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Ahmaud Arbery murder trial


MiloMorai

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47 minutes ago, rmgill said:

Why does one NEED a prior history of conducting citizen's arrest (it doesn't need scare quotes because that was an actual thing). 

Except it wasn't an actual thing, hence the quotes.  The only people that believe it was citizen's arrest are the three murderers and, those that that want to excuse such vigilante acts.

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To be clear. What's vigilante act? Because if you go according to the dictionary meaning it means those that go and punish criminals for their actions in an extra legal way.

Why is catching a criminal considered vigilantism? If a cop shoots a suspect is that vigilantism? Does the shooting itself constitute punishment? 

I'm used to seeing this sort of slapdash use of English by some but not you Dave. 

To put it differently, why is THIS killing absent probable case a good judgement vs the lack of charges for the officers who killed Willie Jackson? I use that as a case that I am very familiar with AND which had miss-apprehension by the arresting individuals and which resulted in the death of someone not shown to have been committing any crime or where there was any reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime, let alone probable cause for an arrest. 

Note, Andrew Branca notes that there are some serious issues with this case and I expect there will be several things that subject this case to appeal. 

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1 hour ago, rmgill said:

To be clear. What's vigilante act? Because if you go according to the dictionary meaning it means those that go and punish criminals for their actions in an extra legal way.

Why is catching a criminal considered vigilantism? If a cop shoots a suspect is that vigilantism? Does the shooting itself constitute punishment? 

I'm used to seeing this sort of slapdash use of English by some but not you Dave. 

To put it differently, why is THIS killing absent probable case a good judgement vs the lack of charges for the officers who killed Willie Jackson? I use that as a case that I am very familiar with AND which had miss-apprehension by the arresting individuals and which resulted in the death of someone not shown to have been committing any crime or where there was any reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime, let alone probable cause for an arrest. 

Note, Andrew Branca notes that there are some serious issues with this case and I expect there will be several things that subject this case to appeal. 

That is strange fruit you are talking about here.

 

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For once I'm with Ryan on the point that specific words have specific meaning. Redefining the meaning of words is usually not helpful, except for those who want to obfuscate.

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'Vigilantism' comes from 'Vigilance Committees' where citizens would organize to restore order in the absence of effective civil authority.  Like 'militia' it has been rather badly distorted for political purposes.

I'm at my sister's house for Thanksgiving, and the consensus here is that the verdict was an attempt to appease The Black Mob.

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42 minutes ago, shep854 said:

'Vigilantism' comes from 'Vigilance Committees' where citizens would organize to restore order in the absence of effective civil authority.  Like 'militia' it has been rather badly distorted for political purposes.

I'm at my sister's house for Thanksgiving, and the consensus here is that the verdict was an attempt to appease The Black Mob.

Just because it's the politically convenient verdict doesn't mean it's wrong.

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4 minutes ago, Skywalkre said:

How in the world does anyone not see this as the right and just outcome?  :blink:

No f*cking idea.  Take the racial overtones out of it (which is pretty hard since its a black jogger being hunted by armed white guys in a truck in Georgia) and you have a guy killed because he was fleeing from three strangers with handguns and shotguns chasing him.  Not uniformed police officers but just three guys in civilian dress.  Anybody who didn't flee would be an idiot.  

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1 hour ago, shep854 said:

'Vigilantism' comes from 'Vigilance Committees' where citizens would organize to restore order in the absence of effective civil authority.  Like 'militia' it has been rather badly distorted for political purposes.

I'm at my sister's house for Thanksgiving, and the consensus here is that the verdict was an attempt to appease The Black Mob.

I'm really having a problem wrapping my head around the fact that there are people who believe it is justifiable to hunt somebody down with firearms and then claim self-defense as they kill the hunted who has turned to defend himself against his hunters.  

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2 minutes ago, DKTanker said:

I'm really having a problem wrapping my head around the fact that there are people who believe it is justifiable to hunt somebody down with firearms and then claim self-defense as they kill the hunted who has turned to defend himself against his hunters.  

I agree with you; just to be clear, I was not trying to defend their actions.

Edited by shep854
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Just now, shep854 said:

I agree with you; I was not trying to defend their actions.

I know from your other posts that you do.  My observation was more generally oriented, not specific to your post.  That said, there are a few people here abouts that might accept an invitation to explain how the hunted can be justifiable killed should the hunted not accept being hunted.

