The Arbery trial / Follow-up: Various

To continue the recent discussions of race and treatment in the courtroom, etc. (cf. [1], [2]):

Today, we saw a near complete conviction of the three accused in the Ahmaud Arbery shooting. (Travis and Gregory McMichael, William Bryan. By “the shooter” I refer to Travis McMichael.)

At a minimum, this speaks against the claimed-by-the-Left pervasive problem with anti-Black judgments (juries, judges, police, whatnot). It might even speak in favor of anti-White or anti-Right judgments (etc.).

I have not followed this trial anywhere near as closely as the Rittenhouse trial, and I do find the behavior of the convicted potentially* much more troublesome than anything that Rittenhouse did. In particular, the type of “provocation” reasoning that (rightfully) failed against Rittenhouse might very well have worked here**—that Arbery might never have grabbed the gun, had he not been followed and spoken too for a prolonged time before the final scene. (Note also the asymmetry that Rittenhouse was trying to get away from the persons that he shot, while here the person shot was the one trying to get away.) Moreover, there might have been lesser crimes (cf. below) involved in a more legitimate manner than for Rittenhouse. At a minimum, there was a lot of stupidity on display.

*The usual disclaimers and reservations like “I was not there” apply.

**With obvious reservations for the different jurisdictions.

Still, I had expected the two non-shooters to be cleared of at least the murder charges. (While the shooter presented a trickier call—at least, based on my level of knowledge.)

This is not at all what happened. Instead, they were deemed guilty almost throughout, including some oddities. A large portion of this is explained by the absurdity that is felony murder—i.e. commit a felony that, even inadvertently, leads to a death and you are a murderer. As can be seen here, the consequences can be entirely out of proportion. Laws concerning felony murder must be removed or reduced to a more reasonable scope.* I am also strongly puzzled over the multiple counts of felony murder per convict, as only one person died.** More generally, as with Chauvin, I find it annoying with multiple convictions for the same crime. (Not to be confused with multiple convictions for different crimes during the same overall event, say false imprisonment at time X and murder at X + two minutes).

*For instance, if someone brings a gun to a bank robbery, even without the intention of more than threatening, a resulting death from an intended warning shot might be a reasonable case of a modified felony murder, because a willingness to kill can be presumed in a different manner than with the Arbery case. (This while deliberately killing someone with the same gun would be regular murder.) However, extending culpability to other participants would, even in this scenario, be very disputable.

**I have not investigated the details of this, but would speculate that each separate felony led to a separate felony-murder charge.

So far, we have mostly issues with unsound laws, not something that involves race.

However, if we look at malice murder (of which only the shooter was convicted), I have considerable doubts. The linked-to page claims:

Malice murder is a criminal offense in the U.S. state of Georgia, committed when a homicide is done with express or implied malice.

[…]

Express malice is “that deliberate intention unlawfully to take the life of another human being which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof.” Malice is implied when “no considerable provocation appears and where all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.”

I cannot see malice, per this definition, as sufficiently clearly present (remember: beyond reasonable doubt) that a conviction would be possible.* On the contrary, if this had been the case, just shooting Arbery as he moved along would have been easily possible. On the outside, I could imagine a situation where someone tried to provoke an apparent self-defense situation in order to shoot with plausible deniability, but this is far-fetched, would be very hard to prove, and seems like far more planning and intelligence than plausible with the current trio and in the comparatively short time-frame.

*But I caution that courts often ignore the “plain text” reading in favor of a slippery slope of diverging precedent. A Georgia lawyer might see it differently.

On the contrary, I see a very large risk that race and/or political opinions* played a greater part than the events and what was plausible to assume from the events.

*I have not studied their opinions in detail, but my superficial impression is that these were legitimately unkosher. (To be contrasted with e.g. the fake claims against Rittenhouse or the general “all Republicans are evil” attitude shown by some Leftists.) Still, the opinions should only be of tangential importance, and only play in where it is important for the case.

Speaking as a non-lawyer, something like manslaughter would have been a more reasonable charge, with “guilty”/“not guilty” hinging on how a self-defense claim played out with the jury.

Other convictions, e.g. for false imprisonment, might very well be justified. (Here I would need a deeper study of the details, but I suspect that, had I been in Arbery’s shoes and had the police arrived before the shooting, I would have filed legal charges of my own.)

Finally, on the race of Arbery: From what I have seen so far, he was not targeted because he was Black, but because he was very legitimately suspected of repeated criminal activities in the neighborhood. Indeed, there is a very fair chance that he actually had just engaged in such activities at the time. (I do not remember whether something conclusive was said on this.)

Excursion on calling the police:
Much of this might hinge on whether the claim, by the shooter, was true that he genuinely believed that the police had been called at a very early stage. If true, it puts a potentially different light on many behaviors; if false, they look very odd indeed.

Excursion on what I thought happened:
I suspect that the convicted were more lacking in judgment than overflowing with malice, that they genuinely thought that they were helping the police and the neighborhood, and that they had no a priori intention of harm, but that their behaviors put Arbery in a position where a great many others would have reacted similarly, e.g. to “grab the gun before he shoots me”. This then followed by a reverse “fire the gun before Arbery can take it and shoot us”.

Excursion on the potential negative influence of anti-White stereotypes on Arbery:
If we look at the scenario in the previous excursion, it might very well have been made worse by the attempts to paint Whites as racists, many of whom would just love an excuse to get rid of a few Black guys. What if this type of propaganda left Arbery with a “they are out to kill me” instead of a “they will drag me to the nearest police station”?

