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

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."

The very idea of any average joe in the street being casually able to carry a gun around just staggers me, coming from such a gunless culture as I do. I mean even seeing a cop in the street with their holstered pistol always gives me the creeps.

but think how much less creepy it would be if you knew that every other person around that cop was also carrying a gun

the couple of people i know who conceal-and-carry have both expressed directly to me that they only do it because most people on the street have a gun and they need to it to protect themselves. so there's a bit of wonky thinking going into the "i need a gun all the time" mindset.

Fear and paranoia and the Danning-Kruger effect

while we're digressing about guns, a friend of mine posted this on fb recently. http://boingboing.net/2012/05/09/german-police-fired-85-bullets.html

meanwhile, a single incident here in the US...

some perspective, imo

someone really needs to compile the US stats

if we were comparable to germany, we'd use about 330 a year. suspect it's a few more than that.

would be interesting to see estimates of how many bullets were fired by police and non-police per capita in different countries, wonder where we'd stand

Yeah the other day i was at the Dekalb Farmers Market around closing time and the security guy (I guess a cop, not 100% sure!) out front was packing a effing huge automatic rifle just patrolling the entrance/exit. The only thing that came close to that was when I was in Egypt and outside of the temples they have security with AK47s but then again those are priceless historical temples in deserts occupied by sometimes violent extremists.

yeah that was one of the things that really stressed me out in jerusalem, people in street clothes just standing around with uzis everywhere you went

are you sure that wasn't just an american patriot or something