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3 hours ago, R011 said:

Just because it's the politically convenient verdict doesn't mean it's wrong.

Of course not. But delving into the specific meaning of the terms AND the law and understanding it does cast the doubt. The interpretation of the statute against the defendants is itself an issue. 

Here's the statute:

Quote

 

GA §17-4-60 Grounds for arrest

GA – Official Code of Georgia Annotated

TITLE 17. CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

CHAPTER 4. ARREST OF PERSONS

ARTICLE 4. ARREST BY PRIVATE PERSONS

§17-4-60. Grounds for arrest

A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.

 


This is what Andrew Branca says on the statute:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/11/arbery-case-trial-judge-walmsley-drops-the-ball-on-ambiguous-citizens-arrest-law/

Quote

Well, more accurately, I’ll cover the small portion of that instruction that’s the part that really matters here—the instruction on citizen’s arrest, §17-4-60. Grounds for arrest.  And that instruction was an exercise in patent professional failure of duty on the part of Judge Walmsley.

This entire case essentially hinges on the question of the underlying citizen’s arrests.  If the effort to make a citizen’s arrest of Ahmaud Arbery was lawful, then everything that follows was likely also lawful.

Conversely, if the effort to make a citizen’s arrest of Arbery was unlawful, then everything that follow was also likely unlawful.

And both sides fully understand this.  In particular, ADA Linda Dunikoski is fully aware that if she loses the jury on the question of citizen’s arrest, she loses the trial entirely.

Naturally, then it’s in her interest to have the citizen’s arrest statute interpreted as narrowly as possible—and there’s definitely room for interpretation in this statute that was first made law back around the Civil War, and makes use of legal terms of art that likely don’t mean today what they might have meant back in the day.

Certainly, nobody drafting a citizen’s arrest statute today would construct it as this one is constructed.

The amount of ambiguity in the statute is really remarkable if only because of the statute’s brevity—it is only two sentences long.  Those two sentences are:

A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.

My own reading of that statute, applying normal rules of statutory construction, is that the two sentences present two different scenarios for a citizen’s arrest.  The second sentence refers explicitly to a felony scenario and sets out certain requirements for that scenario that differ from the requirements set out in the first sentence.  My reading is that the first sentence is therefore contemplating the alternative criminal scenario, the non-felony, the misdemeanor.

So, if the citizen’s arrest is being made for a serious felony, like murder, the person making the arrest is required to have reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion, which Judge Walmsley is interpreting as probable cause.  Fair enough.

If the citizen’s arrest is being made merely for a misdemeanor, however, then probable cause is not enough.  After all, an arrest is a real burden on a person’s personal liberty, and ought not be done lightly

Before we’ll allow a citizen’s arrest for a relatively minor crime, then—imagine shoplifting, for example—we’ll require more than just probable cause, we’ll require that the offense was committed in the presence of the person making the arrest, or that they have immediate knowledge of the offense (perhaps observed from a distance, for example).

So, my reading of this citizen’s arrest statute is that the first sentence refers to arrests premised on a misdemeanor offense, and the second sentence refers to arrests premised on a felony offense.

ADA Dunikoski urges a different reading of this statute. She argues that the first sentence is supposed to apply to all citizen’s arrests, whether for misdemeanor or felony offenses, such that any citizen’s arrest requires that the offense be committed in the presence of or with the immediate knowledge of the person making the arrest.  The second sentence then adds additional conditions—the probable cause requirement—that must be met in the case of felony arrests.

This construction makes no sense to me, if only from a public policy perspective.  Why? Because it makes it easier to make a citizen’s arrest, to constrain a person’s liberty if they’ve merely committed a misdemeanor like shoplifting than if they’ve committed a heinous felony like murder.  That doesn’t make sense to me.

In addition, if we’re supposed to read in the “presence/immediate knowledge” into the second sentence, then the “probable cause” language in the second sentence serves no purpose.

If the offense occurred in your presence or with your immediate knowledge you have a degree of certainty that’s vastly greater than mere probable cause—you know for certain that the offense happened.  Probable cause is merely a probability that it happened. That’s less than certainty.

It’s like saying that before you can make any arrest you have to be 100% certain of the offense, but before you can make a felony arrest you also have to be 51% certain. That makes no sense.

