Actually, according to California penal code section 188, I think this is absolutely first-degree murder. Section 189 reads:
189. All murder which is perpetrated by means of a destructive
device or explosive, a weapon of mass destruction, knowing use of
ammunition designed primarily to penetrate metal or armor, poison,
lying in wait, torture, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate,
and premeditated killing, or which is committed in the perpetration
of, or attempt to perpetrate, arson, rape, carjacking, robbery,
burglary, mayhem, kidnapping, train wrecking, or any act punishable
under Section 206, 286, 288, 288a, or 289, or any murder which is
perpetrated by means of discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle,
intentionally at another person outside of the vehicle with the
intent to inflict death, is murder of the first degree. All other
kinds of murders are of the second degree.
As used in this section, "destructive device" means any
destructive device as defined in Section 12301, and "explosive" means
any explosive as defined in Section 12000 of the Health and Safety
Code.
As used in this section, "weapon of mass destruction" means any
item defined in Section 11417.
To prove the killing was "deliberate and premeditated," it shall
not be necessary to prove the defendant maturely and meaningfully
reflected upon the gravity of his or her act.
Section 206 reads:
Every person who, with the intent to cause cruel or extreme
pain and suffering for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion,
or for any sadistic purpose, inflicts great bodily injury as defined
in Section 12022.7 upon the person of another, is guilty of torture.
The crime of torture does not require any proof that the victim
suffered pain.
So, even if you believe he did intend to pull his tazer (which implies such a huge degree of incompetence as to expand the limits of the definition of "reasonable doubt" beyond all use), he still committed first-degree, capital murder.
He should be on his way to the chair right now.
Anyone actually going to address this?
Yup. See the bolded.
Can you please explain to me how you plan to prove that his intent is to cause injury for the purposes of revenge, extortion, blah blah blah?
Because you can't. And if it's not torture (or another covered act), then you can't use section 189 and you're back to proving good old fashioned murder, where you also can't prove intent.
No matter how you slice it, at some point you're going to have to prove intent. Even for felony murder, you basically have to prove intent to commit the felony underlying the charge. The prosecutor couldn't do it, and I doubt you could either. It simply wasn't provable.
Also, we have long since established that when confronted with a young black man who is doing anything other than lying face-down on the ground with his hands on his head, police think everything is a gun.
On this front, I'm pretty sure that the jury deciding to convict on anything rather than acquit suggests they completely rejected this long-standing defense. Which is pretty fantastic, really.
Intent, specifically premeditated intent to kill, is an element. It is very hard to prove without proof of some sort of motive. Practically? You go to a murder trial with no plausible motive and you're going to lose.
Actually, premeditated intent to kill is not necessarily an element of first-degree murder, if you'll take a look at the sections of the penal code I posted earlier.
I guess if you think his gun is a weapon of mass destruction?
Otherwise you're reading it wrong.
Or I guess you are going under the torture definition? Which is a very specific intent I'm not sure how you'd prove here...
If you believe his story, then he was going to taze a restrained kid lying on his stomach who was just searched by another cop. How is that not "intent to cause cruel and extreme pain" with a "sadistic purpose?"
He said he was going for the taser cause he thought the kid was possibly reaching for a weapon, I thought. That does not seem sadistic to me, nor is there any evidence he wanted to tase the kid repeatedly or upped the voltage or something, which to me would be proof he wanted to cause extreme pain.
I guess I'm just more inclined to believe what this guy says than you are, and that's that.
Except that he'd just been searched by another cop, and was laying face down on the ground.
Even if he managed to pull a weapon that the other cop didn't find but that could still be quickly accessed
He was laying face down on the ground
So clearly the only reasonable action was to taser him?
It IS sadistic to take an action that you expect to cause harm to someone that cannot realistically harm you.
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Motive is not a necessary element of murder. And he didn't make an insanity plea, so the rest of your argument is bullshit.
Motive is not an element, but intent is, and since we don't have a scientific test for intent or a bunch of telepaths, determining intent is a matter of inference. Part of making that inference is looking at things like motive that imply intent.
If only there were some way to prove intent... like, I don't know, maybe multiple videos of him pulling a gun on a restrained, freshly-searched young man lying on the ground and shooting him in the back. If we cannot infer intent from that, then when, precisely, can we infer intent from? Does a cop have to actually say "I am now going to murder you with this gun in my hands" immediately before he shoots someone in order for it to be murder?
The action isn't simply enough, especially when the defendant has presented a story that's equally (if not more) plausible that wouldn't have required him to snap for a split second, kill the guy, then immediately express regret on the video.
One of the officers on scene (yeah, yeah, I know your response to that) said he heard Mehserle say "I'm gonna taze him." Another non-police officer heard the same thing. Mehserle shot Grant in the back... exactly where you would shoot somebody with a taser. Grant didn't die for several hours. If he was deliberately trying to kill him, I think just about anybody could shoot him in the head from that distance. Defense witnesses said Mehserle looked shocked afterwards, put his hands to his head, and said "Oh my god" several times.
Again, if this wasn't murder, then it's essentially impossible for a cop to commit murder.
Oh, hogwash. With these exact facts, it could have very easily been determined to be murder by the people hearing the facts (ie., the jury, not you). Or there could have been facts establishing the aforementioned motive to kill. Or there could be other factors from which to draw the inference of intent. You don't have anything other than the physical action of him shooting to base your murder theory on, and unfortunately for you there are a lot more plausible explanations (such as the one the jury found).
You desperately, out of your venom towards cops, need for the equation to be "Cop wrongfully shoots somebody = murder," but it's just not so.
If this were anyone but a cop, there would be absolutely no question of intent.
I don't see why extensive training with a weapon should mean that we give orders of magnitude more leeway when it comes to intent to a cop than we would anyone else.
He had 6 hours of training with the weapon. That's a shockingly low amount. I'm not sure I'd call that "extensive."
But you're right in a sense that this is a defense peculiar to a cop, because there will be very few situations in which a private citizen will find themselves in the exact same circumstances or a similar fact pattern. In the few cases where it might come up, the same standards should apply.
As for your assertion that it should be first degree murder, the state attempted to charge him with it, and the judge reprimanded them for being retarded on that point. I'm no more of an expert on California law than you, but I think I'll defer to the judge's decision on that matter of law.
If you believe his story, then he was going to taze a restrained kid lying on his stomach who was just searched by another cop. How is that not "intent to cause cruel and extreme pain" with a "sadistic purpose?"
He said he was going for the taser cause he thought the kid was possibly reaching for a weapon, I thought. That does not seem sadistic to me, nor is there any evidence he wanted to tase the kid repeatedly or upped the voltage or something, which to me would be proof he wanted to cause extreme pain.
I guess I'm just more inclined to believe what this guy says than you are, and that's that.
It might have something to do with the fact that what he said is patently fucking ridiculous. Have you actually watched the video? If he thought the kid might have had a weapon, then why is the other cop who was restraining and searching the kid getting up off of him?
