It’s surprising that a detective would type “prove beyond a reasonable doubt” when we’re talking about the minimum evidence necessary to arrest someone. If you know that for charges, it’s not necessary to meet that burden, that’s cool. But it certainly seemed like you were muddying the issue by using that terminology.
(bolding mine)
I agree with this, with the caveat that sometimes what a jury is believes is not necessarily what is believable in the absolute sense.
I imagine a police detective doesn’t like to get yelled at by his boss. Which is what I would expect to happen if you went and arrested everyone who you had probable cause to arrest but had nothing approaching a chance of getting a conviction. I learned most of my Law Enforcement from Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, and Barney Miller, but I still think it seems pretty likely investigators who are in the business of making arrests on flimsy evidence get bitched at pretty quickly since you’re essentially dropping unwinnable piles of shit on the prosecutor’s desk.
“Believable in the absolute sense” is a meaningless nonsense phrase. You just mean that sometimes juries reach decisions that you don’t agree with. But juries always have info you don’t have, and you have info the judge has ruled the jury shouldn’t have, so your opinion of a jury’s verdict is meaningless.
Also, your reaction here avows why “racism” will never go away. There is always someone willing to argue that the whole situation would be handled differently if the races were reversed (despite their lack of evidence for that position).
I can imagine this too, but my definition of “flimsy evidence” would be hearsay or maybe one fingerprint that is a 45% match to the suspect’s or something like that. Something flimsier than an admission of killing plus no evidence of provocation by the kid in addition to the guy having a prior history of violence. But if they say it’s flimsy, I guess it is flimsy.
[bold added]
How do you know they have no evidence of that? All I’ve seen here are news accounts that are rather short of specifics. The cops rarely, if ever, tell the reporters everything they have, so I see no reason why I should assume you or I have all the facts, here. Additionally, the guy’s prior history, while reason to suspect his story, isn’t sufficient reason to reject it. That takes actual on-scene evidence that it’s false. The news accounts give no indication of that.
It’s good to know all I have to do to get away with murder is make sure I bloody my nose before the cops arrive and then admit I did it.
Really, I’m having a hard time imagining that if the kid had shot the neighborhood watch guy, we’d even be having this discussion.
This case is weird to me. Intellectually I understand what’s happening, but my gut doesn’t.
How can you ever determine or judge if someone genuinely feared for his life–even when there are witnesses? It’s a totally subjective proposition. Someone might just yell, “Fuck you!” at me, and even if I’m standing next to some other people who aren’t particularly concerned about it, I can construe it as a genuine threat. Who’s to say that I didn’t genuinely fear for my life? It’s even more pointless when a person is alone. I can perceive anything I want as a genuine threat, so that qualification seems pointless to me. So if the Neighborhood Watch guy tells police that he “genuinely feared” for his life, I don’t see how they can give it much weight unless there is some other collaborating evidence that the kid did something to deserve getting killed. That’s what the police haven’t announced, yet, so naturally people are getting skeptical. Was the kid a “genuine” threat simply be being there?
I’m assuming if there were signs of a scuffle on the shooter there was evidence of the same on the deceased (abrasions on the hands, things of that nature.)
If you tell the cops someone was attacking you and you had to shoot them to defend your life, and there is no sign of a struggle on that other person they’re going to ask you a lot of questions you’ll need to be able to answer in the heat of the moment without contradicting anything in the physical evidence.
If you see a guy walking toward you on a deserted street, and you bloody your own nose, then walk up to the guy and shoot him at point blank, and tell the police he was trying to mug you there is actually quite a good chance that would work. Assuming you can keep a straight story with the police.
The reason this doesn’t happen very often is really think about it, how many people want to kill random people they’ve never met before on a regular basis? The number of people who want to go out and do that for no good reason is massively inflated by television, in real life it’s very rare. Since most murders happen between people who know each other and for specific reasons, this tactic wouldn’t get you off on most murders. “Yeah officer, my wife who was sleeping around tried to mug me, as you can see from my bloody nose, so I shot her in fear for my life.” Just wouldn’t work.