So, as you might expect, I favor my reading of the Georgia citizen’s arrest statute over the reading that ADA Dunikoski urges.

In any case, however, at the end of the day, the question of how this law is to be applied in this criminal trial is not up to me, and it’s not up to ADA Dunikoski

And most definitely of all, it’s absolutely not up to the jury, whose job is to be the finder of fact, to work through any ambiguity of evidence—not to work through the ambiguity of law.

The person in charge of the law in a trial is the judge—in this case, Judge Timothy Walmsley.  It is his duty to decide how the law is to be applied to the facts as the jury determines those facts to be proven or not proven.

And this Judge Walmsley abjectly failed to do.  And in a trial with three defendants looking at life in prison, that’s a contemptible professional failure.

Remember—the key issue is whether the two sentences in the citizen’s arrest statute are intended to be melded together so that both apply to all arrests, or whether the conditions of the first sentence refer to misdemeanor arrests and the conditions of the second sentence refer to felony arrests.

That’s the fundamental issue that Judge Walmsley needed to resolve.

And he did not.

 

Also, I have spoken about the rule of interpretation of statutes. My own limited legal observations put it into something related to a specific case, that's where my own attorney cited, but it's a larger general rule called the Rule of Lenity. There area  LOT of citations of this rule in state to federal courts. It also goes back to English Common Law as a concept.
More citations and source points here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_lenity

From https://definitions.uslegal.com/r/rule-of-lenity/

Quote

Rule of Lenity is a judicial doctrine requiring that those ambiguities in a criminal statute relating to prohibition and penalties be resolved in favor of the defendant if it is not contrary to legislative intent. It embodies a presupposition of law to resolve doubts in the enforcement of a penal code against the imposition of a harsher punishment. The courts while construing an ambiguous criminal statute that sets out multiple or inconsistent punishments should resolve the ambiguity in favor of the more lenient punishment.

 

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3 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

How in the world does anyone not see this as the right and just outcome?  :blink:

Because we don't convict based on what the press says about a case and what the left wants it to be. 

Because understanding where the dividing line between duly appointed powers of the state to enforce laws and the rights of the citizens to do same is a very murky thing. More so collectivists, as a rule, argue that there should be NO encroachment by citizens into the state's purview at all. 

With crime being what it is in the US, when you see a crime occurring, are you supposed to stand there and suck your thumb or are you supposed to help your fellow man out and stop the criminals? 

We already know what much of the world thinks of this. This even goes as far as the supremacy of the state and that citizens shall not oppose it's enforcers at all. At least in the US there is a somewhat murky line where citizens CAN defend themselves from untoward actions by the state's enforcers of law if they are themselves acting outside of the law. 
 

Edited by rmgill
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2 hours ago, DKTanker said:

I know from your other posts that you do.  My observation was more generally oriented, not specific to your post.  That said, there are a few people here abouts that might accept an invitation to explain how the hunted can be justifiable killed should the hunted not accept being hunted.

See, you're still doing it. "The Hunted". We got the same language with the Zimmerman Trial. And with the Rittenhouse Trial. And with just about every other bloody case that has a bit of a whiff of the woke sniffing around looking for nuggets of tofu to chew on. 

Where do you think the line between citizens arrest powers and the state's powers in this regard lie? 

Do you think citizens have an interest or a role at all in stopping or pursuing criminals that they witness? 

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3 hours ago, nitflegal said:

No f*cking idea.  Take the racial overtones out of it (which is pretty hard since its a black jogger being hunted by armed white guys in a truck in Georgia) and you have a guy killed because he was fleeing from three strangers with handguns and shotguns chasing him.  Not uniformed police officers but just three guys in civilian dress.  Anybody who didn't flee would be an idiot.  

But this argument is the same with the Farrakhan's, et al in the  black community vis a vis cops in general. 'Pookie ran because he knows that cops will kill him'.

Hell, my own friend had this happen several times. Once with the woman showing up a week later with an attorney and a minister to accuse him of cursing her out and acting exceedingly unprofessional (racist language, etc). Just so happens he still had the dash cam audio and her lawyer turned an odd shade of pale when he saw he had no case AND was skirting close to a client who was filing false reports. 

We've had decades of folks telling blacks that Whitey will kill you, cops or otherwise. The hard fact is that it's not whitey or cops who kill all the black teens/tweens. It's other black teens/tweens. But that's not the narrative. 