The series of fantastical events necessary for this to be mere involuntary manslaughter defy all logic.
Intent, specifically premeditated intent to kill, is an element. It is very hard to prove without proof of some sort of motive. Practically? You go to a murder trial with no plausible motive and you're going to lose.
Technically you don't actually need intent to kill. Intent to harm, coupled with willful disregard for human life, is enough to show second-degree murder.
And we're back to asking what percentage of Taser subjects die from the Taser. Because that number would have to be pretty far from zero to constitute "willful disregard for human life."
Even in cases of struggling and subdued subjects I'm pretty sure that percentage is going to be ridiculously low.
If you believe his story, then he was going to taze a restrained kid lying on his stomach who was just searched by another cop. How is that not "intent to cause cruel and extreme pain" with a "sadistic purpose?"
He said he was going for the taser cause he thought the kid was possibly reaching for a weapon, I thought. That does not seem sadistic to me, nor is there any evidence he wanted to tase the kid repeatedly or upped the voltage or something, which to me would be proof he wanted to cause extreme pain.
I guess I'm just more inclined to believe what this guy says than you are, and that's that.
It might have something to do with the fact that what he said is patently fucking ridiculous. Have you actually watched the video? If he thought the kid might have had a weapon, then why is the other cop who was restraining and searching the kid getting up off of him?
The series of fantastical events necessary for this to be mere involuntary manslaughter defy all logic.
Yes I've seen it. No I don't think the story is ridiculous. This is why I'm saying we will never agree.
or for any sadistic purpose, inflicts great bodily injury as defined
in Section 12022.7 upon the person of another, is guilty of torture.
The crime of torture does not require any proof that the victim
suffered pain.
Yup. See the bolded.
Can you please explain to me how you plan to prove that his intent is to cause injury for the purposes of revenge, extortion, blah blah blah?
Because you can't. And if it's not torture (or another covered act), then you can't use section 189 and you're back to proving good old fashioned murder, where you also can't prove intent.
No matter how you slice it, at some point you're going to have to prove intent. Even for felony murder, you basically have to prove intent to commit the felony underlying the charge. The prosecutor couldn't do it, and I doubt you could either. It simply wasn't provable.
The "blah blah blah" you're omitting is the important part. For any sadistic intent.
You tell me how it's not sadistic to taser someone who's laying face down, who has just been searched by a competent police officer.
Also, didn't the other cop have his knee on the guy?
Was Mehserle going to taser someone that another cop was in physical contact with?
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Also, we have long since established that when confronted with a young black man who is doing anything other than lying face-down on the ground with his hands on his head, police think everything is a gun.
On this front, I'm pretty sure that the jury deciding to convict on anything rather than acquit suggests they completely rejected this long-standing defense. Which is pretty fantastic, really.
I don't think they rejected it, necessarily, but that they deemed it an unacceptable bias, which it is.
I still think it's true, and it goes a long way to explain these sort of shootings. Even black police officers, in studies, are shown to be more likely to identify an image of a wrench flashed on a computer screen as a gun if they have been primed with black faces.
It's pretty indisputable that unconscious bias does inform the rapid actions of police officers, especially w/regards to young black men and guns.
Ideally, we train police to avoid situations that require rapid, instinctive action, and also train them to act more consciously and calmly in such situations, probably by inducing high amounts of stress and fear in controlled tests as part of police training, as the military does for soldiers.
Every person who, with the intent to cause cruel or extreme
pain and suffering for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion,
or for any sadistic purpose, inflicts great bodily injury as defined
in Section 12022.7 upon the person of another, is guilty of torture.
The crime of torture does not require any proof that the victim
suffered pain.
So, even if you believe he did intend to pull his tazer (which implies such a huge degree of incompetence as to expand the limits of the definition of "reasonable doubt" beyond all use), he still committed first-degree, capital murder.
He should be on his way to the chair right now.
Yup. See the bolded.
Can you please explain to me how you plan to prove that his intent is to cause injury for the purposes of revenge, extortion, blah blah blah?
Because you can't. And if it's not torture (or another covered act), then you can't use section 189 and you're back to proving good old fashioned murder, where you also can't prove intent.
No matter how you slice it, at some point you're going to have to prove intent. Even for felony murder, you basically have to prove intent to commit the felony underlying the charge. The prosecutor couldn't do it, and I doubt you could either. It simply wasn't provable.
I don't need to prove that his intent was to cause injury; I just need to prove that his intent was to cause "cruel or extreme pain," which inflicted "great bodily injury."
He claims that he meant to pull his taser; presuming this was true, the video tape more than proves his intent. The degree to which you must stretch reality to say "Officer Mehserle believed that this freshly-searched kid was going to materialize a gun out of thin air, then shoot it while lying on his stomach" does not come anywhere near the burden of "reasonable doubt." The judge was wrong to throw out the first degree murder charge.
Also, we have long since established that when confronted with a young black man who is doing anything other than lying face-down on the ground with his hands on his head, police think everything is a gun.
On this front, I'm pretty sure that the jury deciding to convict on anything rather than acquit suggests they completely rejected this long-standing defense. Which is pretty fantastic, really.
I don't think they rejected it, necessarily, but that they deemed it an unacceptable bias, which it is.
I still think it's true, and it goes a long way to explain these sort of shootings. Even black police officers, in studies, are shown to be more likely to identify an image of a wrench flashed on a computer screen as a gun if they have been primed with black faces.
It's pretty indisputable that unconscious bias does inform the rapid actions of police officers, especially w/regards to young black men and guns.
Ideally, we train police to avoid situations that require rapid, instinctive action, and also train them to act more consciously and calmly in such situations, probably by inducing high amounts of stress and fear in controlled tests as part of police training, as the military does for soldiers.
If we buy your argument here, are we not then required to acquit every single black person who has ever been convicted of shooting at a police officer (regardless of whether or not they hit) on the basis that they were acting in self defense?
In this thread, Thanatos presumes to know more about the law than a judge.
No, I do not presume to know more about the law than a judge; I presume that an LA judge is likely to be biased in favor of a police officer, and take a position which favors a police officer in spite of the law. Hardly an outlandish position.
It might have something to do with the fact that what he said is patently fucking ridiculous. Have you actually watched the video? If he thought the kid might have had a weapon, then why is the other cop who was restraining and searching the kid getting up off of him?
The series of fantastical events necessary for this to be mere involuntary manslaughter defy all logic.
Unless you have even a minimal willingness to investigate what the mental state of the cop may have been, using established knowledge of how the human brain works in moments of stress.
In which case it becomes super believable, because people are pretty incapable of rational assessment and action once their arousal reaches a certain threshold.
This is why people sometimes freeze in the face of danger. It is how fights can escalate out of control -- have you ever tried arguing with someone in a state of high arousal? Reasonability is worthless in such a situation, because their brains have ceased to be reasonable.
Once the brainstem takes over, forget about someone reasonably thinking to themselves "oh well the other guy searched him so we're fine."
