Too many of the potential jurors said that even if the defendant, Elisa Meadows, was guilty, they were unwilling to issue the $500 fine a city attorney was seeking, said Ren Rideauxx, Meadows’ attorney.
So much time, effort, and resources wasted towards trying to fine someone $500 for doing something humane. Our “leaders” are out of touch with reality. Can we fine them for wasting our tax dollars on shit that doesn’t matter?
with “leaders”, the best course of action usually involves guilliotines.
You really believe that? I’ve had way too many conversations with people that generally support the mentality of the stick over the carrot.
My cousin, totally not super conservative or anything, just gen x, was talking about how Mike Tyson (I think) had said his son couldn’t box like him cause he didn’t know what it was like to be hungry. I was just like, is that important for us to have boxers?
Stop telling them this in advance! They can’t get at your work material or deliberations. Just give them a general affirmative and go on to nullify that shit.
Also, at the point you can’t seat a jury because they’re telling you they won’t convict there has to be some kind of slaughter rule. To stop wasting the court’s time if nothing else. Because at some point you’re just letting the prosecutor choose a verdict, not a jury.
Exactly. Well put
Don’t lie under oath, but you also don’t have to scream from the hilltops that the whole damn system is out of order and ensure that someone who is heavily invested in punishing the people for feeding the homeless gets your spot in the jury instead.
What the fuck did I just read?
Humans arrested and charged for feeding hungry and needy humans
That’s a level of Freedom ©®™ I just cannot comprehend
That’s fucking evil
You’ll fucking love this one then: Ohio pastor charged for opening church to homeless people in freezing weather
Welcome to America!
Home of the fuck you i got mine
With a lot of right-wing voters, it’s “fuck you and me, someone else got theirs”
I thought it was just “fuck you”.
One day we will be in the utopia summed up only by “fuck”.
Very elegant. Nothing to add, nothing to take away. Perfection.
Worse: they think they got theirs but didn’t. The group most likely to experience homelessness? Boomers. The group most entering the workforce? People over 75 years old.
An entire generation worked so hard to put their vision of the world out there but couldn’t see that they were destroying their own future in the process.
Somehow freedom morphed into Free Dumb.
Believe it or not, it used to be illegal in most places to be in public if you were maimed or deformed. We’re talking veterans will be arrested for walking down the street. The reason? Good christian folk suffer when they see it, it has to be kept out of sight.
This is the 20th century version of that.
This still goes on with dress codes directed at women. “This women’s skirt is an inch too short, all the boys will turn into sexual predators!”
Men should grow beards because other men might become sexually attracted to them if they don’t.
The bear community has something to say about that.
This is a reference from a couple years back. Don’t recall where but a Muslim scholar made this argument. It’s bad to not have a beard just in case, apparently.
What if men have beards and other men are attracted to men with beards?
Believe it or not, straight to jail.
Not just jail in many countries.
SHHH, don’t create a new point of panic amongst the fearful.
Making me look up the source 😡
Had no idea that it was called that. The San Francisco law was specifically the one I was thinking of.
You’re breaking the money chain! Believe it or not, prison.
So the DA is just allowed to say, “I don’t like any of my choices in this jury pool” and that’s just okay?? That doesn’t sound like a fair trial at all. It’s like grabbing the stack of lottery tickets from behind the counter and starting to scratch them off. When somebody comes to make you stop you just say, “it’s all good. I’m just trying to find one I like before I decide to play the lottery today.”
The process of jury selection is complex. It good that it’s this way, however it can be abused if the system itself (meant to keep it working properly) breaks down. One of the most important elements in that is that the officers of the court (both lawyers and the judge) are operating honestly and in good faith.
So, you see the problem.
To over-simplify, as I understand things…
There’s a variety of reasons a juror can be rejected, with one of them being “the juror is not willing to follow the law, as written”. This seems to be what’s happening here, the law says that if a person does X, the penalty is fine Y, and these jurors are saying “I would not issue fine Y even if you prove they did X.”
To an extent, this is the system working they way it’s supposed to, one of the checks on unreasonable laws is being unable to find people willing to enforce them in good conscience.
Although that process can also be heavily abused, such as when all white juries would routinely find white defendants not guilty when they very obviously lynched black people.
deleted by creator
How simple can this be?
