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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
Oh. Well I guess that whole trial by jury thing is a waste of time, since you clearly know exactly what happened.
Well, that was weird.
My mistake. I fix.
There’s really no good outcome in this. None. No matter what a guy is dead at the hands of the state having broken no laws beyond a bad tail light. Even if the cop had a “reasonable fear” it’s still a 100% crappy outcome.
I’ve been very curious about the judge’s instructions to the jury before deliberating. In the brief interviews of jurors I’ve seen locally, I thought they seemed sort of off, confused. And supposedly they were very very quiet with each other, indicating some unease. My recollection of my own jury service was that we clung to the judge’s instructions because we were not educated in the law and the gravity of the outcome weighed so heavily. I’d like to see someone evaluate the outcome in terms of the instructions and the facts presented.
This is my experience on a jury as well. It wasn’t a great and weighty matter (second checking a workman’s comp decision), but everyone on the jury behaved as the type of jurors they would want for their trial. I have no doubt the jury reached what they believed was the appropriate decision, but it was likely appropriate according to the judge’s instructions more than some deeper knowledge of philosophy of how these things are supposed to work.
Just more proof that if “You’re not cop, you’re little people!” The cops have a legal right to shoot anybody at any time. They know the government will have their back if for no other reason that the government 1) wants to maintain its authority and 2) no government wants to pay the cost of being wrong.
A little too cynical for me, but I just had ice cream, so I’m likely compliant for the next half hour or so.
You can be compliant longer than that, that statement is not true. Some more law classes and a little less Prison Planet might be a good idea.
The officer was charged and prosecuted by the state. The jury found him not guilty. So the state did not protect him from criminal charges and a trial.
It isn’t just rhetoric. Police officers are being killed every week by black perpetrators who feel empowered by BLM rhetoric. I am libertarian with a libertarian’s suspicion of authority but this has to stop ! The driver had a long criminal record and a suspended license. The woman with him who passed around a dishonest version of the incident lied again and again.
What is Prision Planet? A movie?
It’s pretty clear she would have been shot if she reached towards him.
From Foxnews:
Not that the officer knew any of this because he didn’t yet have the guy’s ID yet. And none of it is a reason to shoot him. Castile was legally permitted to carry meaning he was a generally law abiding citizen with no felony convictions.
Alex Jones
Again, not the argument made by the OP or the referenced piece by French. Actually read the stuff. It helps. Argue against the points made, not the ones merely imagined.
That’s completely disingenuous. Saying there’s a problem with how the justice system handles cases like this is not the same as calling for the abolition of it.
You’re right it’s not a good outcome.
I think were all arguing from the imagined, unless someone has access to a pdf of the trial transcript, and by the way people are not tried on unwritten laws, and unwritten laws do not contain written elements of the law, nor do unwritten laws contain written defenses that are allowable in court to unwritten laws.
The point of French’s piece, and the idea that spawned my question is “The unwritten law is simple: When an officer is afraid, he’s permitted to shoot.” I even put it in bold in the OP to avoid confusion.
Do average Joe’s get to legally kill people because they’re afraid? I’d argue that they don’t. It takes the fear plus rational, real reasons for the fear. With cops it seems more and more that the mere presence of an armed citizen is enough to create the “reasonable fear” required to make shooting the person legal. That still doesn’t make it right morally or philosophically.
In my home state, the laws were fairly direct. As best I can remember, the wording was something like this: “A citizen who has reason to believe he is in imminent danger of suffering death or grave bodily harm may use lethal force in self-defense.” The key seemed to be reason to believe. One couldn’t use lethal force just because he was afraid. I also believe, but don’t know for certain, that the law addressed more than just firearms as means of self-defense. Knives can also be lethal.
This seems to be something going on in the culture. The internet is full of events such as shootings, fights, wrecks where it seems that people’s first instinct is to start recording on their smart phone. I saw a video the other day of some womyn fighting at a Waffle House. In the video dozens were standing around recording some even getting in the middle of it to get a better shot but nobody tried to stop them. I saw another about a shooting at mrytle beach. When the shooting started some ran but a few could be seen standing around recording. I don’t understand it but this theme seems common.
I reflexively defend the police–four of my brothers have been cops, one still is–but I won’t defend this one. I admit I don’t know all the facts beyond French’s article and a couple of web posts, but the dashcam alone persuades me that this particular cop acted panicky and trigger-happy, lacked the judgment to do the job, and should not have been issued a badge.
But take it from me: no police force I’ve ever heard of instructs its officers that they can kill with impunity. If you don’t like the verdict, it didn’t come about because “the state” allowed it; they prosecuted the policeman and wanted him in jail.
If the VA hospital screws up an operation, it’s not because The State Has a Right to Cripple You. If you eat a bad salad at their cafeteria, it’s not because The State Reserves the Right to Poison You. It’s because a human being screwed up.
How should Mr. Castillo have acted differently to avoid being murdered?
Murder’s a loaded word, Jamie. Did the cop get out of bed that morning and decide to kill the guy? No? Then we’re talking manslaughter, yes? (legal eagles feel free to fill me in). Agreed that there ought to be better justice than this, but that’s what tough cases are.
How should Mr. Castile have acted differently to avoid being killed?
Better?
Yep. He was brutally killed, unlawfully in my opinion; clearly the jury differed with me. It’s as serious as it gets, and to be fair it’s a real problem that the Left complained about for years before most of us paid much attention to it, but it doesn’t mean The Leviathan State is in on it.
I don’t think that is quite the point being argued. It’s more that The Leviathans State has created the conditions where both its agents and the citizenry act contrary to reason or our values.
Hard to argue with you there. There’s a legitimate point about the militarization of civilian police work being made, and a lessening acceptance, even among conservatives, that we Back the Badge no matter what, in any circumstance. But there’s a reason why the pendulum swung this far: it’s because some of us remembered the rise of crime from the early Sixties through the early Nineties. We remember cops being hunted in the streets and being treated with snobbish disdain in the courts. Better policing is a big part of the reason these two trends leveled off and eventually decreased (some).
As it took Nixon to go to China, it takes conservatives to say, OK, time for another look at what we’re tacitly accepting here. But thinking that the “citizenry”, however you define it, is readily distinguishable from “the government” or “the state” in opinions about law enforcement only makes sense if you think there’s been a rejection of “the cops” by “the people”–and outside of Black America, Galt’s Gulch, and moonshine country, I just don’t see that.
Wait, how does someone with a long criminal record get a concealed carry permit?
That comment was a hiccup by my browser.
Here’s what I was responding too :
“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.”
And
“So the officer panicked and killed an innocent man.”
Stating you know why the jury found the cop not guilty, or why the cop fired without a shred of evidence to support your contention.