No, his heart is pounding, he's sweating, he's hot, his vision is probably dim or blacked out in the periphery, time is slowed down, he's hyper aware of any struggle/movement on the part of Grant, he may be partially or totally deaf -- he's almost certainly not able to process speech -- and he sees what he interprets as Grant moving for a gun.
This is not a situation where you can transpose a normal mental state in daily life onto the events in question.
The cop was practically a different species, in terms of cognitive ability, at the time of the shooting. It's like expecting a chimp to respond reasonably to a perceived threat.
In this thread, Thanatos presumes to know more about the law than a judge.
No, I do not presume to know more about the law than a judge; I presume that an LA judge is likely to be biased in favor of a police officer. Hardly an outlandish position.
I've never heard of a single case in which an LA judge acted in a biased fashion with regards to the LAPD.
Not once.
In unrelated news I've just recently awoken from a coma that I'd been in since the early 80s.
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or for any sadistic purpose, inflicts great bodily injury as defined
in Section 12022.7 upon the person of another, is guilty of torture.
The crime of torture does not require any proof that the victim
suffered pain.
Yup. See the bolded.
Can you please explain to me how you plan to prove that his intent is to cause injury for the purposes of revenge, extortion, blah blah blah?
Because you can't. And if it's not torture (or another covered act), then you can't use section 189 and you're back to proving good old fashioned murder, where you also can't prove intent.
No matter how you slice it, at some point you're going to have to prove intent. Even for felony murder, you basically have to prove intent to commit the felony underlying the charge. The prosecutor couldn't do it, and I doubt you could either. It simply wasn't provable.
The "blah blah blah" you're omitting is the important part. For any sadistic intent.
You tell me how it's not sadistic to taser someone who's laying face down, who has just been searched by a competent police officer.
Also, didn't the other cop have his knee on the guy?
Was Mehserle going to taser someone that another cop was in physical contact with?
Can you prove that sadistic intent beyond a reasonable doubt to twelve of your peers?
If you believe his story, then he was going to taze a restrained kid lying on his stomach who was just searched by another cop. How is that not "intent to cause cruel and extreme pain" with a "sadistic purpose?" Or are you arguing that he didn't inflict "great bodily injury?"
Because you've not proven his intent. Simply saying "how is it not intent" doesn't do that. He can simply reply that he honestly felt the suspect needed to be Tased to get him to comply, or for the safety of other officers, and now the burden is on you to prove that his purpose was instead sadistic.
If you can't, we're back to involuntary manslaughter...because he was still criminally negligent in this choice of force (using the Taser, as was his stated intent and which the prosecution was unable to refute), even if his intent wasn't sadistic.
Now, supposedly somebody there was some testimony about a statement prior to the incident that he intended to Tase somebody. Which wouldn't surprise me, since I've heard other officers I know personally talk about going out of their way to Tase people (these are not, I'll note, "friends"). Theoretically, that could constitute the sadistic intent you're looking for, and it might be possible to then stretch the law to support your strategy for capital murder. However, even assuming a prosecutor wanted to bend the law in that fashion (unlikely even for a non-cop, let alone a cop) you'd probably have a hard time getting a jury to buy it. And that is even assuming that whatever testimony there was as to this remark was sufficient to overcome reasonable doubt...which it probably wouldn't be, particularly for capital murder.
Have I addressed this silly theory sufficiently yet?
By the way, I personally believe the testimony regarding his intent to Tase, thus I would agree that technically the laws you quote may apply. But I don't agree that this was proven beyond a reasonable doubt, nor am I a fan of stretching laws outside of their intent...which (arguably) you are doing.
In this thread, Thanatos presumes to know more about the law than a judge.
Also, Peeps, I just want to be clear, here: you're saying that while a jury should acquit on even the most outlandish of fantastical stories, the judge should deny even the possibility that Mehserle's motives were anything but pure in this case?
By the way, I personally believe the testimony regarding his intent to Tase, thus I would agree that technically the laws you quote may apply. But I don't agree that this was proven beyond a reasonable doubt, nor am I a fan of stretching laws outside of their intent...which (arguably) you are doing.
The problem is that by throwing out the charge, the judge didn't even give the prosecution the opportunity to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge wasn't saying that there was a reasonable doubt; he was saying that it wasn't even possible. Are you agreeing with that?
Every person who, with the intent to cause cruel or extreme
pain and suffering for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion,
or for any sadistic purpose, inflicts great bodily injury as defined
in Section 12022.7 upon the person of another, is guilty of torture.
The crime of torture does not require any proof that the victim
suffered pain.
So, even if you believe he did intend to pull his tazer (which implies such a huge degree of incompetence as to expand the limits of the definition of "reasonable doubt" beyond all use), he still committed first-degree, capital murder.
He should be on his way to the chair right now.
Yup. See the bolded.
Can you please explain to me how you plan to prove that his intent is to cause injury for the purposes of revenge, extortion, blah blah blah?
Because you can't. And if it's not torture (or another covered act), then you can't use section 189 and you're back to proving good old fashioned murder, where you also can't prove intent.
No matter how you slice it, at some point you're going to have to prove intent. Even for felony murder, you basically have to prove intent to commit the felony underlying the charge. The prosecutor couldn't do it, and I doubt you could either. It simply wasn't provable.
I don't need to prove that his intent was to cause injury; I just need to prove that his intent was to cause "cruel or extreme pain," which inflicted "great bodily injury."
He claims that he meant to pull his taser; presuming this was true, the video tape more than proves his intent. The degree to which you must stretch reality to say "Officer Mehserle believed that this freshly-searched kid was going to materialize a gun out of thin air, then shoot it while lying on his stomach" does not come anywhere near the burden of "reasonable doubt." The judge was wrong to throw out the first degree murder charge.
No, you don't need to prove that his intent was to cause "cruel and extreme pain" which inflicted "great bodily injury."
You need to prove that his intent was to cause "cruel and extreme pain for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion, or for any sadistic purpose" and so on and so forth.
If he was causing "cruel and extreme pain" for the purpose of gaining compliance from a struggling suspect, or rather if that was his intent (even if it was an unreasonable use of force, which the jury seems to have determined) then regardless of the "great bodily injury" then the cop is off the hook.
EDIT: Unless you want to try to spin "gaining compliance" as "revenge," which neither I nor any jury will ever buy, because it's (generally) absurd. I mean, yeah sometimes this is exactly what happens but you won't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
It might have something to do with the fact that what he said is patently fucking ridiculous. Have you actually watched the video? If he thought the kid might have had a weapon, then why is the other cop who was restraining and searching the kid getting up off of him?
The series of fantastical events necessary for this to be mere involuntary manslaughter defy all logic.
Unless you have even a minimal willingness to investigate what the mental state of the cop may have been, using established knowledge of how the human brain works in moments of stress.
In which case it becomes super believable, because people are pretty incapable of rational assessment and action once their arousal reaches a certain threshold.