All this political/culture stuff is related. Look at the poem that's cited in Lucky's post over here. The left want's a race war. Even liberals are starting to notice this and worry.


More so, there's the aspect that an criminal fleeing a crime scene would also flee. How do you tell the difference? 

Edited by rmgill
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The guy that fired and killed him was a retired Sheriff’s Deputy or something. The homeowner had complained to the police about Arbery and received a written reply that you don’t need to call us, there is a retired deputy in the neighborhood you can just talk to him. I was surprised that he was convicted. 
 

  He knew Arbery from a felony investigation. Don’t know if was the felony Arbery was convicted of (bringing a gun to a high school basketball game) but he probably knew Arbery to be a felon who was once armed. 

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21 minutes ago, rmgill said:

See, you're still doing it. "The Hunted". We got the same language with the Zimmerman Trial. And with the Rittenhouse Trial. And with just about every other bloody case that has a bit of a whiff of the woke sniffing around looking for nuggets of tofu to chew on. 

Where do you think the line between citizens arrest powers and the state's powers in this regard lie? 

Do you think citizens have an interest or a role at all in stopping or pursuing criminals that they witness? 

I'm doing it again?  I've asked one simple question, which not only haven't you answered, but you have sought to muddy the waters with bullshit.  Just answer the question as posed, Explain how the hunted can be justifiable killed should the hunted not accept being hunted.
Before you answer let's note that the three hunters did not witness any crime being committed by their prey, they merely suspected the black man of being a criminal because he fit the general description of someone suspected of criminal activity.  The general description being, "a black male."

After you answer, were you also a fan of the ATF invading the Branch Davidian compound, because suspected criminal activity, when they could easily, and without bloodshed, have arrested David Koresh while he was in town shopping?

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19 minutes ago, Detonable said:

The guy that fired and killed him was a retired Sheriff’s Deputy or something. The homeowner had complained to the police about Arbery and received a written reply that you don’t need to call us, there is a retired deputy in the neighborhood you can just talk to him. I was surprised that he was convicted. 
 

  He knew Arbery from a felony investigation. Don’t know if was the felony Arbery was convicted of (bringing a gun to a high school basketball game) but he probably knew Arbery to be a felon who was once armed. 

It was the old man who was the ex cop, not the son, who fired the shotgun. Would need to check but old man was forced to retire.

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9 minutes ago, DKTanker said:

I'm doing it again?  I've asked one simple question, which not only haven't you answered, but you have sought to muddy the waters with bullshit.  Just answer the question as posed, Explain how the hunted can be justifiable killed should the hunted not accept being hunted.

If the hunted are acting in criminal capacities, they don't get to resist the arrest and they can't just attack the person because they feel the 'hunting' is unwarranted. 

Same as here. This is in Athens Georgia iinm. Similar set of rules. 

9 minutes ago, DKTanker said:


Before you answer let's note that the three hunters did not witness any crime being committed by their prey, they merely suspected the black man of being a criminal because he fit the general description of someone suspected of criminal activity.  The general description being, "a black male."


WRONG. One of the neighbors saw him coming out of his home and saw Arbery coming out of the house under construction. Then Apparently there was something of a hue and cry about it. 

 

 

 

 

9 minutes ago, DKTanker said:

After you answer, were you also a fan of the ATF invading the Branch Davidian compound, because suspected criminal activity, when they could easily, and without bloodshed, have arrested David Koresh while he was in town shopping?

Yes. There's a good argument to be made about the gun battle at the door, the weeks long siege and the resulting death of 50 men women and children over unpaid taxes in increment's a $200 as compared to someone suspected of stealing property and fighting back from being stopped. 

As to the hunted fighting back...How does this fit?

One is an encounter with two officers suspecting him for dealing. The other is his arrest for shoplifting a TV at the local Walmart. 
 

 

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9 minutes ago, MiloMorai said:

It was the old man who was the ex cop, not the son, who fired the shotgun. Would need to check but old man was forced to retire.

37 years a cop. He was forced to quit/fired for not keeping up with required training. 

I can easily see him NOT mentally adjusting to the differences in his lawful arrest powers as a cop vs as a non-cop. 

Edited by rmgill
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1 hour ago, rmgill said:

Of course not. But delving into the specific meaning of the terms AND the law and understanding it does cast the doubt. The interpretation of the statute against the defendants is itself an issue. 

