Except that ‘murder’ relies on the offender’s state of mind. Otherwise, it’s one of a few forms of manslaughter.
As long as the deceased is black and the cop is white, in other color combinations “your millage may vary”.
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That is immoral and it has to change and it did NOT routinely happen in my day as it does now.
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“On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was asked about the Clark shooting and demurred, referring to it as a local issue.”
They can’t even pretend to give a shit.
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And this is why it’s important to give juries the option of convicting on a lesser crime. If they feel the cops were legitimately afraid for their lives but still fucked up in a legally culpable way, they can convict on voluntary manslaughter instead of murder. Odds are, if the prosecutors bring charges, the cops would plead down to voluntary manslaughter and get 1-3 years of probation on the plea deal.
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I was thinking of “comply” times. How long after an officer gives an order does the suspect have to comply. I keep thinking back to Tamir Rice. He’s playing in a park, some car comes out of nowhere and an officer starts barking commands at him even before the car stops. And there is Levar Jones who got shot in 2014 in S. Carolina for being too quick in following a state trooper’s orders. At least this officer was given 3 years in prison, and Jones didn’t die, and the dashboard cam was working.
Oh and this info I got from Fox News.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/15/ex-south-carolina-trooper-who-shot-man-gets-3-years.html
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Guess what’s not on Faux News’ website.
Guess.
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I’d call racial prejudice and the intention, entering black neighborhoods, to shoot first and ask questions later malice aforethought. But that’s just me, and I understand that manslaughter is the legal dodge that will be used here.
So what I mean is, these cops should be charged with murder. And if only they could be.
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This. even with non-deadly results, there are endless stories of police attacking people for noncompliance in situation where compliance is effectively impossible. If you’re unprepared and someone draws a gun and shouts at you, it’s going to take a minimum of 5-10 seconds to figure out what’s going on and what to do about it. And every time they shout at you again or make a threatening gesture that clock is likely to reset.
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No, police vote Republican so that they can shoot black people in the back.
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Not to mention they didn’t possibly have access to any powerful lights that might have lit him up, maybe like he was performing on a stage or something like that. You certainly don’t want to have any reason not to shoot the guy.
And 7 rounds in the back? He must have been breakdancing.
(and for those who don’t know me, this is completely sorrowful snark.)
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I cannot, for the life of me, imagine why that damned helicopter didn’t have the whole damned yard spotlit, yeah. Add another layer of incompetence to that spotting team.
I’m an attorney but admittedly not a crim attorney (so correct me if I’m wrong), but I believe while 1st degree “murder” is generally for premeditated or intentional acts, 2nd degree is often for “depraved indifference”, which is what I consider shit like this. They didn’t give a fuck what he was carrying. They saw he was carrying SOMETHING so they shouted “gun” and discharged their own. It’s shoot first, ask questions later because “better safe than sorry…and nobody will know anyway.”
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Police Association Chief endorsed Trump and Trump supports Police even when they engage themselves in EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLINGS. Good men in the PD should raise their voice against such outrageous POLICING. America deserves better.
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And end up like Serpico? Fat chance. But the bottom line is certainly this: Bad cops put good cops in danger.
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How do you know “it did NOT routinely happen” in your day? Local newspapers and television stations did not report what cops did to black people and Mexicans back in the day.
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I would’ve thought so, too, but that’s why I went and checked a legal site’s take on California’s homicide laws:
Murder
Voluntary Manslaughter
To be fair, the police didn’t know it was the woman’s grandson – even she didn’t know her grandson was there, and she had told police she knew of nobody in the back yard. Not that I’m saying the police were justified – if they never called for him to drop the gun they thought he had, they have a considerable amount of explaining to do.
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What they said to him was ‘show me your hands. GUN’. They duck back around the corner, then repeat ‘Show me your hands, GUN GUN GUN’ and immediately started firing.
Here you go: