There are 65 comments.

1. Member
   Stina

   @CM

   9:07 AM EST ⋅ Nov 24, 2021

   I strongly dislike that our ideas and attitudes about law, enforcement of the law, and the establishment of justice is so tied to credentials and institutional approval.

   There are philosophies undergirding our law and order institutions that do not seize to exist when this institutions stop functioning or collapse under their corrupted corpulence.

   The positions of judge, jury, and lawyer need not be confined to those given proper labels by the authority of a functioning state. In a stateless society (or where the state has abdicated its responsibilities), we do not need to descend into anarchy. We can find an impartial judge. We can seek out a jury of peers. We can allow someone who we believe is guilty of a crime the opportunity to defend himself. Our constitution does not just need to apply to the government, but can be used to govern any who seek to apply any governance, even when it is ephemeral, temporary, and situational.

2. Thatcher
   Instugator

   @Instugator

   

   3:59 PM EST ⋅ Nov 24, 2021

   Doug Watt (View Comment):
   A private citizen may make a citizen’s arrest if they witness a crime. A police officer may detain a person without witnessing the actual crime. A police officer needs to have probable cause and a reasonable belief that a crime was committed. A private citizen may not detain anyone for a violation. A police officer may detain someone for a violation.

   The Georgia law is different.

   Here is Legal Insurrection’s take.

   The amount of ambiguity in the statute is really remarkable if only because of the statute’s brevity—it is only two sentences long.  Those two sentences are:

   A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.

   My own reading of that statute, applying normal rules of statutory construction, is that the two sentences present two different scenarios for a citizen’s arrest.  The second sentence refers explicitly to a felony scenario and sets out certain requirements for that scenario that differ from the requirements set out in the first sentence.  My reading is that the first sentence is therefore contemplating the alternative criminal scenario, the non-felony, the misdemeanor.

   So, if the citizen’s arrest is being made for a serious felony, like murder, the person making the arrest is required to have reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion, which Judge Walmsley is interpreting as probable cause.  Fair enough.

   The article was written before the verdict, but the author had serious problems with the Judge’s instructions to the Jury.

   In any case, however, at the end of the day, the question of how this law is to be applied in this criminal trial is not up to me, and it’s not up to ADA Dunikoski

   And most definitely of all, it’s absolutely not up to the jury, whose job is to be the finder of fact, to work through any ambiguity of evidence—not to work through the ambiguity of law.

   The person in charge of the law in a trial is the judge—in this case, Judge Timothy Walmsley.  It is his duty to decide how the law is to be applied to the facts as the jury determines those facts to be proven or not proven.

   And this Judge Walmsley abjectly failed to do.  And in a trial with three defendants looking at life in prison, that’s a contemptible professional failure.

   Remember—the key issue is whether the two sentences in the citizen’s arrest statute are intended to be melded together so that both apply to all arrests, or whether the conditions of the first sentence refer to misdemeanor arrests and the conditions of the second sentence refer to felony arrests.

   That’s the fundamental issue that Judge Walmsley needed to resolve.

   And he did not.

   I anticipate that this failure on the part of the judge will be the key filing for the appeal.

3. Inactive
   BDB

   @BDB

   7:46 PM EST ⋅ Nov 24, 2021

   Regardless, from what scanty evidence I’ve seen so far, this looks like a bad case looking for refuge in a soft law.

   My *opinion* is that these yokels set out to cause trouble and did so.  None of this is to defend the violent mental deficient Ahmaud Arbery, who apparently was so stupid that even his parents couldn’t spell.  Still, regardless of his habit of covering violent thefts with other habit of “jogging”, he didn’t deserve to die at the hands of three self-appointed justices after-the-fact.

   I could be wrong — but I think I’m right.

4. Inactive
   Phil Turmel

   @PhilTurmel

   6:32 AM EST ⋅ Nov 25, 2021

   BDB (View Comment):

   Regardless, from what scanty evidence I’ve seen so far, this looks like a bad case looking for refuge in a soft law.

   My *opinion* is that these yokels set out to cause trouble and did so. None of this is to defend the violent mental deficient Ahmaud Arbery, who apparently was so stupid that even his parents couldn’t spell. Still, regardless of his habit of covering violent thefts with other habit of “jogging”, he didn’t deserve to die at the hands of three self-appointed justices after-the-fact.

   I could be wrong — but I think I’m right.

   That sums it up pretty well.

5. Member
   Z in MT

   @ZinMT

   11:03 AM EST ⋅ Nov 25, 2021

   The 7-7-77 on the side of Montana Highway Patrol vehicles is a ode and a reminder of the Vigilantes of the Virginia City gold fields. The corrupt Sheriff Henry Plummer and his criminal Road Agents were removed violently with less than official trials, but the citizens had a right to organize and protect their property and livelihoods.

   Rioting, looting, and vigilantes are not to be celebrated.

   From what I have seen the Rittenhouse (not a Vigilante) and Arbuery (Vigilantes) trials have turned out correctly. If the recent retail crime in CA is any indication we’ll see more and more vigilantes.