Black Lives Matter
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@canefan said in Black Lives Matter:
@snowy said in Black Lives Matter:
@canefan said in Black Lives Matter:
So third degree is manslaughter in NZ? IMHO his actions fit 3rd degree best
Minnesota law and the wording will be different to NZ.
Some states had 5 degrees of "murder" apparently. They seem to have changed it a bit, so that "manslaughter" is more prevalent wording than using so many degrees of murder.I mentioned the "depraved mind" bit because I think as @Crucial says that is going to be hard to prove. Didn't know that he supposedly had issues in the past. His whole life will be brought under the spotlight due to that depraved mind stipulation though.
I now know far more about Minnesota law than I really need to.
IIRC he had previous form. But I don't know if being a sadistic bastard who likes to abuse his position to cause physical harm to people will qualify him as guilty of murder
Probably need to get away from common usage of the word murder and think in terms of the legal definition.
Even "depraved mind" isn't quite what it seems in legal terms and came up in the Noor case. He got both 3rd murder and 2nd manslaughter and was also in Minnesota. There do seem to be some issues in the police dept there.
Anyway - from the Noor appeal:
"Defense attorneys have various avenues to appeal the verdict, but immediate post-trial speculation is on that third-degree charge and the requirement of a “depraved mind,” which in legal parlance doesn’t mean what it does in common usage. It’s a fuzzy area of Minnesota law that left experienced criminal litigators puzzling after the verdicts this week.""In the analysis of Brad Colbert, a criminal law expert and professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, a key factor would be the instructions the judge gave the jury before they went back to deliberate. The finest of legal lines lies between the “depraved mind” required for a murder conviction and “culpable negligence” of a manslaughter conviction, he said."
“Can we say it’s murder to unreasonably defend yourself?” University of Minnesota criminal law professor Richard Frase asked.
A depraved mind is “more than unreasonable behavior,” he said.
Frase said Noor’s physical defense of himself would have to be “reasonable” behavior, otherwise “any time someone panics, they can kill you.”
So who really knows what it is supposed to mean?
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@canefan said in Black Lives Matter:
evincing a depraved mind
From here.
In Minnesota, if a person dies while you are committing a crime as minor as fist fighting or drunk driving, you can be convicted of murder. There is a general presumption in the law that a person must have evil intent to be charged for a serious crime. The idea is that if a person does not intend to commit the crime, they don’t have the mental state necessary to be held responsible for a serious crime like murder. However, Minnesota disagrees.
Depraved Mind Murder
Depraved mind murder (or depraved heart murder as it is sometimes referred to) is a type of third-degree murder in Minnesota. Minnesota’s statute for depraved mind murder reads, “whoever, without intent…causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life…” is guilty of depraved mind murder. ¹ Charging a person with depraved mind murder relies on the assumption that there are reckless acts so dangerous that a person should be charged with murder if another person dies while you are engaging in them.
Examples of depraved mind murder include violently driving an automobile ², the accidental discharge of a gun during a fight³, and Mohammed Noor’s widely publicized charge of shooting a woman while on duty as a police officer.
[NB: Noor has appealed, which was rejected, and it is at their Supreme Court now or soon I think]
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@gt12 said in Black Lives Matter:
Examples of depraved mind murder include violently driving an automobile ²
Woman who tried to commit suicide and killed someone else driving got done for 3rd degree IIRC.
@gt12 said in Black Lives Matter:
the assumption that there are reckless acts so dangerous that a person should be charged with murder if another person dies while you are engaging in them.
That wouldn't look good for Chauvin. The "so dangerous" comes into play though. Define that. His actions likely to cause injury or harm - yep, likely to cause death - possibly. In this case yes.
I used to define my employment contract as a tribute to the lawyer that wrote it. Not a single phrase was black or white (probably shouldn't use that expression here).
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@snowy said in Black Lives Matter:
I used to define my employment contract as a tribute to the lawyer that wrote it. Not a single phrase was black or white (probably shouldn't use that expression here).
He was simply future proofing his profession.
I'm certain that at some law firms they sit at Friday drinks laughing at how one of them is billing hours to interpret and argue something one of the others billed hours to write in the first place.
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@booboo said in Black Lives Matter:
@crucial I hinted at that earlier when I said he failed to assist a dying man.
Does that make him responsible for his death? Does that meet the threshold for First Degree Murder beyond all reasonable doubt? Or somewhere else on the spectrum of illegality?
I suspect the latter, but I'm not a legal expert, on the jury (thank goodness), or across the evidence much beyond @Siam 's summaries
That's not remotely true. Fern membership confers great wisdom in all areas.
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Interesting summary of the Chauvin trial here (via Kiwiblog):
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/04/the-chauvin-trial-so-far.php
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@snowy said in Black Lives Matter:
@jc Know it all's unite.
Unfortunately the motto is:
"Awful analysis, incorrect conclusions, zero insight
Wrong about pretty much everything"That is likely to include Minnesota law.
Don't turn our motto back on us!