This is why people sometimes freeze in the face of danger. It is how fights can escalate out of control -- have you ever tried arguing with someone in a state of high arousal? Reasonability is worthless in such a situation, because their brains have ceased to be reasonable.
Once the brainstem takes over, forget about someone reasonably thinking to themselves "oh well the other guy searched him so we're fine."
No, his heart is pounding, he's sweating, he's hot, his vision is probably dim or blacked out in the periphery, time is slowed down, he's hyper aware of any struggle/movement on the part of Grant, he may be partially or totally deaf -- he's almost certainly not able to process speech -- and he sees what he interprets as Grant moving for a gun.
This is not a situation where you can transpose a normal mental state in daily life onto the events in question.
The cop was practically a different species, in terms of cognitive ability, at the time of the shooting. It's like expecting a chimp to respond reasonably to a perceived threat.
Okay, so you're willing to suggest that because he was stressed out it would have been acceptable for him to use a taser on someone who had just been searched, who was still laying on his stomach?
So that's the standard you believe in, that cops can taser anyone they like on the basis that they're stressed
And if they were to accidentally grab the wrong weapon and lift a substantially heavier thing, with a completely different shape, aim for center of mass and put a bullet in someone, well that's also not their fault because they were stressed out
Man I wish I got that kind of leeway to fuck up at my job
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In this thread, Thanatos presumes to know more about the law than a judge.
Also, Peeps, I just want to be clear, here: you're saying that while a jury should acquit on even the most outlandish of fantastical stories, the judge should deny even the possibility that Mehserle's motives were anything but pure in this case?
There's an evidenciary burden to get a charge in front of a jury, if the judge thinks you didn't make it then the jury doesn't get to deliberate on that charge.
If we buy your argument here, are we not then required to acquit every single black person who has ever been convicted of shooting at a police officer (regardless of whether or not they hit) on the basis that they were acting in self defense?
Again, you're using hyperbole, but I think it would be interesting to investigate.
I don't think anyone's done reverse studies of this -- of, say, young black men and how their cognition may be impaired by stereotypes of police officers. It may explain to some extent the higher rates at which black suspects try to resist or flee arrest -- being arrested is definitely a state of high arousal, which is a state where stereotypes and unconscious bias come into play.
So, you may be right that this would be a reasonable argument for cases involving resisting arrest. It may also be an interesting argument in murder cases.
Now, of course, it would still demonstrate a certain minimum amount of negligence and so on, but yes this probably could come into play in almost any murder case.
I mean, you know, frankly I don't believe in our current prison system or even our system of punishment for crimes in the first place. The idea that anyone "deserves" to be punished is, to my mind, a ludicrous idea that is widespread only thanks to an in-born sense of justice and punishment that all human beings have.
It is, in the context of a modern society and rule of law, archaic, counter-productive, and ineffective.
Frankly, I'd like to see prisons that are more about education, healthcare, diet, and cognitive behavioral therapy than punishment. Prisons should be more like colleges and hospitals than dungeons.
In this thread, Thanatos presumes to know more about the law than a judge.
No, I do not presume to know more about the law than a judge; I presume that an LA judge is likely to be biased in favor of a police officer. Hardly an outlandish position.
I've never heard of a single case in which an LA judge acted in a biased fashion with regards to the LAPD.
Not once.
In unrelated news I've just recently awoken from a coma that I'd been in since the early 80s.
You must not have been keeping up with the news before that coma.
Every person who, with the intent to cause cruel or extreme
pain and suffering for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion,
or for any sadistic purpose, inflicts great bodily injury as defined
in Section 12022.7 upon the person of another, is guilty of torture.
The crime of torture does not require any proof that the victim
suffered pain.
So, even if you believe he did intend to pull his tazer (which implies such a huge degree of incompetence as to expand the limits of the definition of "reasonable doubt" beyond all use), he still committed first-degree, capital murder.
He should be on his way to the chair right now.
Yup. See the bolded.
Can you please explain to me how you plan to prove that his intent is to cause injury for the purposes of revenge, extortion, blah blah blah?
Because you can't. And if it's not torture (or another covered act), then you can't use section 189 and you're back to proving good old fashioned murder, where you also can't prove intent.
No matter how you slice it, at some point you're going to have to prove intent. Even for felony murder, you basically have to prove intent to commit the felony underlying the charge. The prosecutor couldn't do it, and I doubt you could either. It simply wasn't provable.
I don't need to prove that his intent was to cause injury; I just need to prove that his intent was to cause "cruel or extreme pain," which inflicted "great bodily injury."
He claims that he meant to pull his taser; presuming this was true, the video tape more than proves his intent. The degree to which you must stretch reality to say "Officer Mehserle believed that this freshly-searched kid was going to materialize a gun out of thin air, then shoot it while lying on his stomach" does not come anywhere near the burden of "reasonable doubt." The judge was wrong to throw out the first degree murder charge.
No, you don't need to prove that his intent was to cause "cruel and extreme pain" which inflicted "great bodily injury."
You need to prove that his intent was to cause "cruel and extreme pain for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion, or for any sadistic purpose" and so on and so forth.
If he was causing "cruel and extreme pain" for the purpose of gaining compliance from a struggling suspect, or rather if that was his intent (even if it was an unreasonable use of force, which the jury seems to have determined) then regardless of the "great bodily injury" then the cop is off the hook.
EDIT: Unless you want to try to spin "gaining compliance" as "revenge," which neither I nor any jury will ever buy, because it's (generally) absurd. I mean, yeah sometimes this is exactly what happens but you won't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
You have to create the reasonable doubt.
The fact that he wanted to taser someone who had just been searched, who was laying on his stomach, is sadistic.
To make it not sadistic you have to invent some line of reasoning by which it would be reasonable that the cop would have needed to use his taser in his own defense, instead of for sadistic reasons.
Please invent this scenario.
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I think you're making some assumptions here that the footage of the incident doesn't really back up. If anyone looks afraid it is the 3 people they have backed onto a wall. There was barely any "fighting" going on, aside from Grant standing up once and then promptly being pushed back down.
I was under the impression that prior to getting him on the ground, they struggled with him quite a bit to get him on the ground, and the struggle continued, if in a more subdued way, after he was put on the ground. The problem is that the initial struggle triggers the sympathetic nervous system, but the chemicals and processes underway do not halt immediately. Believe me, as someone who gets panic attacks, even after you "calm down" your body still is in a state of arousal for several minutes following, which evolutionarily is meant to make it easy to get keyed-up again if danger returns. This guy may have appeared calm in a low-res video from a distance, but that doesn't mean he was. Especially not physiologically.
Well, that's possible, but either way I won't continue arguing his physiological state because nobody except him knew what it was, and it doesn't change the fact that he fucked up big time.
The police are clearly in a dominant position, and if they are afraid they certainly don't show it. In fact they all seem rather composed until the shot goes off.
