Then cite whatever universal set of legal ethics you think all lawyers agree to follow that supports your assertion about when charges should be brought.
The video does not show “Rice reaching for his waistband”. The video is grainy and poor quality and shows a possible hand movement, but it’s not at all clear that it’s towards his waist rather than his balls or anywhere else. So no, I don’t agree that the evidence supports the cops.
Indeed. Together we can fight the bus.
Feel free to read them at your leisure, and come back when you understand them.
Feel free to cite any portions that support your assertions that I’ve disputed.
This seems phenomenally backward. “Let’s see, you shot him in the head, but we have no footage or solid evidence that he wasn’t charging at you and trying to strangle you, so I guess you’re in the clear. Man, that makes what, 37 people who’ve tried to strangle you that you had to shoot? That’s nuts, man. Sorry you have such a hard time.”
Except in this case we have good evidence that Castile wasn’t trying to shoot or threaten Yanez. Are you telling me that, were you in that situation, you would have opened fire on Castile? That Yanez’s actions are acceptable or reasonable for a trained officer of the law?
Yes, prosecution. My bad.
Well, let’s see here. Imagine it’s the wee hours of the morning, and you hear a loud crash downstairs, and hear people sneaking into your home. As a responsible homeowner, you grab your gun (castle doctrine is a thing, after all), and in the dark, open fire on the intruders who you thought were burglars.
Somehow, killing a man because you freaked out and thought he was going for a gun because he reached for his pockets after you told him to produce ID is self-defense, but firing on people breaking into your house (remember, this is a no-knock raid, where the shooter had no idea that the people breaking into his home were cops) is not.
You should really take a moment to think about this. That’s kinda fucked up.
It seems backwards to you that it’s up to the state to prove guilt, not the defendant to prove innocence?
I’m saying that, as he was found not guilty, he’s innocent of any crime connected to that incident. He’s been removed from his job, so clearly his actions weren’t up to the standards the job requires.
You don’t get to shoot cops who are doing their jobs. That’s not something that should be controversial. To my knowledge, the police who act on this sort of warrant are always in uniform, so there’s no reason not to recognise them as cops.
What if someone has reasonable fear for their lives due to the actions of the cops?
It sounds almost absurdly easy to get away with murder in the USA. Just claim you were afraid for your life, and suddenly there’s this entirely different, often unresolveable claim the court has to deal with.
(Of course, for some reason, this isn’t always applied evenly. I wonder why…)
Nothing about this phases you?
For someone who’s such a s̶t̶i̶c̶k̶l̶e̶r̶ pedantic asshole about the precise meaning of terms, you sure are sloppy. He was not found innocent. He was found not guilty. There’s a difference:
So what is the difference? If you are innocent, you are absolutely without fault in all aspects. You are a victim of a terrible injustice and everyone should give you their pity. Congratulations, you have it! But you still face all the consequences of being charged with a criminal offense. If you are not guilty, you perhaps did not do the crime, [or] there was no crime, [or] they arrested the wrong person, [or] they could not prove their case; any one or combination of the above can produce the “not guilty” verdict.
And I maintain that the jury was wrong. That they judged this case, as they all too often judge police cases, completely wrong. That there is no reasonable case to be made that the officer should have feared for his life. Stop hiding behind the jury’s verdict. They are not infallible.
Congratulations to the police department for recognizing that a man who freaks the fuck out like that when presented with such a basic situation may not be the kind of person who should have an exclusive legal right to force. It’s a shame that they didn’t figure that out before he killed someone.
Maybe, just maybe, if police officers don’t want to get shot like burglars, police officers shouldn’t break into homes without warning before dawn exactly the way burglars might. Maybe if we can’t expect trained cops to not randomly shoot people for following their instructions or accidentally flashbang infants after breaking into people’s homes on a bogus warrant then lie about paying for the child’s medical expenses (fucking really), we shouldn’t expect untrained civilians to not shoot unknown people who have broken into their homes without warning or announcement. That’s sorta the whole point of the castle doctrine, isn’t it? If the cops don’t want to be treated like burglars, they shouldn’t act like burglars. If we’re willing to extend the kind of room for error to cops that allows for the shooting of Philando Castile, we should at least be willing ot extend the kind of room for error that allows for unidentified cops to get shot during no-knock raids.
Luckily for the side of fucking sanity, a similar case ended not all that long ago with a not guilty verdict. So maybe we can hope for the same in this case.
You seem perfectly fine assuming that Rice was guilty based on flimsy evidence and requiring others to prove his innocence (Rice himself, of course, unable to prove anything on account of being dead).
You also seem perfectly fine ignoring the larger context. If the police believe that a person is a potential (or genuine) threat, charging right up to the person and shouting at them would be criminally reckless. If the police officer in the Rice case was in any way in danger of his life, it’s because he put himself there. You don’t get to jump into the tiger cage at the zoo and then shoot all the tigers because you felt you were in danger.
You’ll note in the various examples I gave where the suspects survived the police encounter the police acted with care and caution to avoid escalating the situation and took the best action to avoid a lethal outcome for anyone involved. They kept a distance at first, they talked to the suspects for several minutes, and they acted to disable where talking failed. That’s what police officers who are acting professionally and with due care for their own lives and the lives of others do. Sometimes shooting is necessary, but if your first reaction is to charge into a situation with guns blazing you’re a disgrace to the uniform.
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Yes, of course it bothers me that self defence laws aren’t applied equally. The answer to that is to apply them equally, not to remove the right to defend onessekf.
