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Defaulting to the State
Police Ofc. Jeronimo Yanez and Philando Castile.
David French has written twice about the verdict in the Philando Castile case: the first when the verdict came down; then again when the dashcam video was made public. Of Yanez (the officer who shot Castile) he wrote, “he still panicked, and he should have been held accountable. The jury’s verdict was a miscarriage of justice.” After the video was released, he wrote why he believes the verdict came down as it did. “When I saw that palpable panic, I immediately knew why he was acquitted. The unwritten law trumped the statutes on the books. The unwritten law is simple: When an officer is afraid, he’s permitted to shoot.” [emphasis mine]
This is not the only unwritten law we follow in our criminal justice system. We’ve built and operated the entire thing to default to the defendant over the state; some would say we do so to a fault. The idea was first espoused by Voltaire who wrote in 1749, “that ’tis much more Prudence to acquit two Persons, tho’ actually guilty, than to pass Sentence of Condemnation on one that is virtuous and innocent…” which was expanded by Blackstone in 1783 to be “For the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer…” and multiplied in 1785 by Benjamin Franklin to read “That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.” When the power of the state is brought to bear on a citizen, we’ve held that it is a greater injustice to imprison the innocent than to set free the guilty. My question is this: does the maxim hold when citizens are holding the state to account?
Jeronimo Yanez did not unholster his weapon as a citizen. He did not fire seven shots lethally into the body of Philando Castile as one either. He did so with the full power and authority of the government. In his interaction with Castile, Yanez was the state. The state killed a citizen for no reason greater than fear. If we default to the side of the citizen in cases where liberty is at stake, then why do we default to the state in cases where life is lost? Why do we follow the unwritten law that when an agent of the state is afraid of a citizen, he is permitted to take the citizen’s life?
Published in Law, Policing
Who is talking about permitted? Isn’t that kind of an absurd overstatement?
Calling Yanez, “The State,” dehumanizes him and ignores that he is a man and a citizen just like you and me. Officer Yanez did not sign his Constitutional rights away when he took his oath. He is innocent until proven guilty beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt just like everyone else. Whatever you may think of the merits of the specific case (I haven’t payed enough attention to make a call) we cannot, and should not blithely throw away a man’s right to a fair trial just because he happens to work for the government.
If the guy with the gun empowered by law to initiate force isn’t the state the exactly who the hell is?
But if we treat those who work for government differently and, as French says, operate based on unwritten law then isn’t the trial inherently unfair to begin with?
I would echo echo this sentiment and say the officer is a citizen first, and an agent of the government second.
That he, as a citizen, upholds the request of his neighbors, through the agency of government.
Too empowered for that to be true, in my opinion.
Or maybe he was reaching for his gun.
“Police are 18x more likely to be killed by a black assailant then an unarmed black by an officer”.
I’d be so interested to know how military personnel who have been in active duty would have handled that situation, if they would have let Castile get his wallet out or if they would have shot him. To me, it seems like a timing issue. An officer has his or her gun out and his or her finger on the trigger. How much time does that give him or her to wait to see if the guy is pulling out a wallet or a gun?
I have never shot a gun before so I’m not sure how long it takes to do so once it is in your hand and aimed.
I’m also not sure why the officer was yelling and swearing at Castile instead of repeating his instructions clearly.
Citizens don’t have ranks of Corporal, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Major….
So it’s because he was black…
Did Castile think that by just saying “I’m not reaching for it” and “I’m not pulling it out” that he could lull the cop into being shot? Why even tell the officer he had a gun?
It’s equally possible that, as French intimates, he was a bad cop, it was a bad shoot, and he was acquitted because we have a different, lesser standard when an agent of the state kills someone.
Didn’t he lose his job?
He was a simple man in what the dashcam showed. He wasn’t abusing his position of power, he was simply a fearful man in that moment. I think the BLM rhetoric made officers more fearful than normal.
I was surprised by the verdict. If there was any case that even had a chance, it was this one. I think it was right he is no longer an officer. Outside of that, I’m not certain about the result.
But they’re not military either. They do separate themselves from us though.
Agreed. I don’t think we need a standard for use of force that wrongly restricts it when it is necessary, but I fear that we’ve leaned a little too far the other way with this.
If the guy with the gun empowered by law to initiate force isn’t military, then exactly who the hell is?
Militarization of police forces is a whole other topic, though one very connected to this.
“The State” is not a person. Officer Yanez is. As I said before, your argument requires dehumanizing an American citizen who has rights. If the prosecution could not make its case to the jury’s satisfaction, then the defendant must go free. No exceptions.