By the time the video starts, yes. However, dominance does not imply relaxation. In fact, this is why many argue we need to have more police officers work solo, because being in a group gives police officers a false sense of safety such that they're more likely to end up in situations of stress and arousal -- like fights, chases, and shoot-outs, and so on.
If anything, I'd argue for more police working solo because working in groups results in groupthink and lessened feelings of personal responsibility. It gives them the freedom to think "Well, even if I screw up, my fellow cops will back me up, because we're buddies," or that the blame will just get spread between them all. And that is probably exactly what would have happened here had there not been multiple videos and witnesses.
Again, the guy was a 2 year veteran... maybe he reacted the way you described to the first couple incidents that he took part in, but I don't see anything threatening enough to affect him in such a way here.
This means little to nothing. Two years patrolling subway cars. The dude likely never had been involved in any situation like this -- it was likely the first time he ever drew his gun on the job. It's not like he spent two years busting meth labs as a SWAT officer or something. He was a fucking bus cop. Barely more than a security guard.
I guess this is where the "better training" comes in. I kind of have a hard time believing he was never involved in a scuffle over a period of 2 years in a subway system (and that's what this was- a minor scuffle), but again I have no way of refuting that so I won't.
The way you say that makes it sound like they're convicting officers for no reason. It's not so much individual deterrence as holding cops to the same standards of law as everyone else. You're kidding yourself if you think that the police don't automatically have the upper hand in legal matters. I'm not going to say that better training won't help, but it also won't get rid of the pervasive attitude of being "above the law" that many officers seem to have.
Not for no reason -- you're right, we do need to apply the law equally, so that a reasonable level of deterrence exists to prevent voluntary, conscious crime on the part of police. However, I don't think sending more cops to jail is really going to stop these shootings from happening again, and that's what we really need to happen.
True, but I have to disagree with the idea that more accountability won't lead to a reduction in needless taserings/shootings.
The fact that he wanted to taser someone who had just been searched, who was laying on his stomach, is sadistic.
To make it not sadistic you have to invent some line of reasoning by which it would be reasonable that the cop would have needed to use his taser in his own defense, instead of for sadistic reasons.
Please invent this scenario.
No, you have to maintain the reasonable doubt. Ever heard of presumption of innocence? Burden's on the prosecution to eliminate reasonable doubt.
Also, he could argue that he was trying to assist his fellow officer in gaining compliance, or that he honestly believed his fellow officer was in some minimal amount of danger. While an unreasonable use of force, and thus illegal, it's not sadistic.
He doesn't need to maintain reasonable doubt that the use of force was appropriate, just that his intent was not sadistic. Which is absurdly easy.
Okay, so you're willing to suggest that because he was stressed out it would have been acceptable for him to use a taser on someone who had just been searched, who was still laying on his stomach?
He wasn't still -- that's pretty clear in the video.
Is it acceptable? That's a very different question from it being understandable, which is all I'm arguing. And I'd say if he had used a taser in that situation I would think some sort of professional reprimand or even a firing would be in order, because while, again, you can understand it, it is hardly an acceptable way for a police officer to confront stress.
This is a problem though, because this is how most humans confront stress, but the job of a police officer demands reactions that are better than most humans. This is, theoretically, accomplished by training and expertise. However, we know that this is not the practical reality.
So that's the standard you believe in, that cops can taser anyone they like on the basis that they're stressed
Again, understandable vs acceptable. I am saying the involuntary (or even voluntary) manslaughter is an appropriate charge. It's not that there should be no reprimand at all.
And if they were to accidentally grab the wrong weapon and lift a substantially heavier thing, with a completely different shape, aim for center of mass and put a bullet in someone, well that's also not their fault because they were stressed out
Essentially, yes. I don't really believe in notions of "fault" or "blame" in any case though.
I mean fundamentally we're very quickly headed towards the free-will thread. And I'm very much not on the side of free-will.
And, again, fault may convey that it was unacceptable, as this shooting was, but that is not the same as understandable/possible.
The question is -- is it possible/understandable that someone could fuck up enough to shoot an unarmed man in the back?
I think the answer is a clear yes. Is it acceptable? God no. But is it possible? Very.
Not for no reason -- you're right, we do need to apply the law equally, so that a reasonable level of deterrence exists to prevent voluntary, conscious crime on the part of police. However, I don't think sending more cops to jail is really going to stop these shootings from happening again, and that's what we really need to happen.
True, but I have to disagree with the idea that more accountability won't lead to a reduction in needless taserings/shootings.
This is why the conviction seemed like such a big deal to me...because the standard "everybody can be a threat to any cop at any time" defense was not accepted by the jury as an excuse to use the Taser. They essentially ruled that his (intended, according to him) use of the Taser was not just unjustified, but unlawfully so (making him criminally responsible for the resulting death).
Granted, if nobody had died nothing would have happened, video or no...no prosecutor would have bothered trying him for assault. However, if this gives cops any pause in the use of the Taser (because deaths, while uncommon, do occur from them) then I say that's fucking awesome.
The fact that he wanted to taser someone who had just been searched, who was laying on his stomach, is sadistic.
To make it not sadistic you have to invent some line of reasoning by which it would be reasonable that the cop would have needed to use his taser in his own defense, instead of for sadistic reasons.
Please invent this scenario.
No, you have to maintain the reasonable doubt. Ever heard of presumption of innocence? Burden's on the prosecution to eliminate reasonable doubt.
Also, he could argue that he was trying to assist his fellow officer in gaining compliance, or that he honestly believed his fellow officer was in some minimal amount of danger. While an unreasonable use of force, and thus illegal, it's not sadistic.
He doesn't need to maintain reasonable doubt that the use of force was appropriate, just that his intent was not sadistic. Which is absurdly easy.
So what was the intent behind tasering someone who couldn't possibly have posed a threat?
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IT'S GOT ME REACHING IN MY POCKET IT'S GOT ME FORKING OVER CASH
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Yeah, I think the issue is that, in relation to this silly "torture then capital murder" theory, people are forgetting that there is a third option (and probably fourth and fifth options) that is not either "completely justifiable and legal use of force" or "intentionally sadistic."
The fact that he wanted to taser someone who had just been searched, who was laying on his stomach, is sadistic.
To make it not sadistic you have to invent some line of reasoning by which it would be reasonable that the cop would have needed to use his taser in his own defense, instead of for sadistic reasons.
Please invent this scenario.
No, you have to maintain the reasonable doubt. Ever heard of presumption of innocence? Burden's on the prosecution to eliminate reasonable doubt.
Also, he could argue that he was trying to assist his fellow officer in gaining compliance, or that he honestly believed his fellow officer was in some minimal amount of danger. While an unreasonable use of force, and thus illegal, it's not sadistic.
He doesn't need to maintain reasonable doubt that the use of force was appropriate, just that his intent was not sadistic. Which is absurdly easy.
So what was the intent behind tasering someone who couldn't possibly have posed a threat?
Please prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he could not possibly have posed a threat.