Excursion on another self-defense case/Andrew Coffee:
In parallel with the Rittenhouse case, a Black man was (almost entirely) acquitted on grounds of self-defense, despite having been involved in a shoot-out with the police, instead of fighting of unlawful assailants. Cf. e.g. [3]. So much for Rittenhouse receiving special treatment for being White.

Waukesha car crash? murder? terrorist attack? / Follow-up: Rittenhouse verdict

The reactions to the Waukesha parade incident* go far to prove my points in my recent text on the Rittenhouse acquittal:

*Due to varying claims in sources, I am deliberately vague.

Darrell Brooks, a Black criminal and Trump hater, drives a car into a White crowd killing five (?) and sending dozens to hospital. Headlines encountered today including talk of a mere “car crash” and that the driver would have been fleeing from a knife fight—by implication, innocent victim of circumstance. (How did he get into that knife fight? Would he not have been safe in his car? Should he not have driven more carefully, even if someone with a knife (!) was chasing him? Was someone actually stupid enough to chase a car with a knife?)

Now, maybe these claims are true—I know far too little about the details. However, look at the state of reporting around Rittenhouse at a similar time or how the same incident with “reverse colors” would have been handled: “White supremacist terrorist mows down Black celebrators!!!”

Certainly, calls for life in prison would already be raised by Black activists, no matter the presence or lack of evidence or the presence or lack of exculpating* explanations.

*With regards to e.g. criminal or racist intent. Criminal or civil liability of e.g. gross negligence, reckless endangerment, involuntary manslaughter, or similar, might still apply.

Or consider the case of James Alex Fields Jr., who was involved in a similar incident in Charlottesville. I do not know in detail what happened there either, and I do not claim that he was innocent of intent, but I do know that he received a radically different treatment in the press, long before either conviction or the appearance of a clear image of events. A White man with the wrong political opinions—must be domestic terrorism!

This is equally reflected in his punishment (life + 419 years after “only” one death), which far exceeds the typical level* for even coldblooded murder, even in the U.S. (which tends to have harsher punishments than e.g. Sweden and Germany). Enormous amounts of violence, with definite intent, by Antifa thugs have gone entirely unpunished (including in Charlottesville).

*He did avoid the death sentence. However, (a) this might have been merely the result of a guilty plea, whereby he avoided the risk of death by the guarantee of a long prison term, (b) statistics on the death penalty give a mere 39, nationwide, for 2017, the year of the event and similar numbers for 2018 and 2019, when trials and sentencing took place. (To be compared with far higher numbers of murders.)

As to the conviction, with the reservation that I have not done detailed legwork: He claimed fear, not anger or hate; and I have read a few supportive accounts (a long time ago; I do not vouch for their correctness), including talk of a gunman chasing him. (And note that gunmen are far more dangerous to someone in a car than knife wielders are.) There are signs that he was mentally ill, not evil, even were the act deliberate. (Note e.g. that wannabe presidential killer John Hinckley was given a few decades of psychiatric care and is now back on the streets.) It will, I suspect, be very, very hard to acquit Brooks by arguments that would not also have given Fields a considerable chance of acquittal (assuming equally fair juries).*

*Which is not in anyway a prediction that Brooks will be harshly punished. Considering the overall trends in society and the justice system, I suspect a very different result in terms of sentencing. (How different, I leave unstated.)

Rittenhouse verdict / Follow-up: various

Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote:*

*And even with regard to Rittenhouse the opinion is likely to have been older. (Definitely so on the more general issues.)

Similarly, news reporting around various race-related court cases is often heavily distorted, creating an impression that there is a very clear case, that the accused did have certain motivations, or similar—and if a court, even quite legitimately, finds the opposite later, well, then cries of scandal, racist jurors/judges, and whatnot ensues. And then comes the riots … For an example, the same Swedish news source referred to Kyle Rittenhouse as a right-wing extremist, which is (a) disputable, (b) irrelevant in what currently appears to be a clear-cut self-defense case. But, no, the reader is to think “evil Nazi” and ascribe a motive of hate and malevolence.

After one year, the justice system has caught up on (b) and cleared Rittenhouse fully. Indeed, anyone who has actually followed the trial through non-propaganda channels must have seen the self-defense claims as almost obviously true, including through testimony and video evidence. Well, anyone with an intelligent mind who did not suffer from massive prejudice. (As to (a), I have still not seen one shred of evidence for this being true. However, it would still be irrelevant for a fair trial, even had it been true.)

The news reporting around Rittenhouse and his trial has been a scandal, however. Many sources have tried to distort the events horribly and in a manner not compatible with what was actually shown during the trial. Indeed, even post-trial, the situation is ridiculous and libelous. For instance, visiting MSNBC earlier today, I found headlines like “Kyle Rittenhouse trial was designed to protect white conservatives who kill” and “The Rittenhouse verdict is a symptom of a much bigger sickness in America”—these turn the world on its head. Notably, as to the first: there are strong signs that Rittenhouse was prosecuted and persecuted because he was a “white conservative” (not despite it); the disparate treatment of various ethnic and political groups over the last few years strongly point to “black liberals” (up to and including Antifa terrorist and BLM rioters/looters) being treated far better in court and the justice system than “white conservatives”; and it appears that Grosskreuz (?*) remains unprosecuted for the attempted murder of Rittenhouse, despite the evidence against him being stronger than the evidence against Rittenhouse for the attempted murder of Grosskreuz. Sick and twisted.

*I do not have the energy to check name details.

Looking through older texts, I have found one other that mentions Rittenhouse. In that text I express fear about the risk that fair trials might be disappearing. At least in this specific case, my fears did not materialize. (At least not to the point of a change in verdict. Doxing attempts and prosecutional misconduct did take place, to Rittenhouse’s disadvantage, as might some other problems.)