Oregon Occupiers - Not Guilty of Firearms on Federal Property Despite Video Evidence

DarkPrimus

Jazz wrote: »

DarkPrimus wrote: »

Is there a thread about the Dakota Access Pipeline protests?

Doesn't look like it. Which is a tad odd now you mention it.

I don't have enough information to do an informative OP that the topic deserves.

But a reporter was shot by police (rubber bullet, thankfully) while interviewing protesters there. She got it on video, and has just uploaded it because, well...

WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO.
Speechless. I was shot by militarized police WHILE interviewing a peaceful man at Standing Rock live on camera. I woke up this morning with the thought that I may have that very footage – and broke down in reliving the 40-second horror before my own eyes. Warning: it's very very difficult to watch and sent me into quivers and tears, even without the compounding historic trauma that Native Americans face.
I do not wish to divert focus away from the bravery of the Water Protectors, from the power of nonviolent direct action, from the people fighting for their lives and for our futures – but I want you to witness the indiscriminate use of excessive force firsthand. Many have said that militarized police firing a rubber bullet at a female reporter was a fabrication, provoked by violence, or otherwise merited, including a Morton County, North Dakota press release. That is a lie; we have proof and eyewitnesses (cc Josh Fox, Matt McGorry, Jordan Chariton, Josue Rivas, Evan Simon, Josh Fox, Wes Mekasi Horinek, Kendrick Sampson, Doug Pineda, Doug Good Feather and countless more).
I was standing innocently onshore, not making any aggressive gestures, never exchanging a single word with the police who fired at my lower back from their boat. Peaceful souls were seeking to cross the river to hold a prayer circle on Army Corps public land, but halted by over one hundred hostile military police armed with and deploying tear gas, pepper spray, batons, and rubber bullets, as well as assault weapons and the threat of jail, only one week after 141 individuals were brutally arrested. I was shot at pointblank range, dozens were maced and pepper sprayed in the face, hundreds faced freezing waters. There were no arrests or deaths and I will be okay physically, but the safety and wellbeing of many peoples and lands remain in danger, for present and future generations.
Thank you for your prayers, for your action in calling upon our President, government and Department of Justice to halt this atrocity immediately, for showing up and donating to support this fight for human rights, for the environment, for peace. Please continue to pray for the strength and protection of all peoples, for the physical pain, for the emotional trauma, for the desecrated land. #StandWithStandingRock #NoDAPL

https://twitter.com/ErinSchrode/status/794255752055562240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

DoctorArch

Those e-mails to juror #4 confirm one of my major suspicions:

Q. What about counts 4 and 5? What was the thinking with those? (Count 4 was a property theft charge against defendant Kennth Medenbach for driving a refuge truck to the Safeway in Burns and Count 5 was a property theft charge against Ryan Bundy for helping to remove FBI surveillance cameras from two utility poles near the refuge.)

A. With count four, we were split for a good while and it didn't look like we could agree. Because this law requires us to consider intent, one of the jurors pressed hard on the issue of what Medenbach was thinking (adverse possession: he believed it was no longer a refuge truck).

This is literally "he couldn't have the necessary intent because he was too stupid." It also justifies future militia and sovereign citizen actions in that as long as they stick to their claim that they don't believe the law applies to them, they can't have the requisite intent for criminal charges.

hippofant

We didn't steal the truck. The owners abandoned it after we marched into their workplace with guns.

DarkPrimus

DoctorArch wrote: »

Those e-mails to juror #4 confirm one of my major suspicions:

Q. What about counts 4 and 5? What was the thinking with those? (Count 4 was a property theft charge against defendant Kennth Medenbach for driving a refuge truck to the Safeway in Burns and Count 5 was a property theft charge against Ryan Bundy for helping to remove FBI surveillance cameras from two utility poles near the refuge.)

A. With count four, we were split for a good while and it didn't look like we could agree. Because this law requires us to consider intent, one of the jurors pressed hard on the issue of what Medenbach was thinking (adverse possession: he believed it was no longer a refuge truck).

This is literally "he couldn't have the necessary intent because he was too stupid." It also justifies future militia and sovereign citizen actions in that as long as they stick to their claim that they don't believe the law applies to them, they can't have the requisite intent for criminal charges.

Thinking the law doesn't apply to you shouldn't absolve you when you break it.

DoctorArch

DarkPrimus wrote: »

DoctorArch wrote: »

Those e-mails to juror #4 confirm one of my major suspicions:

Q. What about counts 4 and 5? What was the thinking with those? (Count 4 was a property theft charge against defendant Kennth Medenbach for driving a refuge truck to the Safeway in Burns and Count 5 was a property theft charge against Ryan Bundy for helping to remove FBI surveillance cameras from two utility poles near the refuge.)

A. With count four, we were split for a good while and it didn't look like we could agree. Because this law requires us to consider intent, one of the jurors pressed hard on the issue of what Medenbach was thinking (adverse possession: he believed it was no longer a refuge truck).