Could I convict someone for a victimless crime that helped people? The answer is yes. Yes of course I could. I could also have an affair, blow up my car, do a naked tap dance on my boss’ desk, tell my kids that I don’t love them, and finish the day trying to underwater basketweave.
If the laws of the physics does not prevent me from doing something the answer to the question “can I x” is yes. If the question is it likely well that is a much different story.
People have to learn how to jury nullify properly
Unfortunately this is a very cut and dry indication of intention of jury nullification, and that is a reason to dismiss a potential juror. They shouldn’t have said anything and then nullified once they actually got on the jury.
Not even intent, even the risk that someone has the ideological basis that could justify nullification in that case is enough to throw them out.
It’s actually why it took a while to prosecute the boston marathon bombers, because the jury selection ran face first into the fact that the jury pool was bostoners and bostoners lean pretty sharply against the death penalty, which is what the prosecutor was after.
Both parties get a certain number (like 2 or 3) chances to excuse anyone, no reason required. Outside of that, you’re raising technical reasons to the judge and the judge does the dismissing. If the judge doesn’t buy the reason and the other party doesn’t object, they may just end up on the jury.
This makes sense to me, but I also think that you shouldn’t be able to dismiss the jury en masse more than once. Jury pools are what, 20-30 people? If they can’t find 12 people and/or set 1 doesn’t work out for some reason and the judge agrees, you get one more shot and either accept the hand you’re dealt or drop the case.
When something of similar scope happens to the defense they can ask for a change of venue, and if it’s granted that’s it. The trial proceeds.
This is picked up on elsewhere in the thread that basically this, itself, is a form of jury nullification. If the law is so bad that they can’t ever get a jury together to try a case, then that law is unenforceable and effectively nullified.
This sounds like an abstraction of a general “problem” in the system. If you set a law with consequences that no reasonable person would think is proportionate to the crime no jury will convict someone of the crime. It was a real problem back when the death penalty was too broadly applied.
One particular thing with the abortion ban debates that is overlooked is how common women killing children under the age of one used to be before birth control/abortion legality. In those eras courts (usually somewhere between 1850 and early 1900’s) had to put new laws on the books to lower their punishments well off of full murder convictions because juries would refuse to apply full murder charges broadly to the category because at some level they accepted it as kind of a natural but volitle reaction to misery beyond the control of the person that the juries were very empathetic towards because a woman’s lot being particularly miserable was an accepted social norm.
These “problems” have ways of figuring themselves out. If you can’t reliably find a jury you have to change the law.
Jury Nullification! Tell a friend, tell an enemy, tell everyone. Take back our country.
Yeah but pipe down about it during jury selection, they screen for us.
Weird how it works. The one time I got jury duty I was ready to nullify and got given a case where the accused was accused of a raping a 11 year old.
Hmm I don’t think I am going to nullify that particular law. Sounds like a good one to keep on the books.
They rejected me anyhow, guess the defense didn’t want a parent of young daughters on the jury for some strange reason
Whenever they call up jurors for drug trials where I’m at they’ll inevitably end up throwing out most of the pool because even trials related to legit scum who are peddling the life ruining stuff can be derailed by the Legalize it Campaign apparently
Just because you think the law is bad doesn’t mean you like criminals. They are unrelated. A morally good person can be a criminal, a shitty human being could always be following the law.
Nullify bad laws.
Yeah that’s the rub though, I don’t trust people to decide what the bad laws are given which ones they’ve done it for previously.
The bad laws that get nullified tend to be a lot less impactful than the good ones that get nullified,
The practical application of it historically has convinced me that nullification is something akin to the death penalty,
There are without a doubt cases where it ought to be applied, but I do not at all trust my fellow humans to be capable and consistent judges of those circumstances.
I don’t trust people to decide what the bad laws
Do you know how representative democracy works?
but I do not at all trust my fellow humans to be capable and consistent judges of those circumstances
Right but a civil servant in a black dress is trustworthy. Like for example Clarence Thomas.
