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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   42396 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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The bigger news than the style guide(which, however dumb and offensive in the moment, is baked in) is that they refer to it as a ‘killing’ and not a murder. Nobody thinks stabbing random people to death, unprovoked, on the bus, is good. Everyone agrees this is a murder. They just won’t say it.

I believe this is standard journalistic practice, in that it’s not technically a “murder” per se until someone is found guilty. The same way news outlets have to call people “suspects” and crimes “alleged” until a trial happens even if there’s obvious video of them committing the crime, it’s just accepted standard practice, nothing nefarious. It does result in somewhat silly outcomes at times, but I think the legalistic consistency is worthwhile for a non-tabloid outlet.

Edit: Just scrolled down and saw that @VoxelVexillologist already posted essentially this exact comment. Whoops.

While it's often sounds ridiculous, the New York Times was at least relatively consistent about this regarding the 2020 happening and AFAICT eyeballing search results they didn't start calling it a murder until after the trial.

Probably some opinion articles that got away with the improper terminology, and I suspect many other outlets are less consistent on this.

With the 2020 case you could argue there was a lot more conjecture around cause of death and liability

IIRC at least some journalistic style guides recommend against calling a death "murder" unless a trial court has ruled it to be such. Otherwise it's just spicy homicide "killing". There are ways to kill people that are merely manslaughter, and ways in which doing so with intent still not be considered a "murder" (self defense, the death penalty).

It's relevant that they also generally say "accused" for libel reasons even when the case is expected to be pretty open-and-shut.

And of course it isn't technically a murder if the killer is legally insane - which is the scenario most likely to be relevant here.

While this is true, if black schizophrenics are (hypothetically, I don’t know if they are) vastly more likely to aim their paranoia and rage at white people than at black people, that seems to blur matters somewhat.

“This person is possessed by unstoppable rage that makes him hurt people.”

And

“This person is possessed by an unstoppable rage that makes him hurt people AND a racist hatred of whites that means he goes after them specifically.”

Seem to hit quite differently. Like if Dexter had gone after Indians rather than other serial killers.

Well, yes, and many people here have done so. But given how many people rioted over thinking it was murder, I'm mildly impressed the NYT actually stuck to the principle on this one.

It's manslaughter, isn't it?

That's a different dimension than what's at play here, I think. Just from what I saw on the video, there's no way that that behavior counts as manslaughter, not murder. Manslaughter tends to be about unreasonable recklessness causing an unintended killing, not intent to kill causing an intended killing. The reason journalists don't call this "murder" is probably because, sans an actual conviction, they're opening themselves up to libel accusations. Sure, this video makes things pretty clear cut, but it's still a judgment call of whether this is truly clear-cut enough to declare as murder given that the justice system hasn't is probably something journalists and editors don't want to make. They could call it "alleged murder," which I think would be fine even if the guy hasn't been charged with murder.

We're not journalists publishing in news outlets, though, so we can call it murder all we want, and I'm pretty comfortable calling it first degree murder, based on the evidence I've seen.

Depends on the prosecutor but somebody said the feds are taking it up. If it stayed under NC law and I'm reading all the or's correctly, I think it could be first-degree murder because it involves a deadly weapon, or possibly second-degree murder under "such a reckless and wanton manner as to manifest a mind utterly without regard for human life and social duty and deliberately bent on mischief."

Manslaughter requires proving heat of passion and no malice.

I see, thanks. My understanding of the US criminal law was wrong. I thought the difference was in premeditation.

It varies by state, too, so there’s likely some where that has more emphasis. Though in my experience reading cases premeditation is one of those terms with quite different legal versus colloquial definitions, and likely flexible by prosecutorial and judicial effort as well.

What would be the justification for making this a federal matter?

In addition to what professorgerm posted (which is what they're currently using), there's also the "Emmet Till Anti-Lynching Act" (18 USC 849(a)(5)), which doesn't provide for death but does provide for 30 years for any racially motivated murder.

Let's see!

A federal criminal complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in Charlotte today, charging Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr., 34, with a federal crime in connection with the fatal attack of Iryna Zarutska on the city’s light rail system. Brown is charged with one count of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system.

Wait, what?

18 USC 1992:

(7)commits an act, including the use of a dangerous weapon, with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury to any person who is on property described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (4);

(4)(B)garage, terminal, structure, track, electromagnetic guideway, supply, or facility used in the operation of, or in support of the operation of, a mass transportation vehicle, and with intent to, or knowing or having reason to know,1 such activity would likely, derail, disable, or wreck a mass transportation vehicle used, operated, or employed by a mass transportation provider;

Huh. TIL. Interesting application of a terrorism law.

and with intent to, or knowing or having reason to know,1 such activity would likely, derail, disable, or wreck a mass transportation vehicle used, operated, or employed by a mass transportation provider;

This makes it sound like it has to be more than just a murder on a transportation system? Although I guess the earlier point says "any person who is on property described". I'm going to take a wild guess and say the defense is going to be about whether the law applies, rather than guilt/innocence.

Yeah, I wondered the same.

ChatGPT didn't turn up any precedent for this usage, and specifically mentions this case. I didn't know it had real-time access now for free-tier freeloaders. Seems like the code is hardly used at all and one case was a guy whose truck got stuck at a construction site. That there's precedent for "willful" only meaning non-accidental could be part of the case too.

I think the law was written to sound as if it was just to cover terrorism but actually covered a lot more. I'm pretty sure the "intent" part of paragraphs (4)A and (4)B does not transfer to paragraph (7).

Afaik it's not a murder until somebody has formally been found guilty in court

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