The Ahmaud Arbery affair

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Alexis Jacobi
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The Ahmaud Arbery affair

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

The crux of this issue is bound to an old Georgia law of one paragraph and two sentences:
The Georgia law reads: "The private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony, and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion."
It would seem -- it seems so to me but I only have a superficial understanding of this law -- that those who sought to detain Ahmaud Arbery had the right of law on their side. That is, if the first sentence is taken to refer to a misdemeanor infraction (since it is clear that the second sentence clearly refers to a felony infraction).

This entire case hinged on the issue of whether the defendants did or did not have the *right* to pursue, stop and arrest Ahmaud Arbery. Obviously, the law reads as I have quoted it.

The argument of the prosecution was that those who pursued and attempted to detain Ahmaud Arbery did not have right of law on their side. So, by doing so they committed a whole group of illegal acts.

Ahmaud Arbery was in this view, and in this interpretation of the law, within his rights to resist the attempted arrest, and that when he tried to disarm the man, or fight against him, he was in his right to do so.

Therefore, everything these 3 men did was entirely illegal from the start.

My thoughts on this matter are that their conviction was not properly attained. That is to say that -- I assume for political, social reasons -- that the legal issue was not properly defined to the jury by the judge. And that is to say that the law, as it is written, does allow a citizen to pursue and arrest a suspect in a minor crime (misdemeanor).

So in the reading, or interpretation, of the law that was operative at the time, it is Arbery who was *ignorant of the law*, not those who pursued and tried to detain him. He was obligated (I assume) to stop and submit to the arrest since, again if this reading is correct, instead of trying to flee.

He very definitely did not have a right to attempt to resist, or attack, those who pursued him. (Though in most other states there is not a right to citizen's arrest. In Georgia that law was in effect).

If there is ambiguity in the law, jurisprudence refers to the the legal doctrine of lenity. When a criminal statute is ambiguous, "that ambiguity is always to be resolved in the favor of the defendant, never in the favor of the State. It is the government that drafted that statute and passed it into law, not the defendant. If they left in ambiguity, that’s on the government, not the defendant."

I wonder if this conviction, in whole or in part, will be overturned on appeal. It would seem they have a very good chance at it.
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henry quirk
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

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"The private person may arrest an offender *if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony, and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion."

*right there is your critical point...did Arbery commit a crime in the three's presence? did the three know he committed a crime? or did they chase, attempt to detain, and kill a fella who just seemed suspicious?

From the not-always-accurate wikipedia...

Police interview transcripts detailed that Gregory initiated the chase after seeing Arbery running past his house, suspecting that Arbery had committed burglary or theft in Satilla Shores, but no evidence has emerged of Arbery doing so. According to police testimony, Bryan told police that he saw the chase and joined in independently, but was not sure if Arbery had done anything wrong.
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

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Alexis Jacobi wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 3:47 pm The crux of this issue is bound to an old Georgia law of one paragraph and two sentences:
The Georgia law reads: "The private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony, and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion."
It would seem -- it seems so to me but I only have a superficial understanding of this law -- that those who sought to detain Ahmaud Arbery had the right of law on their side.
Yes!!!

Yes they had right on their side IF jogging was illegal - last time I looked Jogging in NOT illegal.
I hope they stay in prison the rest of their lives.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

henry quirk wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:32 pm*right there is your critical point...did Arbery commit a crime in the three's presence? did the three know he committed a crime? or did they chase, attempt to detain, and kill a fella who just seemed suspicious?

From the not-always-accurate wikipedia...

Police interview transcripts detailed that Gregory initiated the chase after seeing Arbery running past his house, suspecting that Arbery had committed burglary or theft in Satilla Shores, but no evidence has emerged of Arbery doing so. According to police testimony, Bryan told police that he saw the chase and joined in independently, but was not sure if Arbery had done anything wrong.
To clarify: He would not have had to commit the 'offense' in the presence of all three, but only in the presence of one. That one could then. validly I assume, communicate to others that some sort of crime may have been committed.

I am not at all sure if Wiki should be relied on. And I find that I cannot rely on any newspaper nor journalism source, either. And I am frankly unsure if those who did pursue him had enough 'reasonable cause' to have detained him.

