His belief, or the hypothetical white peoples’?
The white peoples’, that they could use his race as the basis for a reasonable belief that he was an imminent threat that justified use of deadly force in self-defense.
Not for the first time, I didn’t understand the brief when I read it, and having it explained made it worse.
Are there other laws that have been struck down because they didn’t define what “reasonable” meant? I read a lot about “reasonable doubt”, but I thought that no comprehensive definition beyond “what a reasonable person would think” existed, and that’s not very clarifying.
For the Goetz case to be precedent, does this lawyer have to point to some finding of the court that says “it is reasonable to be more afraid of a black person than a white one, all other things being equal”? Because I didn’t see anything like that in Human Action’s cite of the decision.
Regards,
Shodan
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No. Reasonableness is frequently undefined. By choosing not to define a word, the legislature is implicitly leaving the matter to the courts. Sometimes that presents “lack of notice” issues but for words which have already been defined to death that doesn’t matter.
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Even if the Goetze case stood for the proposition cited, it’s not controlling authority so it’s basically irrelevant. They’ll have to point to some Georgia precedent or controlling Federal precedent.
I can’t help but wonder whether this is intended to fail. Then the RC can point to its failure to motivate supporters to donate.
I expect a successful suit would get them more donations - especially since it would automatically be appealed.
Probably, but the success of this suit is pretty unlikely unless I’m really misreading it.
I shouldn’t have said that it was intended to fail. I meant that they don’t really care whether it succeeds. Otherwise they’d have found an effective way of going about attacking the law. This reads more like something they can reference in fundraising materials rather than a serious attempt to change the status quo.
I didn’t read it all because it is very poorly written and made me cringe. But to challenge a law as being facially unconstitutional, there must be NO situation where it could be constitutional. When I draft pleadings arguing that a law is unconstitutional I always add, “as applied to the Petitioner” because it relieves the heavy burden you have.
But from my understanding the crux of the argument is that “reasonable” is undefined and that 1) a person is unsure of what conduct he can engage in without getting killed by another citizen, and 2) there could possibly be equal protection violations by judging “reasonable” based upon race.
Well, the argument in #1 applies to penal situations where the government will throw you in jail for unknown conduct, and it doesn’t apply to conduct that merely given a citizen a defense to a crime. As far as it being a novel argument, as others have said, the law is replete with “reasonable man” definitions. The code can’t possibly list all behaviors that might be threatening, so it judges on a case by case basis. As far as #2: ifs and buts and candy and nuts. Until there is evidence that the law is being applied unequally, then it has no merit. And if it is being applied unequally, the remedy is to apply it equally, and not strike down the whole thing.
Never say never, but this Complaint is bullshit.