This is literally "he couldn't have the necessary intent because he was too stupid." It also justifies future militia and sovereign citizen actions in that as long as they stick to their claim that they don't believe the law applies to them, they can't have the requisite intent for criminal charges.

Thinking the law doesn't apply to you shouldn't absolve you when you break it.

Unfortunately, the jury in this case didn't get that memo.

hippofant

DoctorArch wrote: »

DarkPrimus wrote: »

DoctorArch wrote: »

Those e-mails to juror #4 confirm one of my major suspicions:

Q. What about counts 4 and 5? What was the thinking with those? (Count 4 was a property theft charge against defendant Kennth Medenbach for driving a refuge truck to the Safeway in Burns and Count 5 was a property theft charge against Ryan Bundy for helping to remove FBI surveillance cameras from two utility poles near the refuge.)

A. With count four, we were split for a good while and it didn't look like we could agree. Because this law requires us to consider intent, one of the jurors pressed hard on the issue of what Medenbach was thinking (adverse possession: he believed it was no longer a refuge truck).

This is literally "he couldn't have the necessary intent because he was too stupid." It also justifies future militia and sovereign citizen actions in that as long as they stick to their claim that they don't believe the law applies to them, they can't have the requisite intent for criminal charges.

Thinking the law doesn't apply to you shouldn't absolve you when you break it.

Unfortunately, the jury in this case didn't get that memo.

That seems like something the judge would be responsible for in their instructions, clarifying what intent is and how the law, you know, works.

Shadowfire

DarkPrimus wrote: »

Jazz wrote: »

DarkPrimus wrote: »

Is there a thread about the Dakota Access Pipeline protests?

Doesn't look like it. Which is a tad odd now you mention it.

I don't have enough information to do an informative OP that the topic deserves.

But a reporter was shot by police (rubber bullet, thankfully) while interviewing protesters there. She got it on video, and has just uploaded it because, well...

WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO.
Speechless. I was shot by militarized police WHILE interviewing a peaceful man at Standing Rock live on camera. I woke up this morning with the thought that I may have that very footage – and broke down in reliving the 40-second horror before my own eyes. Warning: it's very very difficult to watch and sent me into quivers and tears, even without the compounding historic trauma that Native Americans face.
I do not wish to divert focus away from the bravery of the Water Protectors, from the power of nonviolent direct action, from the people fighting for their lives and for our futures – but I want you to witness the indiscriminate use of excessive force firsthand. Many have said that militarized police firing a rubber bullet at a female reporter was a fabrication, provoked by violence, or otherwise merited, including a Morton County, North Dakota press release. That is a lie; we have proof and eyewitnesses (cc Josh Fox, Matt McGorry, Jordan Chariton, Josue Rivas, Evan Simon, Josh Fox, Wes Mekasi Horinek, Kendrick Sampson, Doug Pineda, Doug Good Feather and countless more).
I was standing innocently onshore, not making any aggressive gestures, never exchanging a single word with the police who fired at my lower back from their boat. Peaceful souls were seeking to cross the river to hold a prayer circle on Army Corps public land, but halted by over one hundred hostile military police armed with and deploying tear gas, pepper spray, batons, and rubber bullets, as well as assault weapons and the threat of jail, only one week after 141 individuals were brutally arrested. I was shot at pointblank range, dozens were maced and pepper sprayed in the face, hundreds faced freezing waters. There were no arrests or deaths and I will be okay physically, but the safety and wellbeing of many peoples and lands remain in danger, for present and future generations.
Thank you for your prayers, for your action in calling upon our President, government and Department of Justice to halt this atrocity immediately, for showing up and donating to support this fight for human rights, for the environment, for peace. Please continue to pray for the strength and protection of all peoples, for the physical pain, for the emotional trauma, for the desecrated land. #StandWithStandingRock #NoDAPL

https://twitter.com/ErinSchrode/status/794255752055562240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

.... There are no words.

Aside from "fuck everyone involved with that."

DoctorArch

I think the judge royally screwed the pooch in this case by allowing the defense to testify about adverse possession and their completely non-legal version of it, essentially allowing the defendants to preach sovereign citizen doctrine to the jury.

DoctorArch

For example, sovereign citizens don't get their way in court because they preach legal mumbo jumbo before the judge and the judge shuts that shit down hard and it (normally) never gets to a jury. In this case, the judge probably deferred towards letting the defendants talk about their own theories because otherwise they wouldn't have had a defense at all. I understand the judge's reasoning, but I think it was flat wrong and ultimately detrimental to the legal system.

In other words, you don't get to tell a jury that you didn't break the speed limit because only God can set a speed limit and man's laws do not bind you.

kedinik

Yeah it's crazy to me that the judge allowed a defendant to argue his own nonsense interpretation of legal intent

DoctorArch

I fully expect them to try the same thing in the Cliven Bundy / Bunkerville trial in Nevada and claim that they couldn't have had the intent to impede federal officers because they don't believe the federal government has any legitimate authority.

In other words: bullshit.

Schrodinger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ3dk6KAvQM

Oregon Militia basically adopted the "white friend, Chip" defense.

i.e., "I'm sorry officer, I didn't know I couldn't do that."