What a lovely bunch of statists we have here (hi Steophan!)

[Steophan]

@iiandyiiii

I know of no places in which the witness testimony of friends/relatives of the deceased is considered irrelevant for cases in which self-defense is declared, as you have proposed in other threads.

In what context?

[iiandyiiii]

@Steophan

In what context?

In the discussion about the Jordan Davis shooting. You said that the testimony of his friends in the car should have been disregarded by the jury. To me, disregarding the testimony of witnesses is nuts, unless the jury decides they think the witnesses were lying. Witness testimony isn’t the end-all be-all of justice, but it can definitely be a piece of the puzzle, and it should be up to the jury to determine if they find a witness credible or not.

[Steophan]

@asahi

I get what you’re saying and in theory there’s nothing fallacious about what you’ve written. I think what people are protesting is that the reality seems to be quite different than the principle. It seems that it’s too easy for officers to kill civilians without any sort of repercussions other than being fired from their jobs. I have no doubt that a discharge from duties as an officer to a true blue officer is a stinging rebuke both personally and professionally. But it’s still not justice in the eyes of many people, particularly those living in communities that have been marginalized economically and politically. Do you understand that part of it at least?

I understand that people feel that way, and why. But the answer is not to remove the legal protections from the police, or anyone else - it’s to ensure that people in disadvantaged places are able to exercise their rights as well.

One thing that came out of the Ferguson shooting was that turnout for elections in that region was something like 10%, and that because of that people from the outside were able to run the local authorities. That’s a community disenfranchising itself, for whatever reason, and it would be possible for that community to take control of its authorities and police department. Whether that would change anything I don’t know, but it would mean the responsibility, and ability, would be with the people affected.

[Steophan]

@iiandyiiii

In the discussion about the Jordan Davis shooting. You said that the testimony of his friends in the car should have been disregarded by the jury. To me, disregarding the testimony of witnesses is nuts, unless the jury decides they think the witnesses were lying. Witness testimony isn’t the end-all be-all of justice, but it can definitely be a piece of the puzzle, and it should be up to the jury to determine if they find a witness credible or not.

Depends on the testimony. Witness testimony is obviously useful to establish what actually happened, but less so to determine whether someone else should feel threatened. “We knew our friend wasn’t actually threatening, so anyone else should have known that” is not useful.

[iiandyiiii]

@Steophan

Depends on the testimony. Witness testimony is obviously useful to establish what actually happened, but less so to determine whether someone else should feel threatened. “We knew our friend wasn’t actually threatening, so anyone else should have known that” is not useful.

But it was about specific claims – Dunn (the shooter, ultimately convicted) said that Davis opened the door and pointed something that looked like a shotgun at him. Davis’s friends in the car said that Davis never did this. You said in the thread that the jury should have disregarded the witnesses’ testimony about this. The final jury obviously believed Davis’s friends and not Dunn, based on the ultimate verdict.

[k9bfriender]

@Steophan

That’s all irrelevant, and your implication that killing someone is a trivial act is ridiculous.

It may not be trivial to you or me, I’ve never killed anyone, and I assume that you have not either. Killing someone would be an odd thing for me to do. It would not be a trivial matter to me, or to you, I think.

There are those out there to whom killing is trivial, or even desired. Then there are those to whom killing is necessary for their criminal enterprises.

We have laws to prevent these people from getting away with it any more than we have to.

And, to your point, it is ridiculous that you feel that it is more trivial to be dead, or have a family member killed, than to have killed.

It’s too much of an inconvenience, just as it’s too much of an inconvenience in any other situation when someone is accused of a crime.

How much of an inconvenience is it that your husband isn’t going to come home because some twitchy idiot though his cellphone looked dangerous?

So what? Better that than convicting innocent people, who were forced to defend themselves.

So what? Removing the deterrence from murder could have a bit of unintended consequences.

That’s a separate issue, really, and one that should be addressed. People should obviously have equal access to justice. In practice though, in places with Stand Your Ground laws, it seems to be the poor that benefit from them, as they’re generally at more risk of violent crime.

I don’t see it as a separate issue. It is part of our justice system, and part and parcel of that has always been that the wealthy get better representation than the poor. This has been the case since we have had courts, and is not something that is going to be addressed any time soon.

Tell you what, we address and repair the inequalities in the justice system first, then we look at giving rich people more ways to get away with murder.

It’s probably also worth mentioning that the vast majority of defensive gun use does not result in death, or even injury. There’s over 2 million defensive gun uses in the US per year, and something like 16,000 murders. What you are suggesting just doesn’t happen to any significant degree,and should not be the basis of policy.

It’s not really worth mentioning, actually, as most of the defensive gun use statistics come from self reporting, so there is no accountability. There is no way of telling whether the numbers are correct even within an order of magnitude. What is worth mentioning is that, even in the self reporting of defensive gun use, where it is just the defendee’s word, many do not qualify as defensive use, but more intimidation, and many would be straight up illegal.