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@FtttG, couldn't reply in the wellness thread, since it's CW-adjacent. You wrote in your blog post:
It doesn't matter whether Ross was clipped by Good's car or not. If I shoot at you and miss, you are allowed to shoot back at me. Even if I shoot at something in your general direction and you think I'm shooting at you, you are allowed to shoot back at me.
Earlier in the blog post, you wrote:
This is the only standard. Just like it doesn't matter which one was the better or worse person overall, it doesn't matter why Good accelerated her car and whether she hit Ross or not and if she missed was it because she had poor aim or Ross was the dodgeball champion. The only real answers for the jury to give are if a reasonable person working as a law enforcement officer can interpret the car lurching in his direction as an attack and if shooting the driver is a reasonable action if you have just a split second to decide.
I'll admit that I may have phrased my argument poorly (as I said in the wellness thread, I was under pressure to meet my self-imposed deadline). The argument I was trying to make is that, in the hypothetical world in which it could be established that Ross's shooting was justified beyond reasonable doubt, it wouldn't matter if Good had been a scrupulously law-abiding citizen prior to the altercation. Conversely, in the hypothetical world in which it could be established that Ross's shooting wasn't justified, it wouldn't matter if Good had had numerous criminal convictions beforehand. I probably shouldn't have bothered getting into the weeds of what either of these hypothetical worlds might look like, as they weren't relevant to my argument.
Also showing a pretty crass misunderstanding of the Floyd situation. Chauvin got railroaded on vibes for performing a maneuver that was expressly taught to him by the police force, and one that doesn't lead to positional asphyxiation unless the victim happens to be having a drug overdose despite having horrible optics.
What about the Floyd situation did I misunderstand?
Given that Floyd was having a drug overdose, you realize you basically just admitted that Chauvin shouldn't have used that manoeuvre, and hence that the jury of his peers was right to convict him of murder? That's one hell of a "railroading".
I don’t think the grandparent is saying that drug overdose + positional asphyxiation leads to death. I think he is saying that drug overdoses lead to death, whether or not the person is subject to positional asphyxiation during his drug overdose.
If that's what was intended, it's not what I took from it. I wish the person who posted it would clarify.
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It may not matter legally, in court, but it absolutely matters to society at large. Any criminal justice system will be ragged around the edges, all states are organized violence. It matters what group the mistakes and violations run against in general.
If the cops unjustifiably kill someone with forty felonies, run the legal process, but don't ask me to give a fuck. Society is better off no matter how cruel or unjustified the actual police behavior is. That has to be balanced against the costs imposed by the dead criminal.
If the cops unjustifiably kill some random law-abiding productive citizen with a family and community, that's much worse. It not only means that the police are poorly trained, but that they are being aimed at a part of society they shouldn't be. Mistakes will happen, but it isn't difficult to make the judgement between these sorts of cases.
Of course, in the media we are constantly told that the second scenario is happening, which on inspection turns out to be the first.
Agreed, but that wasn't the comparison I was making. I was comparing an unjustified killing of someone with forty previous felonies with a justified killing of an erstwhile law-abiding citizen.
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By the way, this is another example of what I mean. If Good was simply trying to get away, it's not relevant to the guilt or innocence of Ross, and yet the blog post brings this up. Of course, it seems pretty clear in hindsight that Good was just trying to get away. So that raising this issue is fundamentally no different than bringing up Good's (alleged) criminal history: In either case, the person is using evidence which is arguably irrelevant at trial in order to make their side look better and the other side worse.
I think it's also worth noting that police and prosecutors very much use peoples' criminal history in deciding who to investigate and who to charge with a crime. And this is a big part of the reason such evidence is typically inadmissible at trial -- because it's already been taken into account by the system.
Is this exculpatory evidence? I don't think so. If it were, then every criminal who starts running from the police "because they got scared" would then have, at the very least, a get-out-of-evading-arrest-free card to play at all times.
Non-compliance with law enforcement orders has to remain chargeable. Otherwise, we get into a situation in which subjective interpretations in the moment bear the same evidentiary weight as objective facts. Again, I'd recommend everyone watch an hour of police bodycam videos and not just the ones that result in discharge of a weapon - I mean basic traffic stops / drug possession chargers. You see a pattern after a while of the cop going through this process of information elucidation to begin to establish facts and intent and also to suss out obvious self-contradicting lies. They're doing this so that, should they need to testify later, their evidence and procedure is as tight as possible.
For narrative purposes, it certainly looks much better to say she was trying to get away than to say she was trying to run down the ICE officer.