Actually, scratch that. Prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer didn't believe that he posed a threat.
Because that's the burden you're taking on by trying to prove it was torture. You're not going to meet that burden. Period.
Yeah, I think the issue is that, in relation to this silly "torture then capital murder" theory, people are forgetting that there is a third option (and probably fourth and fifth options) that is not either "completely justifiable and legal use of force" or "intentionally sadistic."
What is it?
Tell me what the intent was, when he meant to electrocute someone who was laying on the ground, on his stomach, having just been searched by a fully competent police officer
What was the intent behind that
Pheezer on
IT'S GOT ME REACHING IN MY POCKET IT'S GOT ME FORKING OVER CASH
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
The fact that he wanted to taser someone who had just been searched, who was laying on his stomach, is sadistic.
To make it not sadistic you have to invent some line of reasoning by which it would be reasonable that the cop would have needed to use his taser in his own defense, instead of for sadistic reasons.
Please invent this scenario.
No, you have to maintain the reasonable doubt. Ever heard of presumption of innocence? Burden's on the prosecution to eliminate reasonable doubt.
Also, he could argue that he was trying to assist his fellow officer in gaining compliance, or that he honestly believed his fellow officer was in some minimal amount of danger. While an unreasonable use of force, and thus illegal, it's not sadistic.
He doesn't need to maintain reasonable doubt that the use of force was appropriate, just that his intent was not sadistic. Which is absurdly easy.
So what was the intent behind tasering someone who couldn't possibly have posed a threat?
BECAUSE SUBJECTIVELY, HE SEEMED THREATENING TO THE OFFICER
How hard is it to get this across?
From a low-res video in the calm repose of our homes, he obviously does not pose a threat to the cop.
To a man who is in the throes of sympathetic nervous system activation following a struggle with a man his society has conditioned him to believe is fundamentally dangerous he is not obviously un-threatening
This is the disconnect:
You and Than are discussing the crime from an objective/absolute framework. Whereas I am discussing it from a subjective/relative framework, which I think is necessary since we're talking about intent, which is subjective.
If murder were determined by "was it logical to deem this man a threat" then it would be murder, but I would think that that's a silly definition of murder. It would also mean lots of people who had successful self-defense pleas would currently be in prison.
The fact that he wanted to taser someone who had just been searched, who was laying on his stomach, is sadistic.
To make it not sadistic you have to invent some line of reasoning by which it would be reasonable that the cop would have needed to use his taser in his own defense, instead of for sadistic reasons.
Please invent this scenario.
A) The defendant doesn't need to create reasonable doubt. That's not how the system works. The prosecution has got to disprove all reasonable doubt.
There's no need to invent the scenario. You can use this one. Grant had not been "searched." There's no way to adequately search an uncuffed subject on the ground, precisely because they can be resting on top of their weapon. You secure the subject in cuffs, then you search them. If somebody who is struggling with the reaches into their wasteband, it's a fair assumption they're going for a weapon, which makes drawing the taser reasonable.
I think you're grossly underestimating how easy it is to conceal a weapon and how fast it is to draw a weapon. If somebody on the ground like that actually does produce a gun from their wasteband, you have almost no reaction time.
Also, cops are allowed to use pain to gain compliance. So the intention to inflict pain, even absent a "threat," can be legal anyway. This can include pressure points, other manual physical force, pepper spray, Tasers (generally in the drive-stun mode, but not always) or other means.
This is not assumed to be sadistic, if the purpose is to gain compliance for a suspect during a detention/arrest.
The fact that he wanted to taser someone who had just been searched, who was laying on his stomach, is sadistic.
To make it not sadistic you have to invent some line of reasoning by which it would be reasonable that the cop would have needed to use his taser in his own defense, instead of for sadistic reasons.
Please invent this scenario.
No, you have to maintain the reasonable doubt. Ever heard of presumption of innocence? Burden's on the prosecution to eliminate reasonable doubt.
Also, he could argue that he was trying to assist his fellow officer in gaining compliance, or that he honestly believed his fellow officer was in some minimal amount of danger. While an unreasonable use of force, and thus illegal, it's not sadistic.
He doesn't need to maintain reasonable doubt that the use of force was appropriate, just that his intent was not sadistic. Which is absurdly easy.
So what was the intent behind tasering someone who couldn't possibly have posed a threat?
Please prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he could not possibly have posed a threat.
Actually, scratch that. Prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer didn't believe that he posed a threat.
Because that's the burden you're taking on by trying to prove it was torture. You're not going to meet that burden. Period.
Oh, so I have to prove what someone believed
That's horse shit and you know it. It's impossible to prove what someone believed at the time. You can show what they did and if there was any reason for a person with their training and experience to do it.
You can show what they did, and that there was NO reason for a person with the same training and experience to do it.
The fact that he was laying face down on the ground and was just searched and found to be unarmed by a competent police officer shows that there's no reasonable doubt that this was an unarmed person, in a position that made them incapable of posing any immediate physical threat to the officer.
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IT'S GOT ME REACHING IN MY POCKET IT'S GOT ME FORKING OVER CASH
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
When he accidentally causes the death of someone, as happened here. Execution implies intent. He was struggling with someone he was arresting and he pulled the wrong weapon. It's still not murder.
In order to believe that this wasn't murder, you'd have to assume a level of incompetence that is in and of itself deeply disturbing.
Personally, I'm happy the guy got convicted of anything at all, because I was really scared that he was going to walk. But let's not kid ourselves here - if it were actually involuntary manslaughter, he would have walked.
Does this verdict necessitate a pan-United States PA meetup?
Yeah, I think the issue is that, in relation to this silly "torture then capital murder" theory, people are forgetting that there is a third option (and probably fourth and fifth options) that is not either "completely justifiable and legal use of force" or "intentionally sadistic."
What is it?
Tell me what the intent was, when he meant to electrocute someone who was laying on the ground, on his stomach, having just been searched by a fully competent police officer
What was the intent behind that
Electrocute implies death, by the way.
See my previous post; using pain to gain compliance is an accepted (and legal) tactic. And sometimes necessary when you're arresting/detaining somebody who, you know, isn't down with it.
At which point you're back to having to prove that his intent was malice rather than incompetence...obviously the use of the Taser was unnecessary, particularly in hindsight. But you (putting on your prosecutor hat) have to prove that he knew it was unnecessary. Good luck.
Posts
Yup. See the bolded.
Can you please explain to me how you plan to prove that his intent is to cause injury for the purposes of revenge, extortion, blah blah blah?
Because you can't. And if it's not torture (or another covered act), then you can't use section 189 and you're back to proving good old fashioned murder, where you also can't prove intent.
No matter how you slice it, at some point you're going to have to prove intent. Even for felony murder, you basically have to prove intent to commit the felony underlying the charge. The prosecutor couldn't do it, and I doubt you could either. It simply wasn't provable.
On this front, I'm pretty sure that the jury deciding to convict on anything rather than acquit suggests they completely rejected this long-standing defense. Which is pretty fantastic, really.
