So LHOD, you still cool with the indictment?
I am, for what it’s worth.
It’s a really hard case for me to be unbiased about, I gotta say. I have a lot of things going on here:
-All else being equal, I want these assholes to suffer for the immensely awful thing they did. This point has the most emotional appeal and the least logical appeal.
-All else being equal, I want the law to be applied fairly.
-All else being equal, I want undercover journalism not to be squashed.
-All else being equal, I want government documents to be trustworthy.
Numbers 1, 2, and 4 point toward thinking the indictment is cool. Number 3 gives me pause. Am I okay with the indictment because I’m a vindictive sonofabitch, or am I okay with the indictment because the value of justly-applied laws and protecting government documents are greater than the value of protecting one particular approach to undercover journalism (that approach being forged government documents)? I’d like to think it’s a rational decision, but can’t be sure.
What I can be sure of is that there IS a rational basis by which I could be okay with the indictment, so I’m not gonna spend too long navel-gazing to figure out if that’s my basis. I’m cool with the indictment.
Don’t much care about the indictment so far as putting somebody behind bars, because they most likely won’t. That said, the prospect of indictment starts the legal gears grinding, so we might fairly expect to learn more about these people, like who they are and who funds them, so on and so forth.
Downside is indictment lets them do the Perp Walk to the ATM, they will publicly bleat for money for their legal defense team, etc. And will get it, most likely. So, a little squishy on “support”, more like five points below “meh”.
Apparently due to a technicality concerning the indictment process:
AFAICT the dropping of charges in this criminal investigation of the anti-PP “activists” has no bearing on the pending civil suit filed by PP against them:
Is anyone ever found innocent of criminal charges?
IANAL, but isn’t that what a “Not Guilty” verdict is? If tried on criminal charges, and found not guilty, isn’t that effectively the same as being found innocent?
Technically, I suppose, a “Not Guilty” verdict means only that guilt wasn’t proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but convincing the jury of one’s innocence is one quite common way to achieve that outcome.
Certainly, having criminal charges dropped because of technical violations during the indictment process isn’t equivalent to being tried and found not guilty of the charges.
Not guilty is not the same as being found innocent. There is something that is called a finding of factual innocence. In that instance, records of arrest and prosecution would typically be sealed and destroyed limiting the circumstance that such events would be discovered via background check, etc. This type of finding can vary by state but does exist in my state of CA.
“Not Guilty” doesn’t me “they definitely didn’t do it”. It means “we haven’t found enough to prove they did do it/what we have that proves they did do it cannot be accepted in court”. There *should *be a separate verdict for “no, really, they couldn’t possibly have done it/we have factual proof somebody else did it” but then there should be beer, chocolate and ponies as well.
Chocolate beer ponies? Are those like ponies made out of chocolate flavored beer.
- Not guilty - they didn’t do it
- Not guilty - they might have done it, but the evidence wasn’t sufficient to convince a jury (see O.J. Simpson)
- Not guilty - we did something wrong procedurally, so even though they might be guilty as hell for having 20 lbs of cocaine in the back of their car, the chain of custody on the evidence was so screwed up, they are going to walk.
It was a christian terrorist attack. PP won. The facts are quite clear.
Hah! Facts! I remember when people cared about those, in the long-long ago…
Yet another case of why allowing fuckups to kill cases is bad. Someone has a case you don’t to prosecute, just make sure that something gets fucked up along the way.
Punish the people who fucked up, but still give a shit about justice and prosecute the offender.
Can’t it be presented to a new grand jury? I get dropping the charges concerning offering to buy human organs, nobody believes that they really intended to make such a purchase; but the other charge was dismissed due to a technicality, so why wouldn’t the prosecutor try again? I’m nearly certain that double jeopardy isn’t relevant here.
Double jeopardy attaches once the jury is seated. ISTM that the charges were dropped during the pretrial phase, though that’s not entirely clear from the article. So no double jeopardy problem. There may now be a statute of limitations problem.
From what the article says, it sounds like they were dropped due to a technicality involving the grand jury, so I was assuming it was pretrial, but you may be right that it’s not clear.
I don’t think either side comes out of this smelling of roses. Best to let bygones be bygones.
Both sides are equal? How so?
It’s unclear to me that PP did anything even slightly improper, possibly because I’m not easily grossed out by the idea of scientific research.