Here's the statute:


This is what Andrew Branca says on the statute:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/11/arbery-case-trial-judge-walmsley-drops-the-ball-on-ambiguous-citizens-arrest-law/

Also, I have spoken about the rule of interpretation of statutes. My own limited legal observations put it into something related to a specific case, that's where my own attorney cited, but it's a larger general rule called the Rule of Lenity. There area  LOT of citations of this rule in state to federal courts. It also goes back to English Common Law as a concept.
More citations and source points here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_lenity

From https://definitions.uslegal.com/r/rule-of-lenity/

 

See the Colion Noir video already posted.  No crime was committed in their presence.  They thus had no right or authority to detain him let alone do so at gunpoint.

Edited by R011
Replaced "felony" with "crime".
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1 hour ago, rmgill said:

But this argument is the same with the Farrakhan's, et al in the  black community vis a vis cops in general. 'Pookie ran because he knows that cops will kill him'.

Hell, my own friend had this happen several times. Once with the woman showing up a week later with an attorney and a minister to accuse him of cursing her out and acting exceedingly unprofessional (racist language, etc). Just so happens he still had the dash cam audio and her lawyer turned an odd shade of pale when he saw he had no case AND was skirting close to a client who was filing false reports. 

We've had decades of folks telling blacks that Whitey will kill you, cops or otherwise. The hard fact is that it's not whitey or cops who kill all the black teens/tweens. It's other black teens/tweens. But that's not the narrative. 

All this political/culture stuff is related. Look at the poem that's cited in Lucky's post over here. The left want's a race war. Even liberals are starting to notice this and worry.


More so, there's the aspect that an criminal fleeing a crime scene would also flee. How do you tell the difference? 

They were not in uniform, they were not driving a police car, and they had no obvious identification as anything besides people on the street.  If I am approached by a man in a police uniform with a drawn weapon I will comply.  If they are in jeans and a T-shirt and hop out of a pickup truck I have taken the risk and beat feet (once at least).  Sure, it could be a dirtbag in a fake uniform but the odds are already against me with a drawn firearm so I'll take that risk and pray he's a real cop.  There is no way in hell I am putting myself at the mercy of a no-name with a firearm if I have any chance to bolt.  That's not racial, that's just common sense.

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12 minutes ago, nitflegal said:

They were not in uniform, they were not driving a police car, and they had no obvious identification as anything besides people on the street.  If I am approached by a man in a police uniform with a drawn weapon I will comply.  If they are in jeans and a T-shirt and hop out of a pickup truck I have taken the risk and beat feet (once at least).  Sure, it could be a dirtbag in a fake uniform but the odds are already against me with a drawn firearm so I'll take that risk and pray he's a real cop.  There is no way in hell I am putting myself at the mercy of a no-name with a firearm if I have any chance to bolt.  That's not racial, that's just common sense.

At the very least, one would expect undercover/plainclothes cops to identoify themselves as police.  Three guys with guns chasing after me?  I'd either run or fight myself.

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1 hour ago, rmgill said:

If the hunted are acting in criminal capacities, they don't get to resist the arrest and they can't just attack the person because they feel the 'hunting' is unwarranted. 

WRONG. One of the neighbors saw him coming out of his home and saw Arbery coming out of the house under construction. Then Apparently there was something of a hue and cry about it. 

 

 

Yes. There's a good argument to be made about the gun battle at the door, the weeks long siege and the resulting death of 50 men women and children over unpaid taxes in increment's a $200 as compared to someone suspected of stealing property and fighting back from being stopped. 

As to the hunted fighting back...How does this fit?

One is an encounter with two officers suspecting him for dealing. The other is his arrest for shoplifting a TV at the local Walmart. 
 

 

One of the neighbors saw a person coming out of a house under construction.  That is NOT a crime, and even it tickles at the edges of being criminal, it certainly doesn't rise to the level of being a capital offense.

Regarding the BD compound, I'm specifically talking about the initial invasion by ATF, when they were serving their warrant on Koresh for the weapons charge.  Good shoots by all sides would you say?  Could have taken Koresh while in town, the ATF had been following him, but a few dead bodies to fertilize the fields, it's all good.  Isn't that about where you're at?

We're just going to have agree to disagree about this great sport of taking lives.  

Edited by DKTanker
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