That’s actually not the argument made by French and me. The argument is that the police are held to a lesser standard than citizens. If you shot someone because you were afraid would you be acquitted? So far as I know from the available information Castile did not draw his weapon. The officer shot him based only on knowledge that he had it (which he only knew because Castile informed him) and a fear that he was drawing it even though Castile told him more than once that he was not doing so.
That may be part of it. That’s the reality of crime in the US.
Horse manure. I work for the government. Everything I do as part of my job is not me as a citizen doing it but the state doing it through me. I do lay down certain rights (like free speech) at 6AM M-F and act as the state.
I think there were strange things going on in this case. Something was hinky—about Philando Castile and about his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds. I say this not because I (always) give police officers the benefit of the doubt—though I’ll admit, I do—but because Diamond Reynolds’ first impulse when her boyfriend was shot was not to try to render first aid, nor see if her daughter was okay nor even panic and shriek…it was to calmly reach for her phone and start recording and uploading video of her dying loved one.
That’s weird. I don’t know what it means, but it makes me a little more inclined to think that Yanez was reacting to more than just Castile’s actions. Doesn’t mean Yanez got it right, either, only that sI’m willing to believe that something strange was happening.
Yanez’ account of his thoughts during the incident shouldn’t necessarily be judged the way you would judge ordinary reason. Police officers who have been involved in deadly force (or apparently deadly force) incidents have told me that, along with remembering the weird acronyms their long-ago academy instructor taught them about “confronting the suspect armed with an edged weapon” they have thoughts like “I needed to mow the lawn” and “but this guy is wearing Crocs.” Your brain is working as fast as it can in such situations, grabbing at any bit of random information hat might somehow help it figure out what the heck is going on. “She let this guy smoke in the car with her daughter?” isn’t as weird as these thoughts get, by any means.
Reynolds has since gone on to be arrested for assaulting a woman with a hammer.
But we restrain the state and those acting on its behalf from acting based on race.
What law are you and French citing which says that the police are held to a lower standard?
Depends on if a jury found my fear reasonable.
What this comes down to is you and French think the jury got it wrong, which is reasonable, but you’re trying to turn this into something ominous when it’s not. Yanez was tried and the prosecution’s case was found lacking. That’s how it works.
Whenever someone argues that, “It’s difficult to convict X,” the implication is that the law should make it easier. That is far more tyrannical than anything you or French are fretting about.
Indeed. Taken in isolation though, a legally armed citizen who is assuring an officer that he isn’t reaching for his weapon shouldn’t be shot. We lack entirely the view the officer had, but if the view from the other officer is any indication there likely wasn’t enough activity to shoot since the other officer didn’t even put his hand on his weapon. That said, my gravy…why on earth would you keep moving your hands at all when the officer says to stop?!? When a cop says “Don’t reach for it!” the appropriate response is not to reach AT ALL for anything.
So if you make a mistake that hurts someone, you should be willing to go to prison without a meaningful trial? Because that’s the standard you seem to be demanding for the police.
Not in the real world. if you think cops are going to ignore the fact that blacks males age 14-35 are 3% of the population and commit 50% of violent crimes and 50% of the murders, good luck. I’m not saying he shot him because he was black. But only a fool would not recognize there is a significant increase in risk in an interaction with a black male.
Allow me to quote the OP:
I’m not entirely certain I agree with French 100% on this, but I know I can’t just flippantly say the jury got it right, especially not when an agent of the state is seemingly getting easy treatment on killing a citizen who committed no crime. Making a cop scared is not a crime. Legally carrying a weapon sure as hell isn’t a crime. Being black isn’t a crime. I just can’t add up enough particulars here (probably because I don’t know them all) to equal the authorization to use deadly force.
So the officer panicked and killed an innocent man.
No, I’m not, and you know I’m not. I’m saying that when one acts on behalf of the state he is both empower by our laws and limited by them. We don’t grant carte blanche power to anyone in government.
I won’t argue that point because I can’t. Yes, the calculation changes, but does it change enough for this shooting? If a cop knows those statistics enough to change his behavior in interactions then he probably also knows that permitted, legal gun bearers are the least likely citizens to commit violent crime or murder. The cop either knows both or neither, not one or the other.
And a jury was ok with that because he was a cop. At least that’s what I got from French’s piece, hence my question of if we have things backwards.
Oh. Well I guess that whole trial by jury thing is a waste of time, since you clearly know exactly what happened.