The Times put it like this:
  • The verdict suggested that the jury agreed with prosecutors’ arguments that Mr. Arbery posed no imminent threat to the men and that the men had no reason to believe he had committed a crime, giving them no legal right to chase him through their suburban neighborhood.

    The case has been one of the most closely watched trials with civil rights overtones in the United States since the April murder conviction of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was captured in a bystander video kneeling on the neck of another unarmed Black man, George Floyd, for roughly nine minutes. The video of that incident created an international uproar and raised serious questions about the treatment of minorities at the hands of police.

    The slaying of Mr. Arbery was also captured on a videotape that was widely viewed by the public. And the trial of his accused killers also brought up issues of policing — although in this case, it involved questions about private citizens and their rights to detain people who they believe to be breaking the law.

    Those rights in Georgia were spelled out in a controversial Civil War-era statute that was significantly weakened by state lawmakers in direct response to the outrage over the Arbery killing. Lawmakers also passed Georgia’s first-ever hate crimes law as a result of the incident.

    All of that set up a remarkable kind of trial in which the defendants claimed they were not guilty based in part on an old law that their actions helped to dismantle. At the same time, they were not charged under the new Georgia hate crimes law., though all three have also been indicted under the federal hate crimes statute.
From a Washington Post article on the issue:
The McMichaels have said they recognized Arbery from surveillance footage of an under-construction home that Arbery entered several times in the months leading up to the shooting. Travis McMichael also said he saw Arbery at the property on the night of Feb. 11, 2020, and reported the encounter to police.
That could be considered to be 'reasonable cause' if the statute is taken on its face.
Dunikoski, who will give her final rebuttal Tuesday morning, acknowledged that Arbery had entered the unfinished home unauthorized. But she called him nothing more than a “looky-loo,” saying that trespassing — a misdemeanor — would not legally justify the defendants’ actions. She noted that Travis McMichael did not tell police about the alleged thefts from a boat that he said bolstered his belief Arbery was a burglar.
The first sentence of the ambiguous law would seem, in contrast to the second, to refer to minor crimes -- misdemeanors.

She based her prosecution on the second sentence -- that they had insufficient cause to believe he had committed a felony. But she admits that he did commit a misdemeanor.

Again the first sentence is ambiguous but lenity should have, or could have (and may eventually?) favor the condemned.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Sculptor wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:47 pm Yes they had right on their side IF jogging was illegal - last time I looked Jogging in NOT illegal.
I don't think they tried to stop and detain him because he was jogging. I think they tried to stop and detain him because he had been seen entering a house under construction -- technically trespassing. And they definitely suspected he might have committed robberies but this was, of course, pure suspicion.

The issue hinges on the trespassing infraction. If it occurred.

But it is false to say they killed him because he was jogging!
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Lenity is an ancient doctrine that speaks to fair warning and fair play. It is afforded out of fairness to a criminal defendant when s/he faces the possibility of conviction and sentencing under a statute that is less than clear.
A statute is ambiguous only where it is open to two or more constructions, or where it is of such obscure or doubtful meaning that reasonable minds might disagree or be uncertain as to its meaning.
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henry quirk
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

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Seems to me the three had no just cause to chase, detain, or kill the fella.

His crime -- actin' suspicious -- was no crime at all.

Applyin' lenity so abuses the concept it's rendered meaningless (and what of the presumption of innocence?)

The facts, as I understand them, are simple: a fella was seen runnin'; three found it suspicious (one claiming he recognized the fella from broadcasted security camera footage); the three weren't jeopardized by the fella; they gave chase solely based on suspicion; they attempted to detain him; they killed him.

More fundamentally: the three killed the fella cuz he seemed suspicious.

We can, of course, wade into the weeds till the water is over our heads.

We can set aside fact in favor of legalism (and if we do, the three might very well end up free men).
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

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Alexis Jacobi wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 5:07 pm
Sculptor wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:47 pm Yes they had right on their side IF jogging was illegal - last time I looked Jogging in NOT illegal.
I don't think they tried to stop and detain him because he was jogging. I think they tried to stop and detain him because he had been seen entering a house under construction -- technically trespassing. And they definitely suspected he might have committed robberies but this was, of course, pure suspicion.