He hasn’t gotten away with anything, yet. He hasn’t gotten away with anything until the cops close their investigation without charging him.
The sort of “immediate arrest” you seem to be advocating, here, is exactly the type of overreaction that is loudly protested when the races of shooter/victim are reversed. If the situation were reversed, and the kid had been arrested immediately, people would have been complaining that he was being assumed “guilty until proven innocent”.
You’re looking at it from the wrong perspective. The neighborhood watch guy doesn’t have to prove that he genuinely feared for his life; the State has to prove that in his situation a reasonable actor would not have genuinely feared for his life. Since the State’s only information about the situation is the shooter’s word and the physical evidence, unless the shooter has inconsistent stories or stories that don’t match the physical evidence the State has nothing with which to counter his defense. If you have a defense that isn’t necessarily supported by anything other than the defendant’s word, but a prosecution that has no evidence to go on in our legal system that’s going to split for the defense every time. It isn’t a balance system, it’s weighted very heavily in favor of the defendant.
The State has to prove its case. The State has to prove a lot of stuff with any type of criminal homicide, be it murder, manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide or etc that it needs evidence for, and in this case the only evidence is the physical evidence and the shooter’s word. We don’t know what either of those are, but if the physical evidence is inconclusive it won’t sustain a criminal homicide conviction without something else (like a motive, or the shooter’s story indicating some criminal act.)
Actually, people don’t protest things that are this blatant. They protest when people are snatched off the street for simply fitting a profile, and then charged for crimes based on circumstantial evidence. And they protest when young kids are tried as adults. But they don’t say a peep when a teenager shoots an unarmed person in broad daylight and openly admits to it. At least, I’ve never heard of this happening. Have you?
Not in my jurisdiction. In mine, if they have PC, they file and let it get worked out in court. This leads to them filing charges when there are no witnesses to a crime–I defended one recently where a lady heard a crash, went outside, and saw her car windows were broken. A guy nearby who was completely unidentified told the woman that my client did it. Charges were filed against my client, and we went through several court dates before the prosecutor finally admitted that he could not make the case and dismissed it.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde;14861321The State has to prove its case. The State has to prove a lot of stuff with any type of criminal homicide, be it murder, manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide or etc that it needs evidence for, and in this case the only evidence is the physical evidence and the shooter’s word. We don’t know what either of those are, but if the physical evidence is inconclusive it won’t sustain a criminal homicide conviction without something else (like a motive, or the shooter’s story indicating some criminal act.)[/QUOTE]
I agree, but you’re not giving the prosecution much credit here. The man admits to killing the kid. Whether they charge the guy is not entirely a cut-and-dried, text-book, objectively-determined decision. It’s a value judgement, and different prosecutors in different communities are going to come to the decision in different ways, for different reasons. This is the component of criminal justice that gets ignored all too often in threads here. Prosecutors’ offices aren’t like identical computers running the exact same algorithms that always produce the exact same results, given the same circumstances. And this isn’t to say that they can just do whatever they want, because eventually egregious improprieties or bad judgement come to public attention. It’s just to say that prosecutors’ offices are still human and political operations, contextualized by their localities, reflecting to some degree the values thereof.
I don’t think anyone thinks the criminal justice system is a computer where everything gets handled the same. I would imagine some of the significant inputs that alter the outcome are exactly the things I’ve repeatedly said we do not know: the statements collected from the shooter, and the physical evidence. Obviously those statements are important both in what they say and how they were said, and law enforcement and prosecutors will use subtle clues like tone of voice and overall “feel” for a person they are interviewing in making decisions.
I don’t think anyone will deny there is more to it than that, but in every jurisdiction in the country I can tell you that if they have no evidence at all and this guy didn’t incriminate himself in regard to committing a crime I don’t know how he could possibly be convicted–and if he was, I don’t know how it wouldn’t be a miscarriage of justice likely to be overturned on appeal. (Note I said if they have no evidence against him, which is what the local police chief is essentially indicating when he says they can’t establish probable cause.)
