The System at Work.

What's that? Juries trust the word of cops over "civvies" by way of superstition? Stop the presses. Also: Fuck tha police, coming straight from tha underground.

What boggles my mind is the Jury found he was wronged by the Police and still felt he was guilty for the charges they felt wronged him. Your not forced to find someone guilty, it's the right of the jurors to come to any conclusion without consequence. Their verdict contradicts their feelings.

Before the verdict was delivered, a note from the jury was sent to Flournoy, which he said was “indicative of the verdict.” It read, “We’ve all reached a verdict. To us we feel he has been wronged. Please consider that in his sentencing.

Apparently people no longer know what "jury nullification" means. A jury's duties is to also monitor the state to see if they have wronged the person in question, and verdict not guilty. This is why the system uses citizens to choose the verdict.

How twelve individuals came to this conclusion boggles my mind.

They should lock up that DA who tried the case.

People like him need to be taken off the job.

Mr. Freeze said:

What's that? Juries trust the word of cops over "civvies" by way of superstition? Stop the presses. Also: Fuck tha police, coming straight from tha underground.

The American justice system is fucked up, for choosing to listen to simple stupid people, such as the jury.

This happened in Texas. I don't feel the need to say anything else.

Let's not be so hasty here, I mean given the circumstances what if this monster in the next 30 days bought several more houses and was found by police to be living in them? Think of the children!

Graf Zahl said:

They should lock up that DA who tried the case.

People like him need to be taken off the job.

Why should the defense attorney be taken off the job? I don't see what he was doing wrong, he was trying to defend this man against an unjust sentence for not really doing anything wrong.

I mean, yeah, he resisted arrest, but he wasn't a burglar, only living in his own home.

Sodaholic said:

Why should the defense attorney be taken off the job?

Graf may be referring to the District Attorney.

Sodaholic said:

Why should the defense attorney be taken off the job? I don't see what he was doing wrong, he was trying to defend this man against an unjust sentence for not really doing anything wrong.

I mean, yeah, he resisted arrest, but he wasn't a burglar, only living in his own home.

DISTRICT. it's DISTRICT.

Csonicgo said:

DISTRICT. it's DISTRICT.

And now we see exactly how this verdict happened.

Ohhh, heh. Oops. I feel kinda dumb now. :P

DONT YOU WATCH LAW N ORDER?

Someone posted this in the Zdoom IRC, then I submitted to Dailyrotten and it got posted! "Police Victorious Over Simpleton"

Why is it legal to hire cops with less than genius intelligence? If you're going to give people the power to fuck up people's lives they should have to be smarter than most people.

Mr. T said:

Someone posted this in the Zdoom IRC, then I submitted to Dailyrotten and it got posted! "Police Victorious Over Simpleton"

You have contributed to society greatly, friend.

Also, I'd like to pull a Spank and make my fear of America public. Seriously, since 911, I wouldn't move to the 'states if I had to.

Technician said:

You have contributed to society greatly, friend.

Also, I'd like to pull a Spank and make my fear of America public. Seriously, since 911, I wouldn't move to the 'states if I had to.

Yes, and that's an excellent headline.

Technician said:

Apparently people no longer know what "jury nullification" means. A jury's duties is to also monitor the state to see if they have wronged the person in question, and verdict not guilty. This is why the system uses citizens to choose the verdict.

QFT

You know, it'd be nice to see a headline about cops invading an innocent man's home ending up dead, for a change. If that started happening maybe this JBT crap would end...

Andy Olivera said:

QFT

You know, it'd be nice to see a headline about cops invading an innocent man's home ending up dead, for a change. If that started happening maybe this JBT crap would end...

HAHA Yeah right, you'd have public outrage over the death of a police officer and some schmuck looking at the death penalty.

Get real, if the police here can get away with killing children, the elderly and caged dogs while raiding homes, even wrong homes, then nothing is going to change.

Police officers in the united states can literally kill you and walk.

The thing is, he was guilty of resisting arrest. Now, I'm not saying that he should have been given a custodial sentence. I'm not even saying that it should have gone trial but he did do what he was charged with.

Equally, if he gave no indication that it was his home during the arrest, then how were the police to know? He was just some guy running away, locking himself in the bathroom and, given that pepper spray etc was used, possibly being threatening or even violent when he came out of the bathroom. Throughout, from the report above, there seems to have been no reason for the cops to think it was his home (his defence would surely have provided evidence to that effect had there been any) - what would you do if you were a cop in that situation?

However, IMO, as soon as it was discovered that it was his home, he should have received an apology, not a court summons.

His sentence is not a good result but, as unpalatable as it is, he was charged with resisting arrest and he did resist arrest.

Yea, but he's a manchild, he only know to run from potential danger. The judge even scolded him for being silent, which is his right.

He should have listened to dave chapelle's theory...white people get away from the cops by pretending they didn't know any better :D

Reading that article, it appears Judge Flournoy is an asshole.

Technician said:

Yea, but he's a manchild, he only know to run from potential danger.

True, and I certainly wasn't saying that it was right for him to be locked up, merely that he did resist arrest. Presumably the cops had no way of knowing about this guy's mental capacity and responded how they would normally do when turning up at a house where they have been told someone is breaking in and the person responds in the way this guy did.

However, somewhere between the cops making the arrest and the thing coming to court, someone somewhere should have stopped the process.

As for being scolded for keeping silent and for his silence apparently influencing the outcome against him... yeah, that does seem to go against the "right to silence" doesn't it? :/

Enjay said:

As for being scolded for keeping silent and for his silence apparently influencing the outcome against him... yeah, that does seem to go against the "right to silence" doesn't it? :/

Well that's easy, see, in the united states the 5th amendment is simply a shield for wrongdoers and criminals. A loophole in our justice system as it were.

In the UK (as in the US I believe) people have to be told exactly what is happening to them when they are arrested. The wording in the UK used to be something like "You have the right to remain silent but anything you do say will be taken down and may be given in evidence".

However, that was changed a while back (in the mid 90s I think - as part of a number of other changes) to:

"You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

This was quite a controversial change because previously there was no implication that remaining silent could be harmful to you (and it was generally assumed to mean that you had the right to silence without it being prejudicial to you) but the revised version made it clear that remaining silent could go against you. It was quite a "rights" issue at the time IIRC.

Actually, that may be England and Wales. I think the Scottish version is slightly different, but amounts to much the same thing.

The system's obviously failed badly in this case. What'll be the next legal/judicial low point in Angelina County, prosecuting a quadriplegic for driving their motorized wheelchair without a license?

You all know what to do. The only solution is to

GreyGhost said:

The system's obviously failed badly in this case. What'll be the next legal/judicial low point in Angelina County, prosecuting a quadriplegic for driving their motorized wheelchair without a license?

Maybe they'll take a hint from Georgia cops and shut down a girls' lemonade stand for not having a business license.

Lüt said:

Maybe they'll take a hint from Georgia cops and shut down a girls' lemonade stand for not having a business license.

Nice. Now, I'm going to guess that these particular cops were just dicks. However, part of the problem of having a system like we increasingly do is that everything has to be recorded. There has to be an audit trail and every decision has to noted on a form and processed.

Now, often, that is a good thing but it also means that in those good old traditional situations where a cop would previously have used his judgement to turn a blind eye to something harmless or whatever, so many of them are paranoid and do everything by the book even if it is utterly ridiculous for them to do so for fear of being chewed out or sued for not following procedure.

The system frequently limits (or is perceived to limit) the ability of individuals to exercise their professional judgement and so stupid stuff like that happens.

Or those cops could just be dicks, like I said.