The issue hinges on the trespassing infraction. If it occurred.

But it is false to say they killed him because he was jogging!
White people enter and leave house all the time.
These three jobless clowns were looking for trouble. They had nothing better to do so had armed themselves and were playing at being "toy cop". The black guy had every right to fear them, and NOT accept any bullshit about citizen arrest.
You might want to try to get a life and use your imagination.
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 3:47 pm The crux of this issue is bound to an old Georgia law of one paragraph and two sentences:
The Georgia law reads: "The private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony, and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion."
It would seem -- it seems so to me but I only have a superficial understanding of this law -- that those who sought to detain Ahmaud Arbery had the right of law on their side. That is, if the first sentence is taken to refer to a misdemeanor infraction (since it is clear that the second sentence clearly refers to a felony infraction).

This entire case hinged on the issue of whether the defendants did or did not have the *right* to pursue, stop and arrest Ahmaud Arbery. Obviously, the law reads as I have quoted it.

The argument of the prosecution was that those who pursued and attempted to detain Ahmaud Arbery did not have right of law on their side. So, by doing so they committed a whole group of illegal acts.

Ahmaud Arbery was in this view, and in this interpretation of the law, within his rights to resist the attempted arrest, and that when he tried to disarm the man, or fight against him, he was in his right to do so.

Therefore, everything these 3 men did was entirely illegal from the start.

My thoughts on this matter are that their conviction was not properly attained. That is to say that -- I assume for political, social reasons -- that the legal issue was not properly defined to the jury by the judge. And that is to say that the law, as it is written, does allow a citizen to pursue and arrest a suspect in a minor crime (misdemeanor).

So in the reading, or interpretation, of the law that was operative at the time, it is Arbery who was *ignorant of the law*, not those who pursued and tried to detain him. He was obligated (I assume) to stop and submit to the arrest since, again if this reading is correct, instead of trying to flee.

He very definitely did not have a right to attempt to resist, or attack, those who pursued him. (Though in most other states there is not a right to citizen's arrest. In Georgia that law was in effect).

If there is ambiguity in the law, jurisprudence refers to the the legal doctrine of lenity. When a criminal statute is ambiguous, "that ambiguity is always to be resolved in the favor of the defendant, never in the favor of the State. It is the government that drafted that statute and passed it into law, not the defendant. If they left in ambiguity, that’s on the government, not the defendant."

I wonder if this conviction, in whole or in part, will be overturned on appeal. It would seem they have a very good chance at it.
Where does it say you can kill them?
I don't see how they are all guilty of murder though.
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

Post by commonsense »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 5:03 pm
henry quirk wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:32 pm*right there is your critical point...did Arbery commit a crime in the three's presence? did the three know he committed a crime? or did they chase, attempt to detain, and kill a fella who just seemed suspicious?

From the not-always-accurate wikipedia...

Police interview transcripts detailed that Gregory initiated the chase after seeing Arbery running past his house, suspecting that Arbery had committed burglary or theft in Satilla Shores, but no evidence has emerged of Arbery doing so. According to police testimony, Bryan told police that he saw the chase and joined in independently, but was not sure if Arbery had done anything wrong.
To clarify: He would not have had to commit the 'offense' in the presence of all three, but only in the presence of one. That one could then. validly I assume, communicate to others that some sort of crime may have been committed.
Not so. If one communicated to the others, then the others were not acting on immediate knowledge.
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

Post by commonsense »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 6:49 pm Where does it say you can kill them?
I don't see how they are all guilty of murder though.
I think the reason that all three were charged with murder is that being an accessory to a crime is legally viewed to be the same as committing the crime.
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

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vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 6:49 pmWhere does it say you can kill them?
I don't see how they are all guilty of murder though.
I assume that, in Georgia and under that law, one has the right to pursue and arrest someone that one (a citizen) has sound reason to suspect committed a crime. It would not be unreasonable, if this is so, that those men pursued Arbery because 1) he was trespassing that day (though I am uncertain if the condemned saw him that day trespassing) and 2) he had been observed before also trespassing (if it is true that the condemned man did in fact see him).