It should be noted that is what the police chief point blank said, not that he didn’t think they had enough for a conviction on reasonable doubt grounds, but that he didn’t have even probable cause for an arrest. That should tell you that the State isn’t standing on firm ground in regards to any potential evidence against this guy, when the local chief police officer says that.
No, all you have to do is harrass someone because they look ‘suspicious’, tackle them when they try to run away, take a few wallops to the head when they fight back, and then shoot them. As long as there’s no evidence to contradict your claim of self-defense, it would be unreasonable for you to be arrested. As God as my witness, I am not making this up.
That is not what I said. This is what I said:
“Same as with anything else, probable cause to arrest and beyond a reasonable doubt to convict. But in the real world a prosecutor will not proceed if he does not think he can get a conviction.”
Then you:
“If investigators had to find evidence to contradict these claims everytime they were made, few people would be arrested for murder.”
Which I found ridiculous. So I said:
"Bolding mine. So you think that they don’t have to find evidence to refute a defendent’s claims? You do realize the burden of proof lies with the prosecution?
Yes, every time that a claim of self defense is made and the prosecution presses charges they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was not self defense. How else do you think it works?"
I never confused the two terms. In answering the question about the burden of proof in such cases I was very clear, PC for arrest and beyond a reasonable doubt for conviction. When you made an unreasonable statement about the prosecution not needing to address the issue of self defense I replied that they had to refute the claim beyond a reasonable doubt to get a conviction.
Not so much my boss. For serious crimes we work closely with the prosecutor’s office. Sometimes we take the lead, sometimes they do. Always before trying to get a warrant and pressing charges we have to run it by the Assistant Prosecutor assigned to our area. Then of course it has to be approved by a judge. The judge only cares if there is probable cause. The AP must take into account if it can be won with the evidence on hand and what can possibly be discovered. Sometimes you roll the dice with what you have and hope its enough. Sometimes you can’t proceed.
Must not be a very busy jurisdiction. For something to go to trial here in county court it will take 2 years or more. They are not interested in filling the docket with cases they can’t win. Some high profile cases will get heard earlier if neither side looks to delay it. For routine cases, back of the line.
Although the basic ideas behind such procedures are the same, how they are carried out differs greatly between jurisdictions. In this case it appears that it will be turned over to the states attorney who will make the final determination if charges will be filed.
Just in my opinion I would have tried my hardest to get some kind of charge on him but I don’t know what evidence they have or what kind of a statement the guy gave them. With no witnesses and little evidence it would be a hard case to move forward with.
(bolding mine so you know exactly what part of your sentence is causing my forehead vein to pulsate.)
We aren’t talking about what the prosecution needs to do to get a conviction. We are talking what evidence is needed to press charges against the guy. I mean, look at the thread title if you’re in doubt about this.
Never at any in point in this discussion have I argued that the prosecution doesn’t have to refute the self-defense claim. Of course they do if they expect to get a conviction. Arrests aren’t held to the same standard, though.
I don’t think this is right.
they have proof the kid is dead.
They have proof the neighbourhood watch guy killed him.
Doesn’t “self defence” require some form of “proof” that there was fear for life? Otherwise I could walk up to anyone and kill them with impunity.
Quoting from here: http://www.alljujitsu.com/self-defense-law.html
In the United States legal system, under self defense law, the statutes for the defense of self-defense allows a person charged with injury to another to excuse or justify his actions as reasonable force used in their own defense, or the defense of others.
Seems to be saying that the state charges the guy with whatever crime they think is appropriate, then it’s up to the jury to decide whether or not self defence is an appropriate course of action.
Strikes me as a much more resonable interpretation than “if he says it was self defence no crime has been committed”
or
“the state has to prove it WASN’T self defence”