First, that assumes I don’t think judicial review is a crock of shit, which I do
Second, the legislative process of changing the law with a large body representing the broad national political crossection of opinions regarding how the law should change is far more legit than a bunch of Idaho’s good ol’ bois getting to decide they rather don’t care for the notion of enforcing a law that would prosecute a man for raping a 12 year old because “oh well he’s from a good family! We don’t wanna ruin his life now do we‽”
Yeah but here’s the thing, if they can prove you knowingly steered the jury towards nullification post selection they’ll prosecute you for perjury because the screening questions basically total up to “Would you nullify a guilty verdict? Yes or No?”, so doing it on purpose and being too obvious about it can get you put in front of your own jury.
Which is why you stick to the facts. Dispute them.
Testimony? Witness is lying.
Forensics? You think it is pseudoscience.
Footage? Photoshop, easy to do.
Confession? Given under duress.
It isn’t that hard to be a cynic. Just spend some time on the internet.
Too many jurors… don’t know about jury nullification.
Jurors are expressly prevented from being educated on the third option to avoid its use.
In this case, it is because jury nullification was originally used by racists to give white murderers a pass for killing black people.
Yes, jury nullification can have positive uses, but also terrible ones.
I don’t think the law CAN function when there’s an enormous segment of constituents that don’t believe in it. If you have 99.9% racists in a country, it’s going to be near-impossible to write laws that put them on a jury and achieve an equitable result.
Ideally, the change today is not that jury nullification is impossible - it’s that the percentage of racists has drastically fallen such that even in extremist counties you’d be unilkely to get 12 racist jurors.
And, while old examples are around racism, this could extend to other extreme feelings of justice; in fact I’d say this current case is a good one, if 99.9% of constituents feel a person should not be fined for feeding the homeless.
That isn’t the reason why courts are keeping it seceet
So make sure everyone knows about how to use it for good.
How in the hell would we accomplish that?
The same way we spread any information: by talking to people about it, making memes about it, posting flyers up, whatever you do, do it. I bring up jury nullification whenever I’m in a conversation about the legal system, and it turns out I hate the legal system so that happens a lot.
Just do exactly what you would do for anything else that you care about and want to make people aware of. I’m not suggesting we levitate the Pentagon with concentration and acid or saying we should end world hunger. Literally just talk about this to people. Upvote. Share this with people. Talk to people and tell them about the case. Tell people about jury nullification. Post a TIL if you just learned about the concept.
You said to use it for good.
Telling someone about jury nullification doesn’t mean they’ll use it for good.
Tell them how to use it for good. The law skews towards evil by the nature of what the law exists to do and the historic inequity inherent in it’s application. If jury nullification was used at random it would be used for good more often than not. In the past it was used both in the south to legitimize lynching and in the north to ignore fugitive slave laws (“Some commonly cited historical examples of jury nullification involve jurors refusing to convict persons accused of violating the Fugitive Slave Act by assisting runaway slaves or being fugitive slaves themselves, and refusal of American colonial juries to convict a defendant under English law.” - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#:~:text=Some commonly cited historical examples,a defendant under English law.)
If you talk about it’s history, then you absolutely end up talking about how to use it to nullify illegitimate laws. I said to tell people how to use it for good, not “ensure that every human who knows about this only uses it for good.” I didn’t say the later because that would be an absurd thing to day that’s just obviously impossible to achieve.
And which laws should be subject to jury nullification? Just the ones you think are bad? Who should it be used for or against? Yes, in this case it makes sense if you have any level empathy because the law is needlessly cruel. But what if I fervently believe that laws punishing white collar crime in any way are always cruel so any jury deciding a white collar case should always nullify? Should I go ahead and educate the world that if you’re on a jury in a fraud case that bankrupted retirees and school teachers, you should always vote not guilty because the crime of fraud is absurd so punishing it is cruel?
If a law is stupid, you need to fix the legislature or legislative process, not the enforcement. Selective enforcement of the law tends to consistently lead to very bad outcomes.
Vote with your principles. If I don’t agree with a law, I’m not going to vote to convict someone of it. Like vice laws; as long as anyone involved consents, I don’t think it should be punished. If I’m on a jury, then I have the power to affect that in that case. I’m not going to vote to punish someone because I wasn’t able to do so for other cases. Sure, it would be better to get rid of vice laws and you might not agree with me. But I’m only going to vote to punish someone if I think they should be punished, regardless of what any laws say.
It wasn’t originally used that way but it does illustrate the point
Judges and Lawyers hate nullification not because they’re snooty elitists who hate us uppity commonfolk knowing our options,
It’s because juries that know about nullification are a lot more likely to go ahead and do it, which basically amounts to a legal form of poisoning the jury.