Except that he'd just been searched by another cop, and was laying face down on the ground.
Even if he managed to pull a weapon that the other cop didn't find but that could still be quickly accessed
He was laying face down on the ground
So clearly the only reasonable action was to taser him?
It IS sadistic to take an action that you expect to cause harm to someone that cannot realistically harm you.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
One of the officers on scene (yeah, yeah, I know your response to that) said he heard Mehserle say "I'm gonna taze him." Another non-police officer heard the same thing. Mehserle shot Grant in the back... exactly where you would shoot somebody with a taser. Grant didn't die for several hours. If he was deliberately trying to kill him, I think just about anybody could shoot him in the head from that distance. Defense witnesses said Mehserle looked shocked afterwards, put his hands to his head, and said "Oh my god" several times. He had 6 hours of training with the weapon. That's a shockingly low amount. I'm not sure I'd call that "extensive."
But you're right in a sense that this is a defense peculiar to a cop, because there will be very few situations in which a private citizen will find themselves in the exact same circumstances or a similar fact pattern. In the few cases where it might come up, the same standards should apply.
As for your assertion that it should be first degree murder, the state attempted to charge him with it, and the judge reprimanded them for being retarded on that point. I'm no more of an expert on California law than you, but I think I'll defer to the judge's decision on that matter of law.
The series of fantastical events necessary for this to be mere involuntary manslaughter defy all logic.
And we're back to asking what percentage of Taser subjects die from the Taser. Because that number would have to be pretty far from zero to constitute "willful disregard for human life."
Even in cases of struggling and subdued subjects I'm pretty sure that percentage is going to be ridiculously low.
Yes I've seen it. No I don't think the story is ridiculous. This is why I'm saying we will never agree.
The "blah blah blah" you're omitting is the important part. For any sadistic intent.
You tell me how it's not sadistic to taser someone who's laying face down, who has just been searched by a competent police officer.
Also, didn't the other cop have his knee on the guy?
Was Mehserle going to taser someone that another cop was in physical contact with?
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
I don't think they rejected it, necessarily, but that they deemed it an unacceptable bias, which it is.
I still think it's true, and it goes a long way to explain these sort of shootings. Even black police officers, in studies, are shown to be more likely to identify an image of a wrench flashed on a computer screen as a gun if they have been primed with black faces.
It's pretty indisputable that unconscious bias does inform the rapid actions of police officers, especially w/regards to young black men and guns.
Ideally, we train police to avoid situations that require rapid, instinctive action, and also train them to act more consciously and calmly in such situations, probably by inducing high amounts of stress and fear in controlled tests as part of police training, as the military does for soldiers.
He claims that he meant to pull his taser; presuming this was true, the video tape more than proves his intent. The degree to which you must stretch reality to say "Officer Mehserle believed that this freshly-searched kid was going to materialize a gun out of thin air, then shoot it while lying on his stomach" does not come anywhere near the burden of "reasonable doubt." The judge was wrong to throw out the first degree murder charge.
Judges can be wrong.
Unless you have even a minimal willingness to investigate what the mental state of the cop may have been, using established knowledge of how the human brain works in moments of stress.
In which case it becomes super believable, because people are pretty incapable of rational assessment and action once their arousal reaches a certain threshold.
This is why people sometimes freeze in the face of danger. It is how fights can escalate out of control -- have you ever tried arguing with someone in a state of high arousal? Reasonability is worthless in such a situation, because their brains have ceased to be reasonable.
Once the brainstem takes over, forget about someone reasonably thinking to themselves "oh well the other guy searched him so we're fine."
No, his heart is pounding, he's sweating, he's hot, his vision is probably dim or blacked out in the periphery, time is slowed down, he's hyper aware of any struggle/movement on the part of Grant, he may be partially or totally deaf -- he's almost certainly not able to process speech -- and he sees what he interprets as Grant moving for a gun.
This is not a situation where you can transpose a normal mental state in daily life onto the events in question.
The cop was practically a different species, in terms of cognitive ability, at the time of the shooting. It's like expecting a chimp to respond reasonably to a perceived threat.
I've never heard of a single case in which an LA judge acted in a biased fashion with regards to the LAPD.
Not once.
In unrelated news I've just recently awoken from a coma that I'd been in since the early 80s.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Can you prove that sadistic intent beyond a reasonable doubt to twelve of your peers?
Because you've not proven his intent. Simply saying "how is it not intent" doesn't do that. He can simply reply that he honestly felt the suspect needed to be Tased to get him to comply, or for the safety of other officers, and now the burden is on you to prove that his purpose was instead sadistic.
If you can't, we're back to involuntary manslaughter...because he was still criminally negligent in this choice of force (using the Taser, as was his stated intent and which the prosecution was unable to refute), even if his intent wasn't sadistic.
Now, supposedly somebody there was some testimony about a statement prior to the incident that he intended to Tase somebody. Which wouldn't surprise me, since I've heard other officers I know personally talk about going out of their way to Tase people (these are not, I'll note, "friends"). Theoretically, that could constitute the sadistic intent you're looking for, and it might be possible to then stretch the law to support your strategy for capital murder. However, even assuming a prosecutor wanted to bend the law in that fashion (unlikely even for a non-cop, let alone a cop) you'd probably have a hard time getting a jury to buy it. And that is even assuming that whatever testimony there was as to this remark was sufficient to overcome reasonable doubt...which it probably wouldn't be, particularly for capital murder.
Have I addressed this silly theory sufficiently yet?
No, you don't need to prove that his intent was to cause "cruel and extreme pain" which inflicted "great bodily injury."
You need to prove that his intent was to cause "cruel and extreme pain for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion, or for any sadistic purpose" and so on and so forth.
If he was causing "cruel and extreme pain" for the purpose of gaining compliance from a struggling suspect, or rather if that was his intent (even if it was an unreasonable use of force, which the jury seems to have determined) then regardless of the "great bodily injury" then the cop is off the hook.
EDIT: Unless you want to try to spin "gaining compliance" as "revenge," which neither I nor any jury will ever buy, because it's (generally) absurd. I mean, yeah sometimes this is exactly what happens but you won't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Okay, so you're willing to suggest that because he was stressed out it would have been acceptable for him to use a taser on someone who had just been searched, who was still laying on his stomach?
So that's the standard you believe in, that cops can taser anyone they like on the basis that they're stressed
And if they were to accidentally grab the wrong weapon and lift a substantially heavier thing, with a completely different shape, aim for center of mass and put a bullet in someone, well that's also not their fault because they were stressed out
Man I wish I got that kind of leeway to fuck up at my job
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
There's an evidenciary burden to get a charge in front of a jury, if the judge thinks you didn't make it then the jury doesn't get to deliberate on that charge.
"Even the possibility" is not the standard.
Again, you're using hyperbole, but I think it would be interesting to investigate.