I am uncertain what the law is in Georgia about pursuing someone suspected of a minor offense with lethal weapons (guns, rifles, shotguns). It seems to me that this is an important point. If it is legal for a citizen to pursue and arrest, can they do so brandishing a waepon and threatening with that weapon?

In any case, two of these men pursued Arbery with guns. They assert that while making the (one supposes) legal effort to detain him that he, Arbery, assaulted one of them. Having seen the notorious video I can see why that argument could have been made. They were attempting to arrest him (legally), he resisted, and in close quarters made an effort to grab the man's weapon.

That is when the shots were fired. One could make the argument of 'self-defense' and, in America (and possibly nowhere else) there are very robust self-defense rules.

He could only have been shot in a clear situation where self-defense was required. His argument, through his defense, was just that. It is not an unreasonable argument if all the other facts of the case are seen in a specific light.

However, it is also possible, and indeed more likely, that many who see the video and contemplate the incident will *see* something else. They will see a man being *hunted down and assassinated* because they merely suspect him of trespassing or robbing property.

And the worst-case interpretation is that they set out to kill him because they are malicious people.

The latter argument is the one that resonates with most people, and certainly Black people in the South.

So my question revolves around 'the facts' -- the law itself, and the justification for the pursuit and arrest. Obviously, when Blacks in and out of the South look at this event they do not see the precise and cold facts, they see a history of abuse under the protection of the law. It seems to me fair to say that they invest this event, and the men who did it, with historical culpability that may not, in fact, be deserved.

The social atmosphere in the States, obviously, is riled and highly emotional. It is obvious that, in a sense, facts do not matter.

What matters is what people feel. And then what seems right. It seems right that those men should be condemned harshly. It fits into the general social movement of the time. But I cannot be certain that their condemnation was, in fact, justifiable.

And again it all hinges on how the judge instructed the jury to interpret the law that was on the books in Georgia at that time. The judge may have committed the legal error.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

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commonsense wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 7:13 pmNot so. If one communicated to the others, then the others were not acting on immediate knowledge.
The Georgia law reads: "The private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. Immediate knowledge is an example of ambiguity.

If I tell you that some person committed a crime, you now have 'immediate knowledge' though you did not see the crime yourself.

The ambiguity of the law cannot, in American jurisprudence, benefit the State (prosecution). It can only benefit the accused. That is, the State cannot take advantage of an ambiguous law. But the accused can.
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

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Sculptor wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 6:36 pm White people enter and leave [that] house all the time.

These three jobless clowns were looking for trouble. They had nothing better to do so had armed themselves and were playing at being "toy cop". The black guy had every right to fear them, and NOT accept any bullshit about citizen arrest.

You might want to try to get a life and use your imagination.
It should not have a great deal -- or anything -- to do with my imagination. It must only revolve around concrete points of law. As I said the prosecution's case was built on the fact that 1) he did illegally enter that property and thus was trespassing that day, and 2) that citizens had a right to pursue and arrest him.

According to Georgia law. Not your imagination, and not my imagination. I recommend thinking like a lawyer, which is the only way to think in this case.

It does not matter if they were jobless, or clowns, or good people, bad people or mediocre people. What matters is if they had or did not have the right to pursue and arrest that man, under those precise conditions.

My suggestion would be that those who see this through their imaginations (desires, hopes, emotions, suppositions) will not be able to see it correctly.

But the other question I face is should a person -- you, me, anyone -- take action to defend property?
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: The Ahmaud Arbery affair

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

henry quirk wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 5:28 pm His crime -- actin' suspicious -- was no crime at all.
It seems to me that you are seeing with bias. He was (according to the facts admitted by the prosecution) committing an illegal act: trespassing. This is a fact. It is not imagined or supposed. The prosecution acknowledged it.

It was a crime. A minor one (a misdemeanor). And to see it or describe it differently is inaccurate.

I do not mean to oppose you personally. I am just trying to get clear about the actual facts.
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