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Apropos of nothing, but John Hacker was previously found not guilty in a bench trial for criminal charges of robbery in a fact pattern that... I'm very hard-pressed to believe wasn't clearly guilty.
Which rather broadens the scope of the problem beyond that presented in your criticism, here. I've got an old post about the boxes of liberty, and it doesn't look much better when paralleled to Oregon state or Portland city politics.
As is true of most states, in Oregon to convict a defendant of any theft offense, including robbery, the People must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant intended to permanently deprive the victim of property. See State v. Pusztai, 348 P. 3d 241 (Or: Court of Appeals 2015). So, proving robbery in that particular case would not necessarily be easy.
Edit: That was exactly the basis for the acquittal. See starting at 4:30 here
... There's video of Hacker shouting that he will break Ngo's phone, along with two gym employees testifying that Hacker had Ngo's phone in his possession while trying to leave the gym and only returned it to Ngo after being stopped by those gym employees. The judge explicitly considering and justifying his judgement by considering whether Hacker went into a short-lived fugue and then having no idea why he had the phone... sounds a bit more than the typical level of consideration.
Yes, there is certainly some evidence to support the charge, which is why the grand jury returned the indictment. But Hacker also testified, and we don’t know what that testimony was. Nor do we know what else the gym employees testified to. The threat to break the phone does not mean a whole lot, given that he did not actually break it.
None of which is to say that there wasnot sufficient evidence to convict, but merely that, without seeing more of the evidence, it is a dubious claim to say that it was some sort of open and shut case. I don’t know for sure how Oregon treats circumstantial evidence, but in CA, a jury is instructed, "before you may rely on circumstantial evidence to find thedefendant guilty, you must be convinced that the only reasonable conclusion supported by the circumstantial evidence is that thedefendant is guilty. If you can draw two or more reasonable conclusionsfrom the circumstantial evidence, and one of those reasonableconclusions points to innocence and another to guilt, you must accept theone that points to innocence."
I didn't see that on the video, though I had it on fast forward so I might have missed it. What is the time stamp for that?
6:09 is where the judge lists potential alternate intents, with an approximate transcript of :
I don't get where you get fugue state out of it. That seems to be a reference to the very commonn phenomenon of a person doing something while in an agitated state and then turning around a minute later and saying to himself "what the fuck did I do that for."
Overall, it seems to be a very standard " the defendant acted wrongfully, but there is not enough to show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he committed the specifuc crime he is charged with."
Again, that is not to say that someone could not reasonably conclude the opposite.
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