I don't think anyone's done reverse studies of this -- of, say, young black men and how their cognition may be impaired by stereotypes of police officers. It may explain to some extent the higher rates at which black suspects try to resist or flee arrest -- being arrested is definitely a state of high arousal, which is a state where stereotypes and unconscious bias come into play.
So, you may be right that this would be a reasonable argument for cases involving resisting arrest. It may also be an interesting argument in murder cases.
Now, of course, it would still demonstrate a certain minimum amount of negligence and so on, but yes this probably could come into play in almost any murder case.
I mean, you know, frankly I don't believe in our current prison system or even our system of punishment for crimes in the first place. The idea that anyone "deserves" to be punished is, to my mind, a ludicrous idea that is widespread only thanks to an in-born sense of justice and punishment that all human beings have.
It is, in the context of a modern society and rule of law, archaic, counter-productive, and ineffective.
Frankly, I'd like to see prisons that are more about education, healthcare, diet, and cognitive behavioral therapy than punishment. Prisons should be more like colleges and hospitals than dungeons.
You have to create the reasonable doubt.
The fact that he wanted to taser someone who had just been searched, who was laying on his stomach, is sadistic.
To make it not sadistic you have to invent some line of reasoning by which it would be reasonable that the cop would have needed to use his taser in his own defense, instead of for sadistic reasons.
Please invent this scenario.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Well, that's possible, but either way I won't continue arguing his physiological state because nobody except him knew what it was, and it doesn't change the fact that he fucked up big time.
If anything, I'd argue for more police working solo because working in groups results in groupthink and lessened feelings of personal responsibility. It gives them the freedom to think "Well, even if I screw up, my fellow cops will back me up, because we're buddies," or that the blame will just get spread between them all. And that is probably exactly what would have happened here had there not been multiple videos and witnesses.
I guess this is where the "better training" comes in. I kind of have a hard time believing he was never involved in a scuffle over a period of 2 years in a subway system (and that's what this was- a minor scuffle), but again I have no way of refuting that so I won't.
True, but I have to disagree with the idea that more accountability won't lead to a reduction in needless taserings/shootings.
No, you have to maintain the reasonable doubt. Ever heard of presumption of innocence? Burden's on the prosecution to eliminate reasonable doubt.
Also, he could argue that he was trying to assist his fellow officer in gaining compliance, or that he honestly believed his fellow officer was in some minimal amount of danger. While an unreasonable use of force, and thus illegal, it's not sadistic.
He doesn't need to maintain reasonable doubt that the use of force was appropriate, just that his intent was not sadistic. Which is absurdly easy.
He wasn't still -- that's pretty clear in the video.
Is it acceptable? That's a very different question from it being understandable, which is all I'm arguing. And I'd say if he had used a taser in that situation I would think some sort of professional reprimand or even a firing would be in order, because while, again, you can understand it, it is hardly an acceptable way for a police officer to confront stress.
This is a problem though, because this is how most humans confront stress, but the job of a police officer demands reactions that are better than most humans. This is, theoretically, accomplished by training and expertise. However, we know that this is not the practical reality.
Again, understandable vs acceptable. I am saying the involuntary (or even voluntary) manslaughter is an appropriate charge. It's not that there should be no reprimand at all.
Essentially, yes. I don't really believe in notions of "fault" or "blame" in any case though.
I mean fundamentally we're very quickly headed towards the free-will thread. And I'm very much not on the side of free-will.
And, again, fault may convey that it was unacceptable, as this shooting was, but that is not the same as understandable/possible.
The question is -- is it possible/understandable that someone could fuck up enough to shoot an unarmed man in the back?
I think the answer is a clear yes. Is it acceptable? God no. But is it possible? Very.
I've done so at least four times in this thread.
This is why the conviction seemed like such a big deal to me...because the standard "everybody can be a threat to any cop at any time" defense was not accepted by the jury as an excuse to use the Taser. They essentially ruled that his (intended, according to him) use of the Taser was not just unjustified, but unlawfully so (making him criminally responsible for the resulting death).
Granted, if nobody had died nothing would have happened, video or no...no prosecutor would have bothered trying him for assault. However, if this gives cops any pause in the use of the Taser (because deaths, while uncommon, do occur from them) then I say that's fucking awesome.
So what was the intent behind tasering someone who couldn't possibly have posed a threat?
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Please prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he could not possibly have posed a threat.
Actually, scratch that. Prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer didn't believe that he posed a threat.
Because that's the burden you're taking on by trying to prove it was torture. You're not going to meet that burden. Period.
What is it?
Tell me what the intent was, when he meant to electrocute someone who was laying on the ground, on his stomach, having just been searched by a fully competent police officer
What was the intent behind that
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
BECAUSE SUBJECTIVELY, HE SEEMED THREATENING TO THE OFFICER
How hard is it to get this across?
From a low-res video in the calm repose of our homes, he obviously does not pose a threat to the cop.
To a man who is in the throes of sympathetic nervous system activation following a struggle with a man his society has conditioned him to believe is fundamentally dangerous he is not obviously un-threatening
This is the disconnect:
You and Than are discussing the crime from an objective/absolute framework. Whereas I am discussing it from a subjective/relative framework, which I think is necessary since we're talking about intent, which is subjective.
If murder were determined by "was it logical to deem this man a threat" then it would be murder, but I would think that that's a silly definition of murder. It would also mean lots of people who had successful self-defense pleas would currently be in prison.
A) The defendant doesn't need to create reasonable doubt. That's not how the system works. The prosecution has got to disprove all reasonable doubt.
I think you're grossly underestimating how easy it is to conceal a weapon and how fast it is to draw a weapon. If somebody on the ground like that actually does produce a gun from their wasteband, you have almost no reaction time.
This is not assumed to be sadistic, if the purpose is to gain compliance for a suspect during a detention/arrest.
But do I believe that the cop could have thought he did, due to fight-or-flight? Certainly.
And in a question of intent, it's about what is a reasonable state of mind for the officer to have, not a disinterested observer.
Oh, so I have to prove what someone believed
That's horse shit and you know it. It's impossible to prove what someone believed at the time. You can show what they did and if there was any reason for a person with their training and experience to do it.
You can show what they did, and that there was NO reason for a person with the same training and experience to do it.
The fact that he was laying face down on the ground and was just searched and found to be unarmed by a competent police officer shows that there's no reasonable doubt that this was an unarmed person, in a position that made them incapable of posing any immediate physical threat to the officer.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Does this verdict necessitate a pan-United States PA meetup?
We could totally be as cool as the teaparty.
I think we're onto something, here.
Electrocute implies death, by the way.
See my previous post; using pain to gain compliance is an accepted (and legal) tactic. And sometimes necessary when you're arresting/detaining somebody who, you know, isn't down with it.
At which point you're back to having to prove that his intent was malice rather than incompetence...obviously the use of the Taser was unnecessary, particularly in hindsight. But you (putting on your prosecutor hat) have to prove that he knew it was unnecessary. Good luck.