Let's talk about Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and how unbelievably fucked up this all is

Also, a black woman in Florida has just been sentenced to 20 years for firing a warning shot at her abusive husband, which she tried to justify under "stand your ground" but got the book thrown at her.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/11/justice/florida-stand-ground-sentencing/index.html

The case was prosecuted by the same state attorney as Zimmerman.

honestly, though i don't know all the details, that case is almost as infuriating as the martin/zimmerman business

seriously.

i've been trying to figure out how the case of cece winans plays in here:

Around 12:30 am, CeCe was walking to the grocery store with some friends, all of them young, African American, and either queer or allied. As they passed a local bar, the Schooner Tavern, a group of older, white people who were standing outside the bar’s side door began hurling racist and transphobic slurs at them, without provocation. They called CeCe and her friends ‘faggots,’ ‘niggers,’ and ‘chicks with dicks,’ and suggested that CeCe was ‘dressed as a woman’ in order to ‘rape’ Dean Schmitz, one of the attackers. When CeCe approached the group and told them that her crew would not tolerate hate speech, one of the women said, “I’ll take you bitches on,” and then smashed her glass into CeCe’s face. She punctured CeCe’s cheek all the way through, lacerating her salivary gland. A fight ensued, during which one of the attackers, Dean Schmitz, was fatally stabbed.

come to find out after the fact that the guy had a history of violence and a swastika tattooed on his chest, both facts deemed inadmissable in trial (while a bad check cece wrote once was accepted as evidence of her character). the woman who smash the glass into cece's face wasn't charged with anything.

cece was just found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 41 months.

Cece McDonald, it turns out. I was thinking "Cece Winans? That doesn't sound right. Maybe Cece Penniston...nope, not her either." So off to google I went.

i mean it doesn't 'play in' legally obv but the moral territory is interesting for me in that obv i'd like zimmerman to go down like a fuckin battleship but i'm also in a mileu of people yelling FREE CECE and i'm trying to work through whether or not i'm cool with yelling FREE CECE

oh woops lmao xp

The general narrative wrt this stuff is becoming "think twice about defending yourself if you're not white and heteronormative".

This country gets lucky so many times every day that there's no 'DEL U.S.' key on my word processor of the gods.

Assholes are everywhere, not just the U.S. Only we gear the laws in their favor.

The general narrative wrt this stuff is becoming "think twice about defending yourself if you're not white and heteronormative".

yeah, and i'm kind of shocked by my own naivete in being surprised that this is the case

laws geared in their favor everywhere tbh

yea the cece mcdonald case is i guess a little dicier morally than the martin/zimmerman case, still given the details i know p sure i'm in the free cece camp.

yeah

i put a few more seconds thought into this and i'm free cece all the way

kind of difficult to make an informed judgment given only the info in hoos' quote tbh

glass smasher not catching a charge seems weird tho

more here

http://www.citypages.com/2012-05-09/news/cece-mcdonald-murder-trial/

it's interesting to compare these two cases and then try to decide how i feel about "stand your ground" legislation in general. there are circumstances in which i agree that people are justified in responding forcefully to threats and violence. otoh, there are circumstances in which i think the decision to counter perceived danger with violence should not be legally protected. i feel that i can sort the former from the latter in a way that makes sense to me, personally, but it's very hard to clearly articulate the difference in concrete terms.

Based on the city pages article, even in a state without that awful "kill your enemies" law, this ought to have been manslaughter with a much lighter sentence, and maybe even an acquittal on traditional self-defense grounds; in Florida, this should have been the world's easiest stand your ground acquittal.

It's also pretty clear that McDonald's well-meaning attorneys were way out of their league.

cece was just found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 41 months.

41 months is not bad imo obv prison's no cakewalk but if you take a life self-defense or no doesn't it seem like there has to be some penalty attached?

The sentence is about twice as long as I would expect in a fight like that one with a defendant with no record. And in a "Stand Your Ground" state, it's a bizarre conviction anyway. OTHER FACTORS may have been involved.

sentence was the minimum iirc? also MN isn't a stand your ground state

^ this. it's a fucked situation, but not an outrageous sentence, all things considered.

i mean the sentence could be worse but imo she should have been acquitted on account of self defense

maybe so, but this:

A fight ensued, during which one of the attackers, Dean Schmitz, was fatally stabbed.

is far too sketchy on detail to say either way, really.

there's a good and thorough account of the incident linked not far upthread

as they neared the intersection of 29th Street East and 27th Avenue South, they heard catcalls from across the street. Standing on the corner was Schmitz, a man who looked to be in his mid-40s, with a heavy build, mustache, and sandy blond hair.

What Schmitz and company called out, exactly, is subject to debate. In later interviews with police, Thoreson would only recall that it was something "derogatory" and "sarcastic."

"They were very feminine guys," she said, "something about their walk."

Thomas's recollection of what he heard that night was far more detailed:

"Oh you faggots, you nigger lovers, and whoop-de-woo, you ain't nothing but a bunch of nigger babies," Thomas later recalled in a police interview. "So as they said all that, I go over there and talk to them.

"I backed into the middle of the street, drop my belt like I am ready to fight. He just walk off. And that's when he started talking this stuff, like, 'Oh, look at the tranny over there, look at that tranny.'"

