn be all that he wants to do?
Curtis is an older guy. A couple of punches could badly injure or kill him. Is he really supposed to wait until after a hard punch to defend himself?
I’m not sure. A lot depends on what the witnesses say on testimony. How out of control was this guy? His wife was concerned enough to get involved. She knew his temper. I haven’t made up my mind. I need to hear more from the witnesses.
Reeves is an ex cop. He was chief of security at a theme park. He’s used to barking orders and that certainly contributed to this altercation.
It only takes one punch to die.
Isn’t that called ‘mitigating circumstances’?
You cut off the second part of Ultra Vires’s sentence to make a snide comment.
That is a crucial point in the moral foundation for criminal law: we don’t punish someone who doesn’t understand why they’re being punished.
Someone being shot dead over popcorn is a tragedy, but if the person who did it lacks mental capacity to appreciate the situation, it would be a miscarriage of justice to punish them.
If only that were true in the US.
The US executes mentally retarded people, or others that are incapable if understanding what is happening, all the damn time,
I was hoping to make a point, which I will now make. The sentence construction he used minimized the actual victim in this transaction, and I thought it was important to not do that.
I have a couple of things to say about this. The first thing is that I don’t disagree with this, as far as it goes.
Is it a tragedy like Hamlet, or a tragedy like dying in an earthquake, or something else? I am asking this as a serious question because I think it makes a difference to the outcome. This was not like someone dying in an earthquake, because it was not completely unforeseeable and unpreventable.
The problem is not only what he did, but how he got to the point where it was possible to do it. Preventing that kind of situation (witless man with a gun in a public place) is society’s responsibility, and society has once again failed to perform. And in the process, too many people are shrugging and saying “yeah, the guy died, but what are you gonna do?” That was what I didn’t like about Ultra Vires’ wording, and why I cut out the part after “but.”
Thereby attributing a conclusion to Ultra Vires that he did not make.
Was it light or was it the loud clicking/beeping/blooping sounds some phones make. Because that’s insanely annoying. If the retired policeman was suffering from dementia then that would probably set him off.
If this guy suffered from some kind of diminished capacity, someone in his circle of family and friends should have noticed and gotten his guns taken away. At the very least removed his carry license.
Cite?
Maybe I’m being whooshed, but that detail was an inside joke about a now long-gone SD poster. (Or at least that’s what I thought eight years ago.)
Not specifically about this event but I go to movie theaters fairly often and smartphone screens even many rows away are really distracting. If the person is close to me, I will ask/tell them to put the phone away.
The closest I can think of was a family that had a child with shoes that would flash when bumped or moved. In the dark of the theater they were like strobe lights. About a minute of that and somebody from rows away said something and the clueless parents immediately corrected it.
It’s a shame theaters can’t legally install transmitters that shut down cell phone use under a ticket holder agreement… Or shield the buildings making phones useless…
But that doesn’t address the issue of violence in our society.