I think she was trying to get away and had no intention of running down the officer but still the officer was justified in shooting her since he had a reasonable belief that she was trying to run him down from his own perspective.
TBH it also raises the hypothetical 'she was trying to run him down but he was too far away from her to realistically hit and present a threat but he shot anyway' situation which'd also likely gain a ton of censure.
I agree. My point is that her intentions have little or no relevance to the guilt or innocence of the shooter. If you are going to write an article arguing that Good's criminal history is similarly irrelevant, then it doesn't make logical sense to state or imply that her intentions were relevant. Nor does it make sense to include a picture of Renee good with long hair, smiling, on a beach. When on the day of the shooting, she looked . . let's just say "less sympathetic."
https://ibb.co/PZXRny2y
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Not in the hindsight sense. The standard is whether a reasonable person observing what the officer did and within the time the officer had to evaluate would have perceived it as a threat. If that reasonable person would see that Good was trying to get away, then it wouldn't be legal to shoot her.
Chargeable, yes. Arrestable, absolutely. Deadly force, not without more.
The standard involves a reasonable officer, not a reasonable person, and the interpretation of that standard is very, very officer friendly.
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"Chargeable" and "punished by shooting" are different things.
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The reason it matters that Ross was indeed struck is that it short circuits a lot of arguments. All the stuff from the NYTimes (among others) about how she was not trying to hit him and was clearly turning her wheel to avoid him goes up in a puff of smoke if he was (regardless of whatever else she was doing) clearly in danger, and being hit is really good evidence of that. Which is why many on the side crying murder still insist he was not hit. If he WAS in fact hit, you have to go to a lot of weaker theories, like
He put himself in jeopardy. Not only doesn't this fit the facts (because he wasn't in front of the car until after it started moving), it doesn't fit the law; "officer-created jeopardy" is not an accepted doctrine.
It was against ICE policy for him to be where he was. On shaky grounds factually, irrelevant legally; he can defend himself even if he wasn't in compliance with ICE policy
He wasn't hit that bad. This doesn't really deserve more than a raised eyebrow... how was he supposed to know he'd only be essentially shoved aside by the SUV?
He shouldn't have been there, because ICE shouldn't have been there. This is the real objection, but it's got no legal force.
The blog post says this:
But no, the first two questions do not matter. We do not consider Good's state of mind when judging Ross's actions, because Ross had no way of knowing it. We need only consider whether Ross had a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm (it's the "death or great" which allows deadly force). He saw a 2-ton SUV being driven towards him. The argument that he should have known it wouldn't hit him falls to the fact that it did hit him, making this a very easy judgement.
That is though why some people think he murdered her: He knew that he was only shoved because he faked/forced a shove.
First he switched the phone to his left hand so his right is free to shoot his gun. Then he positioned himself in the way, so it would not be dangerous for him but giving him plausible deniability. That is also why he immediately drew his weapon (even so that is useless to stop a moving car) instead of just making a step to the side.
The hole in the windshield is to the side aiming at Good with an angle, he was at the side on the car not in the front, and the other two shots were through the side window.
I can see your eyes rolling, but ICE does have a problem with fleeing cars which drivers are then shot:
https://archive.is/iQxsu
No, that is not why some people think he murdered her. Entirely backwards. They think that he faked/forced a shove because that's the only way they can maintain their belief that he murdered her. The evidence that he somehow faked being hit by the car or forced the car to hit him simply is not there.
He switched the phone to his left hand about 8 seconds before the incident. It isn't clear why; perhaps his arm was tired or perhaps it got him a better angle.
He did not position himself in the way. When the car started moving, he was not in the way. When she backed up and turned for the first half of the K-turn, he was THEN in the way.
He fires the first shot almost simultaneously with being hit; he is at the driver's side corner (in front of the car, but not centered) at that point.
This also just feels like an extraordinarily long bow to draw that the officer's putting himself into this position intentionally to have an excuse to gun somebody down, instead of 'officer who'd previously had a violent incident with a car due to somebody resisting arrest might have panicked a bit when placed in a position for that to happen again'
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Ross drew his gun because Good was being placed under arrest and refusing to cooperate, that's why the other officer kept telling her to exit vehicle.
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For purposes of a potential trial against Ross, I agree. For purposes of the overall culture war, I'm not so sure.
You can bet that the anti-ICE crowd will use every piece of evidence they can find to make Good look like a good person. In fact, the blog post you link to has a picture of Good at the top which makes her look feminine and somewhat attractive. On the day of the shooting, she looked much more like a stereotypical angry aggressive lesbian.
If one side is going to marshal all the evidence they can find for purposes of the Court of Public Opinion, the other side can hardly be blamed for doing the same thing.