Judges and Lawyers are expecting to be able to argue the case based on the law as a given and that becomes pretty challenging when you now also have to explain to the jury why they shouldn’t decide the law being discussed should be thrown out for this case.
It turns the justice system from hypothetical rule of law to mask off rule of societal biases and that would be MUCH WORSE for the justice system than the present alternative.
Consider how bad the justice system is at taking rape cases seriously already, and now consider that with the defense being able to hit the jury with every rape culture "you don’t want to ruin his life over this!" rhetorical dungheap imaginable because he knows there’s no consequences for inducing a jury to nullify and the jury knows that even if the rapist is guilty they can decide to just ignore that if they like the cut of his rapist gib enough.
Only after they’re empaneled. There’s nothing preventing the education of jurors on the subject beforehand…
You’re not wrong, but when you get selected for jury duty the selecting lawyer will make inquiries about your knowledge on the subject and disqualify you if you admit knowing about it.
If you bring it up to the jury, that can also have you disqualified as well as anyone else the lawyers think were influenced by the discussion.
The third option is supposed to ‘naturally’ occurr, as in the jury agrees that the law was broken but the situation is so ‘outside the scope of the law’ that the law can no longer be applied. (IIRC the judge can overrule the jury in this case, but it can be a pain)
Essentially it’s up to the judge to determine whether the jury’s conclusion is within the realm of the ‘third option’.
Yeah. That’s why people, who could be jurors, should be generally educated on the subject.
I was trying to be subtle.
I don’t have the data to say one way or the other. I can definitely see how public knowledge of the third option can be abused, especially these days when political alignment is more important than facts to many people.
Good point
Which is why you just say you don’t believe the prosecutors proved the case. Also, there’s supposed to be a limit on the number of jurors lawyers can dismiss, for exactly this reason. They’re spending well more than the cost of the fine just trying to empanel a jury at this point.
If we wanted a justice system that didn’t waste money, we’d be authoritarian in nature.
The money wasted is to insure ‘as even a case’ as possible, regardless of the crime.
That’s the idea anyway.
When I say wasting money here, I mean because you’re not going to get a guilty verdict. Not in the authoritarian judge dredd sense. In fact, in other articles it’s clear the city has brought a bunch of these cases and has gotten zero convictions.
So it really seems like someone decided they’re going to win this one even if they have to go through 100 sessions of jury selection. (They’ve gone though about 30 so far)
By the lawyers. There’s nothing to stop normal people from talking about it, as long as you don’t talk about it in the courthouse.
I agree with you there and would go a step further to note that public discourse on anonymous forums is extremely helpful for people to add context and philosophy to the understanding of the third option.
Many people here that are taking to discussing this are the outliers, just by being aware of it, and by being aware of it we can understand its potential use for good or ill and can contextualize the discussion in that frame of reference long before any of us are called to be on a jury, my concern would be those that do not take to discussing law, politics, and philosophy prior to being called to a jury being made aware of the third option with little time to reflect on its implications.
I think some people will browse the discussion and not truly reflect on the contents until possibly months later, while others that are directly engaging in the discussion will reflect currently and posit their views now while also being willing to amend those views should a more appropriate philosophy or fact be made available during the discussion.
Because different people will reflect at different rates this can have a deleterious effect on a trial if one learns of the third option too soon with little ability to reflect on the meaning and implication of a, usually unprofessional (law-career wise, not necessarily in manners), panel of jurors’ choices.
It’s always important for the jurors to respect the evidence before their own bias and sometimes people don’t have the ability to disconnect their emotions from the logic present to be able to do that, but discussions on public forums with participation from many people from a wide array of backgrounds will allow for a more diverse and effective toolset to engage a trial with, ideally leading to a ‘more effective’ ruling from the jury.
Ultimately it comes down to the wide variance of educational quality that everyone even within the same society can be impacted by, whether it be due to their own individual actions or those of the municipal, state/provincial, or national actions on the education quality and quantity, it requires active discussion and reflection not only of the choice but the ramifications the choice can have beyond the trial itself.