One is innocent until proven guilty. That should be the end of it. This isn’t some sort of legal fiction or pedantic technicality, it’s a fundamental part of justice.
He wasn’t found not guilty due to self defence, it was because the state failed to prove he was culpably negligent.
The only way a jury can be wrong would be to convict despite having reasonable doubt that someone is guilty. They can’t wrongly acquit when they have doubts.
Your standard, once again, is to consider someone - especially a cop, due to your bigotry - who acts in a way you don’t like to be guilty of any an all tangentially related crimes regardless of whether their conduct actually satisfies all elements of that crime. You have an absolutely fundamental misunderstanding of how the law, and justice, actually work, and have shown no interest in fixing that misunderstanding.
Most importantly, you fail to grasp that the laws that protect these cops from unfair prosecutions or convictions also protect you and everyone else. You complain about police overreach and misbehaviour, and yet want to remove the very things that protect you from that.
Also, you think you know better from a tiny sliver of evidence than investigators and juries who have seen all the evidence, and you think you know the law better than lawyers and judges. You are, in short, so stupid you can’t even tell you are stupid.
You don’t get to shoot cops who are doing their jobs, whether or not you agree with what their job is. You’re not even supposed to threaten them because, unlike burglars, the cops have a right to be there, and a right to use force if you don’t obey their lawful instructions.
It’s possible to shoot one by accident, if you somehow failed to notice the uniforms. It’s not possible for it to be self defence.
Having read that article, it’s clear he was found not guilty on what you would call a technicality - the state did not retain and present necessary evidence - and had nothing to do with self defence. Had it been the opposite way round, and a cop been the defendant, you would be the first to scream about conspiracies and the deliberate destruction of evidence.
In short, you are a hypocrite.
Rice is not accused of anything. I’ve simply stated what his actions were, not whether they were criminal or immoral.
You do if you’re a zookeeper, and it’s your job to put yourself in dangerous situations. Zoo animals are, in fact, killed when they endanger people - even if it’s through the negligence of others. Harambe is probably the most famous one.
What law criminalises the supposed recklessness of the officers? I assume you know, since you specifically called it “criminal”. It’s part of the job of the police to put themselves in dangerous situations, for fuck’s sake.
“Disgrace to the uniform” is grounds for firing, not prosecution. Even if a cop drives up to you and points a gun at you, you are not allowed to threaten them.
Are we still talking about cops doing their jobs, or are we talking about a situation such as an off duty cop in a bar threatening someone? In the former case, no, you don’t get to respond. In the latter, you have the same self defence rights as anyone else.
If you think a cop is ilegally telling you to do something, and threatening you to get compliance, then you should obey and challenge it later in court. That’s both common sense advice, and in at least some places actually the law.
You’re saying that it’s impossible for someone to have reasonable fear for their life from an on-duty uniformed cop? You’re saying that a cop can’t make a mistake that might lead to someone having reasonable fear for their life?
There’s probably no point asking for a cite for all this, since it’s just so bonkers. Humans being human, cops will sometimes make mistakes (even while in uniform and on duty), and sometimes those mistakes will lead to someone feeling entirely reasonable fear for their life. If “reasonable fear for one’s life” is the only requirement for self-defense to be valid (as I’m pretty sure you’ve stated), then it’s entirely possible for an on-duty uniformed cop to take an action that could cause someone to have reasonable fear for their life.
You stated your feelings about Rice’s actions. Some of his actual actions can’t be discerned by the evidence currently available.
Cops, and a few other law enforcement personnel, are allowed to use fear and force to get people to do as they are told, as long as what they are being told is legal. You don’t get to defend against that.
Neither of those statements are true. My feelings about his actions are irrelevant, and we can examine the evidence to determine the most likely cause of events.
Whether true or not (and this is uncited), it doesn’t preclude the possibility of a cop’s actions (which might be later determined to be legal or illegal) causing one to feel reasonable fear for their life. For example, breaking down the wrong door in the dark. Or beating a prone suspect who surrendered. Or shouting “I’m going to kill you!” accompanied by drawing a gun. Or a million other possible things that a cop might do.
You’re the one, not me, who has drawn the line for self-defense at “feeling reasonable fear for one’s life”. There’s nothing magical about cops that means that they can’t make someone feal such reasonable fear for their life. If this is an exception for your philosophy – that self-defense is justified when one feels reasonable fear for one’s life unless that reasonable fear is caused by a cop then you should probably state it clearly. I think it’s bullshit, since if someone breaks down my door in the dark I’m going to feel that reasonable fear long before I can determine who exactly is breaking down my door in the dark, but at least it’d be relatively clear.
We can, and the evidence is clear about some of the actions/events and not clear about others. It’s clear that the cops pulled up and shot Rice seconds later. It’s not clear what, if anything, was shouted at Rice. It’s not clear what Rice did in reaction. It’s not clear if there was a mosquito on Rice’s shoulder. It’s not clear if there was a rat hiding under the deck at that moment. There are some things that are clear, and other things that are unclear.
You don’t get to shoot a cop for doing his job. Do you still not understand that cops, pretty much uniquely, are allowed to use threats and force as part of their job?
What nonsense.
Your two philosophies are directly conflicting. Suppose, in the dark at night, someone breaks down my door. By your “self defense is justified if I feel reasonable fear” principle, I can shoot them immediately upon feeling reasonable fear (which would be immediately). By your “you don’t get to shoot a cop for doing his job”, I can’t, because there’s a possibility that this person is a cop who made a mistake and is breaking down the wrong door.
So which is it? What do I do in this circumstance according to your philosophies?