At this point, I have to ask if we watched the same video. Good's partner was the one loudly berating and mocking the ICE agents, while Good herself was, for the most part, sitting in her car and smirking. She was being obnoxious, but I can't say I saw anything "aggressive" in her demeanour, prior to her pressing the accelerator.
As to "looking" like a lesbian: she was dressed appropriately for the Minnesota climate.
Serious question: In which of the following images does Renee Good look more like a stereotypical angry aggressive lesbian.
(1) The picture you posted on your blog; or
(2) This picture:
https://ibb.co/PZXRny2y
To be clear, I am NOT asking if the second picture makes her look angry; or aggressive; or like a lesbian. I am asking which picture makes her look MORE like a stereotypical angry aggressive lesbian.
Very simple question: (1) or (2).
Follow-up questions: Which of the two pictures is more flattering? Which of the two pictures is more relevant to the subject matter under discussion?
Yes, I agree that in the second photo she looks more like a stereotypical angry aggressive lesbian. But she doesn't look much like a stereotypical angry aggressive lesbian, and I think your phrasing was a bit weaselly. For any two photos of Beyoncé, she will look "more" like a stereotypical angry aggressive lesbian in one of them than the other: that doesn't imply that she particularly looks like a stereotypical angry aggressive lesbian in either of them.
Of course the first one is more flattering. But I don't think it's remotely indicative of media bias that most outlets chose to use a nice photo of Good when reporting about her, rather than a still frame extracted from a video taken seconds before her death. Even the New York Times used a very flattering photo of Charlie Kirk in their obituary for him, and not, say a photo of him immediately after or immediately prior to him being shot, which would have been "more relevant to the subject matter under discussion".
For what it may be worth, the second photo pings my "butch" radar. And I think that if you could show the two photos to Americans who didn't know the context and culture war issues, most would agree that the woman depicted in the second photo is MUCH more likely to be a stereotypical angry aggressive lesbian.
I'm talking about your bias, not media bias. Ironically, the sort of photo you posted in your blog post is typically NOT admissible in criminal trials, except in some states which have passed "Victim Life Photo" statutes. I don't know if Minnesota has such a statute in place, but I tend to doubt it given that it's more conservative states which have passed these kinds of laws.
In short, I'm pretty confident that the photo you posted in your article would be inadmissible as evidence in a hypothetical trial of the shooter. At a minimum, it is totally irrelevant to Ross' guilt or innocence. Certainly at least as irrelevant as Good's (possible) criminal history.
(As far as media bias in photo selection goes, let's just say the whole situation with Trayvon Martin has heavily informed my views on this issue.)
Anyway, it seems that in arguing that Good's (alleged) criminal history would be inadmissible at trial and therefore should not be considered by the public, you simultaneously include pro-Good evidence which would likely be inadmissible at trial. One example is the photo at the top. Another example is Good's intentions. (" if so, did she do so intentionally, or through negligence? ")
As a result, it's hard to take your blog post seriously.
I'm open to the idea that the photo of Good used by many publications wouldn't be admissible in a criminal trial, although I think you're being a bit melodramatic regarding how "flattering" the photo in question is. It's just a photo of her standing on a beach and smiling: it's not like she's volunteering at a soup kitchen or treating malarial children or something. And please explain to me how the question "if Good struck Ross, did she do so intentionally or through negligence?" would be inadmissible in a criminal trial. By definition, a question is not "evidence".
So you concede it's totally irrelevant to Ross' guilt or innocence?
In your view, is there a big difference between the two photos? If you think there isn't a big difference, would you mind swapping in the second photo on your blog post?
I was talking about evidence of her intentions. The question you pose in your blog post suggests that in your view, such evidence is directly relevant.
Suppose the prosecutor said something like this in his opening statement: "You are going to see evidence that the Defendant gunned down a woman in cold blood who was merely trying to get away"
In that case, I'm pretty sure that at a minimum, the defense would be entitled to a jury charge along the following lines: "In deciding whether the shooting was justified, you should not consider Ms. Good's intent. What matters is whether the Defendant reasonably believed that he faced a grave threat of death or serious injury."
I don't understand the question you're asking me. "Is this photo of Good irrelevant to her guilt or innocence?" Yes, did I ever suggest otherwise?
No, I don't think there's a big difference between the two. I used the photo I did because numerous news outlets were using that photo.
Yes, I would mind.
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I think this is just a case of writing that is legally on the weak side for the concepts discussed and not subtle manipulation that if she didn't physically touched him with the car, the shooting was unjustified.
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