I tend to agree with the scholars that believe the jury is the ‘god of the courtroom’, but I am also extremely jaded by my personal experiences with various large groups of people and their seeming willingness to ignore reality to ‘fit in’ or ‘feel better’. The number of times people label me as a pessimist when I’m trying to be objectively realistic is startling and seriously concerning.
Ultimately I would hope people would, with ample reflection, direct their attentions to discovering what the ‘right’ course of action is, as opposed to the ‘moral’ or ‘easy’ choices tend to be.
I agree, we should make discussion of this stuff a thing again. It used to be, but at some point everyone agreed that politics was a taboo subject. Better to talk about your gender correct conversational topic. Which is ridiculous to hear in a democracy.
Speech is restricted in the courthouse? What the fuck?
Yes, and there are good reasons for it. Imagine if the victims family met the jurors and told them stories from the victim’s childhood.
Of course authoritarian figures take this good reason and stretch it out to cover things people should know about too. In the case of jury nullification the reason is how it was used by white juries through history. They would routinely return a not guilty verdict if the victim was black.
But that can also be solved with a diverse jury and majority verdict for a half sentence. (10 years instead of 20, and no capital punishment without a unanimous jury). They went with restricting speech on it because it also affected the shit laws they were pushing about drugs and protesting.
This actually is a great example of jury nullification. From https://fija.org/library-and-resources/library/jury-nullification-faq/what-is-jury-nullification.html talking about a different case:
Of 27 potential jurors questioned during voir dire, only five said they would vote to convict a person of possession of such a small amount of marijuana. Skeptical that it would even be possible to seat a jury, the judge in the case called a recess during which time the lawyers worked out a deal known as an “Alford plea” in which the defendant didn’t admit guilt.
When these kinds of rejections of enforcement of laws stack up over time, the laws become unenforceable. We’ve seen this rejection of the Fugitive Slave Laws and alcohol prohibition, for example, undermine such laws’ enforcement. Eventually, it is no longer worth the time or hassle or embarrassment for government officials to try to enforce these laws. They may be further nullified in a sense either remaining on the books but not being enforced or being repealed altogether.
So when these potential jurors said they wouldn’t fine someone for feeding the homeless, it’s one brick in the wall. Get enough bricks and all of a sudden the law is unenforceable.
This is an excellent writeup, thank you.
To get there they’d have to risk being charged with perjury since it sounds like they were directly asking that question.
Only if they could prove it
I always wonder what they’ll do if I start chatting about it with other people during the selection process.
From what I understand it depends on the jurisdiction. Some places nothing happens, other places they’ll declare a mistrial and select from a new jury pool. Yet others they’ll slap you with a charge of contempt of court or possibly jury tampering.
It is contempt of a court of law to
checks notes
broaden the involved parties’ knowledge of the law.
Ultimately it comes down to a subtle but important disagreement about what exactly the role of a juror is. For supporters of jury nullification, a juror determines if someone is guilty or innocent. For opponents of jury nullification a juror determines if someone broke the letter of the law or not. Those that think a juror only decides if a law was broken or not feel it’s the judges duty to determine guilt or innocence based on the juries findings. The contempt of court charge is for essentially stepping out of your lane and taking power from the judge.
Personally I find it a weak argument, it has always I feel been the intent that jurors judge guilt or innocence. Specifically they decide if not just the letter but the spirit of the law has been violated, or in the case of an unjust law if no guilt is possible.
Everyone should know about Jury Nullification.
For better or worse, Jury Nullification’s validity is highly debatable. Its history is also mixed. It was used by juries to acquit people who were charged against the Fugitive Slave Act. It was also used in the Jim Crow era to acquit white people of lynching black people.
At a systemic level, its validity is kind of irrelevant because any time you ask a human being to judge whether a law is broken, there’s no way to prevent them from saying no because they don’t agree with the law. Prosecutors and judges can try to weed out jurors who will answer based on their conscience rather than just facts, but they can’t eliminate the possibility.
On a personal level, I can recognize nullification is easy to abuse, but if I’m on a jury and I’m asked to convict someone of breaking an unjust law, I could not in good conscience sacrifice that person’s freedom just because another juror in a different trial could do the same thing for bad reasons.
As the question of whether nullification should be promoted, I think it should, because people have a right to know how their government works as part of their right to choose how it works. A government whose most fundamental mechanisms can’t hold up to public security is ipso facto authoritarian and undemocratic.
