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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27159 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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MSNBC reports:

Man dies after hitting head during Israel and Palestinian rallies in California, officials say. Witnesses said Paul Kessler fell and struck his head during a confrontation with protesters Sunday in Ventura County, the sheriff's department said. He died Monday.

Authorities in Ventura County, California, are investigating the death of a Jewish man who was injured during a confrontation at dueling rallies over Israel and Gaza died Monday, the sheriff’s department said. Witnesses said Paul Kessler, 69, "was in a physical altercation with counter-protestor(s)," the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. "During the altercation, Kessler fell backwards and struck his head on the ground,” it said.

What a horrible freak acci-

Paul Kessler, 69, died at a hospital on Monday, a day after he was struck during pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations at an intersection in Thousand Oaks, a suburb northwest of Los Angeles, authorities said.

Witnesses said Kessler was involved in a “physical altercation” with one or more counter-protesters, fell backward and struck his head on the ground, according to a statement from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. An autopsy Monday said Kessler died from a blunt force head injury and it was homicide, according to the Sheriff’s Department, which said investigators hadn’t ruled out the possibility that the act was a hate crime.

Well, it's unfortunate and tragic to have a real-world example of the eggshell skull rule, but (ed: cw, video of a man dying)-

A witness to the pro-Palestine protest that led to the death of Jewish man Paul Kessler today railed against local police for not arresting the man Kessler argued with - as new video shows the protest continued on even after police arrived at the scene... Witnesses say he and an as-yet unnamed Palestine supporter started arguing, and that it led to the man hitting Kessler in the face with his megaphone.

A police officer is seen on video asking an unidentified man, who is unconfirmed if this is the suspect, 'So you tried to hit his phone?' With law enforcement in the background, protesters are heard chanting, 'You will burn in hell; Israel will burn in hell.'

Another anti-Semitic chant can be heard, 'Hitler didn't want you, Hitler didn't want you, Hitler didn't want you, Hitler should've smashed you.'

Oh.

Nor does the potential for things to get out of hand seem like it was a surprise (ed: cw, video of a man dying):

The man holding the flag in the photo above allegedly lifted up his shirt to show that he had a pistol in his waistband during the October 29 protest at the same corner (Thousand Oaks Boulevard and Westlake Boulevard, just north of the 101 Freeway). Police were called to the scene, but the man left before they arrived.

It's still possible that Kessler's death had some complications, if extraordinarily unlikely. This is Ventura County rather than LA proper, so I think there's at least a chance that genuine prosecution could happen should the death be clear manslaughter or negligent homicide. The suspect has at least been stopped and questioned and is supposedly cooperating, though the amazing lack of any video of the 'confrontation' itself seems to be a complicating factor.

There's no outrage from the conventional sources, or the Biden or White House twitter accounts. There's nothing from the various ACLUs; quite a lot of people who I respected and had strong feelings on political radicalization must not have heard of it. The communities that spent a lot of time hunting down fascists and Nazis to punch and dox don't seem particularly interested by literal invocations of Hitler. And the lack of any arrest despite a clear suspect makes a bit of a mockery of all the people who in the Rittenhouse era proclaimed that any death required a prosecution and a trial. I guess to their credit (if damning with faint praise), the ADL has posted.

I've written at length about the extent and efforts pushing speech and speakers out of the public square have gone, and it's difficult to see this outside of that context. Worse, the lack of backlash seems a justification and legitimization of that behavior.

Which seems noteworthy in a few ways. There's no shortage of right-wing or Red Tribe examples, but Kessler, notably, was not. I'm not a fan of perspectives where only the cleanest hands make acceptable figures to bring forward -- to borrow from Mencken, defending freedom sometimes means defending scoundrels -- but I'll spell out when even that does not seem to be enough. It's not about X as a principle goes to this.

And at a deeper level... @FCfromSSC did a very good tactical analysis of the situation around violence at public protests in the context of the De Oñate Statue shooting. I don't want to extrapolate too hard from this case yet because it could end in a hard conviction next month. But it's looking, if anything, too rosy.

As a guy with most of a medical degree: falling and hitting your head on concrete can be a motherfucker. Results are a crapshoot and can be anything from a mild concussion to death. I saw a young, fit teenager that very nearly died and will be crippled for life with brain injury...because he fainted and fell off a step that was a foot and a half high. Plenty of manslaughter cases come from fistfights that take place in parking lots; one man knocks the other out and the loser falls, hits his head on the pavement, and dies. I think that this guy was KO'd by the thrown megaphone, hit his head on the concrete, and was mortally injured.

Some states in Australia brought in 'One Punch Laws' to specifically address the grey area between common assault, manslaughter and murder to better align with the communities' sense of justice.

It was motivated by alcohol fueled violence in nightlife areas, but would be equally applicable here. A lot of effort went into educating the community that throwing a punch could lead to a homicide.

I think a one punch law in the US would not align with a lot of communities' senses of justice. Two guys get into a fight, there's a bunch of shoving, then one of them socks the other in the nose and they fall and hit their head and die... and the survivor gets the max penalty for any crime in Australia, life in prison?

There are differing versions of the law in different states. There seems to be certain requirements for the 'unlawful striking leading to death' laws to activate. In some cases it needs to be a single punch thrown under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. In other cases harsher sentencing is reserved for 'coward punch' strikes where the victim is unaware that the strike is taking place (punch from behind for instance, or attacking a random passerby).

Some example punishments:

10 years for a single punch thrown outside a birthday party leading to death while the assaulter was drunk

10 years after a thug punched a surgeon trying to enforce a no smoking sign out the front of a hospital leading to death

10 years for punching someone unprovoked from behind at the casino food court while drunk leading to death

8 years for punching someone after the victim supposedly stole the killer's food from a takeaway 'hole in the wall' after a night out leading to death

Minimum sentencing seems to be around 8-10 years and that seems to be the standard punishment given for these sorts of offenses after 10 minutes of googling. Some offenders are eligible for parole after serving half their sentence. Seems fairly reasonable to me, particularly with the ability to allow parole.

Maximum sentence of life imprisonment doesn't seem to have been given out yet and would presumably require aggravating factors.

All this being said, these laws seem to be for a 'one guy throws a single punch (starting the fight) and retreats' situation rather than 'two guys willingly start shoving each other, participating in escalation to a brawl' scenario. Details on the OP seem to be murky at the moment.

Yeah. You do have things more akin to a consensual fistfight duel than one asshole attacking another guy who might just have been a bit less of an asshole that day. In that case I think a much more minor sentence is appropriate...two guys deciding to take it outside and one of them dying from what's basically a shitty bare knuckle boxing match might mean a year or two in prison basically as punishment for fucking up a duel that wasn't supposed to kill anyone.

Life imprisonment is a bit excessive here, and 8 to 10 years sounds like what you'd expect for manslaughter.

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