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@nzzp said in Black Lives Matter:
Interesting summary of the Chauvin trial here (via Kiwiblog):
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/04/the-chauvin-trial-so-far.php
That's a pretty useful summary. Worth reading and following to get an idea of the trial in the context of the jury's role. A role that might decide where the US goes from here
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@jc said in Black Lives Matter:
@snowy said in Black Lives Matter:
@jc Know it all's unite.
Unfortunately the motto is:
"Awful analysis, incorrect conclusions, zero insight
Wrong about pretty much everything"We're just as likely to be wrong about the motto as anything else.
Very philosophical. Are we wrong about being wrong, or are we just wrong?
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surely 'reasonable' comes into play here. Was it reasonable to assume he needed his knee on his neck for those 9 or so minutes?
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@nostrildamus said in Black Lives Matter:
surely 'reasonable' comes into play here. Was it reasonable to assume he needed his knee on his neck for those 9 or so minutes?
Yes. That very word was mentioned in one of my earlier posts.
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Sorry if it's already been discussed, but I've just seen the video and properly heard the story about Daunte Wright.
I mean, what the? After 26 years on the force how do you mistake your gun on one hip, for your taser on another? Surely they also feel quite different in the hand and then look quite different when you aim up...
I find it really hard to buy the mistake line. Moment of thoughtless madness?
Edit: it also seemed like even hurriedly firing a taser might have been a bit much in the situation, but hard to judge from a couple seconds of vid.
And did I see right that she somehow ended up without the gun?
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@bones said in Black Lives Matter:
Sorry if it's already been discussed, but I've just seen the video and properly heard the story about Daunte Wright.
I mean, what the? After 26 years on the force how do you mistake your gun on one hip, for your taser on another? Surely they also feel quite different in the hand and then look quite different when you aim up...
I find it really hard to buy the mistake line. Moment of thoughtless madness?
Edit: it also seemed like even hurriedly firing a taser might have been a bit much in the situation, but hard to judge from a couple seconds of vid.
And did I see right that she somehow ended up without the gun?
It's actually not that hard to get mixed up. I have seen it done in training, and once I did it at change of shift. Someone asked for my Taser and I got my gun out and practically handed it to him before realising.
If it can happen in training it can definitely happen when it's squeaky but time.
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@crazy-horse would you not be a bit more focused in SBT? Or is it a muscle memory type thing?
If you're actually firing a weapon at someone, would you not be inclined to take that split second when the weapon is in front of you to check/aim before pulling the trigger?
And after 26 years?
I'm genuinely curious, not trying to be a dick.
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@bones said in Black Lives Matter:
@crazy-horse would you not be a bit more focused in SBT? Or is it a muscle memory type thing?
If you're actually firing a weapon at someone, would you not be inclined to take that split second when the weapon is in front of you to check/aim before pulling the trigger?
And after 26 years?
I'm genuinely curious, not trying to be a dick.
You’d think easy right hand = gun. Awkward left hand = other means.
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@catogrande said in Black Lives Matter:
@bones said in Black Lives Matter:
@crazy-horse would you not be a bit more focused in SBT? Or is it a muscle memory type thing?
If you're actually firing a weapon at someone, would you not be inclined to take that split second when the weapon is in front of you to check/aim before pulling the trigger?
And after 26 years?
I'm genuinely curious, not trying to be a dick.
You’d think easy right hand = gun. Awkward left hand = other means.
I think you generally wear your gun on the opposite hip for easy draw? In the video the other officer had taser on left and gun on right, so reach across for taser, or more awkward down and up to get gun out.
Edit: I think I read or saw that somewhere anyway, maybe in the Wiggles doc/book.
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@crazy-horse said in Black Lives Matter:
@bones said in Black Lives Matter:
Sorry if it's already been discussed, but I've just seen the video and properly heard the story about Daunte Wright.
I mean, what the? After 26 years on the force how do you mistake your gun on one hip, for your taser on another? Surely they also feel quite different in the hand and then look quite different when you aim up...
I find it really hard to buy the mistake line. Moment of thoughtless madness?
Edit: it also seemed like even hurriedly firing a taser might have been a bit much in the situation, but hard to judge from a couple seconds of vid.
And did I see right that she somehow ended up without the gun?
It's actually not that hard to get mixed up. I have seen it done in training, and once I did it at change of shift. Someone asked for my Taser and I got my gun out and practically handed it to him before realising.
If it can happen in training it can definitely happen when it's squeaky but time.
Yeah, hard to read anything into this other than a tragic accident judging by her immediate reaction and shock. You could perhaps argue carelessness. If the situation only warranted a taser, and that was to stop him (he wasn't being aggressive) then it shouldn't have been such a frantic situation that you couldn't check.
I watched the video and it is unclear if the cop that did the shooting pulled the weapon at the last moment or had already pulled it. That could make a difference in that she pulled the gun then started thinking taser and got confused.
Just shows how fucked up the US is that police even feel the need to be pulling any weapons in such a benign situation. If they had stepped back and talked he would have driven off. Big fucking deal.
They must think Police 10-7 in NZ is a comedy. I've seen scrotes on that actually pushing and taking swings at cops and they still just de-escalate the situation as priority.