The back-and-forth escalated, and someone smashed a glass across McDonald's face, opening a gash in her left cheek.

"I'll take all three of you bitches on!" Flaherty screamed, according to Thoreson. "She threw the first punch and I heard glass break. It was on."

From there, everyone remembers the brawl a little differently. David Crandell, Flaherty's boyfriend, stepped out of the bar for a cigarette to find multiple members of McDonald's group piled onto his girlfriend, punching, kicking, and beating her with belts, he told police. He wrestled with a few of the strangers, trying to pull them off Flaherty.

Gary Gilbert walked out of the bar to make a phone call and heard the sound of glass breaking on the street, he told police. He saw Schmitz, whom he recognized from the bar, pushing McDonald off the hog pile on Flaherty.

"He was just trying to shove her away," Gilbert recalled.

Schmitz and McDonald moved into the street, away from the rest of the group. McDonald appeared to be holding a blade, while Schmitz clenched his fists and approached her.

"He is just like shuffling his feet like, you know, something like you would do in boxing," Gilbert said.

"You gonna stab me, you bitch?" Schmitz asked McDonald, according to Gilbert.

The next thing Gilbert knew, Schmitz was hunched over.

"You stabbed me!" he accused McDonald.

"Yes, I did," McDonald replied.

After everyone saw Schmitz bleeding, the fighting abruptly stopped.

thanks cont, hoos- i actually read it in the meantime.

I need to take time to read this whole account but, based on that excerpt, it sounds like the larger miscarriage of justice is much more on the side of the glass smasher not having any charges brought against (him?/her?).

I mean, I absolutely understand stabbing a racist but that's still kind of illegal in our country, especially if the racist is unarmed.

yeah hoos you're kind of arguing "if the defendant seems like a generally ok person & the victim's an asshole (both of which seem true here), then it's ok for him/her to kill an unarmed person" imo - bringing your politics to bear on whether it's cool to kill unarmed people seems kinda not a good look imo

^ this is totally true and exactly why i've been waffling & not FREE CECEing

clearly i continue to waffle

chicken and waffle

yeah i agree w/ aero & DJP on this one. again, even with that account, we probably know less than the jury did

"You stabbed me!" he accused McDonald.

"Yes, I did," McDonald replied.

This part just sticks out.

i've seen the confusing claim made that he essentially "ran into" the scissors, and everything i've read neatly elides what happened between "boxing stance" and "guy is bleeding"

that's probably because there's little agreement on what exactly happened there

Used to be that all cases of doubt were presumed to be in favor of the defendant -- that's still the law, but happens very little with defendants that juries don't like for whatever reason.

that's probably because there's little agreement on what exactly happened there
--10. “Pour Some Sugar On Me” – Tom Cruise (contenderizer)

Well yeah

TWU- i'm not sure 'he assumed a boxing stance, then he ran into the blade i was holding' is enough to introduce what you'd call reasonable doubt.

That's not the only thing that happened, nor is it a direct quote from the defendant at trial. Throw the whole ugly situation together, including the defendant's propensity for violence, and you do not have a clear conviction.

We don't really have a clear anything.

well, granted, that's not the only thing that happened- if it was, we can assume that a plea-bargain of second degree manslaughter or w/e would not have been offered by the DA- who seems to have considered the facts and events available pretty carefully.

TWU does have a point

Also, an imperfect self-defense claim (the force was excessive or the threat was unreasonably but not maliciously perceived) is a pretty standard reason to depart downward from the minimum. She was not well-served by her attorneys, I think, and I imagine a good criminal appeals attorney might be interested in handling her case.

I know little about how criminal law works, but I'm surprised McDonald's lawyers failed to get Schmitz' criminal record entered into evidence. If this had gone to trial, the jury probably would have heard much less than us about Schmitz history of violence and his swastika tattoo. Who knows what way the jury would have gone with the evidence that would have been available to them. It's my impression McDonald would have been better served by attorneys who had more experience with this type of case.

speaking personally, this is a good example of how info pathways work. i used to live kinda near the schooner and i didn't know this happened until i saw some 'free cece' stuff on feminist/activist blogs. i don't really pay attention to local issues much, i have to admit.

(maybe this needs its own thread?)

TWU does have a point

maybe, but i don't know how true it is that "all cases of doubt were presumed to be in favor of the defendant" in the past. that's always been the ideal, but degree of doubt is crucial and can't be specified concretely, and i suspect that the ability to earn the sympathy of the judge/jury has always figured in.

given the consequences of possible conviction, the fact that defense took the plea doesn't seem like such a terrible error to me.

From Strange Tales, stuff compiled from around the Web by Roland Sweet for bwcitypaper.com, emph added, cos of the way it popped out at me:

Good News for Ted Nugent
Mayor Bob Buckhorn issued a list of items that will be considered security threats at this summer's Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. On it are masks, plastic or metal pipe, string more than six inches long, air pistols, and water pistols. Real pistols, however, are allowed. "If we'd tried to regulate guns, it wouldn't have worked," City Attorney Jim Shimberg said, noting that state law bans all restrictions on carrying firearms in public places. "Any local ordinance that regulates guns is void."