The validity isn’t debatable. Just it’s checkered history. Ending jury nullification would require making the jury an advisory body or getting rid of it altogether. And considering it’s entire purpose is to be the last check on the justice system, that’s not happening any time soon.
No, dude. It’s popular on the Internet. Talk to real lawyers about it. When I’ve come across it with them, they rate it barely higher than SovCit nonsense.
Here’s the ACLU on it. Let me know when they’re willing to defend Sovereign Citizens.
Here’s Cornell Law School on it, and their operative quote.
This can occur because a not guilty verdict cannot be overturned and jurors are protected regardless of their verdicts.
So please tell me how this is a conspiracy theory with no legal force?
Yeah turns out stuff can do bad and good things. Who knew?
Fuckin stuff, man…
I mean sure, if “a jury of your peers” means at least seven other racist fucks, then it could very well go badly.
But it keeps the laws of the land on the same page as the opinions of the people. Jury nullification is as close to democracy as you can hope for.
As opposed to, say, actual democracy.
Well I doubt any of us have any real hope of that.
You might not, but I do.
LOL amazingly a jury can decide how they want and that’s the end of it. the fact that someone may not like it is immaterial.
Uhh, no. That’s not how it works.:
According to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Sparf v. U.S., written by Justice Harlan, juries have no right to ignore the law when rendering the jury’s verdict. However, nullification still occurs in some instances because of the secrecy of jury deliberations. It is difficult to determine if a jury negates the law, especially in close cases.
If it was up to judges, it would never be allowed, and cases would go to appeal or retrial if it happens. It only continues because jury deliberations are private. If judges found out, they would toss it.
You’ve just proven that the SCOTUS decision is fully unenforceable, which means that jury nullification is the de facto law of the land.
It’s not. People blab about it a lot. Often right during jury selection, which makes it easy.
That makes it easy to prevent, I think, but not necessarily enforce/punish
That’s the one time they will get you. The other is like in the Darryl Brooks trial where he tried to bring it up repeatedly and was shut down instantly by the judge.
People blab all the time when they think they’re on to something smart. It’s surprisingly reliable.
Very well. Please show the part of the federal criminal code that allows a juror to be prosecuted for thought crime. I will wait.
Yeah, is this the same SCOTUS that says women have to die if their pregnancy fucks up?
We should probably stop letting judges make laws. They don’t run this place, we do.
It’s been precedent for a long time. Also, if you want to confront the legitimately of the court system altogether, then jury nullification is meaningless.
It’s been a dead letter just as long.
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
-William Blackstone
I’ll take the bait. Blackstone was wrong and no society can actually function under that kind of a premise.
Most guilty people are already escaping punishment.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-rate-by-type-in-the-us/
Which pretty much proves my point, thanks.
I’ll bite:
First of all can we acknowledge that every system is going to be flawed? You’re either going to have innocent people convicted and sent to jail, or guilty people set free. Likely you’ll have some of both.With that in mind, what do you consider an acceptable ratio of innocent people convicted in order to make sure guilty people are also convicted? As many as it takes?
The claim I’m making is that systemic flaws are unavoidable and therefore Blackstone’s formulation is a pile of horseshit.
It literally doesn’t even matter what system I think would be better. I claimed that societies can’t function under Blackstone’s formulation and our present circumstances prove that point handily.
Just because you are happy with it doesn’t mean it’s good or that other people should just accept it.
You’re not really making a point, you’re making a claim. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but you haven’t really said any reason why you think society can’t function when they value protecting the rights of the innocent over guaranteeing 100% of the guilty are punished.
When you say “our present circumstances prove that point”, are you saying that all of society’s problems can be linked to jury nullification? Or to the fact your jurisdiction is too light handed with criminals, or felons, or both? It’s a very bold, very vague claim, considering it’s well studied that rehabilitative/educational and not punitive measures are more effective at reducing crime, so making the current system more heavy handed doesn’t seem to be the answer, if one exists.
Yeah, people make claims in debate, not points.
I don’t list reasons because it’s self-evident and very blatantly obvious why. Go to the news subs on any Lemmy server and you’ll see why.
You’re just angry I am not giving you the fight that you want because you saw me saying something that opposes your little political agenda, and so you came here to proselytize.
Literally no one said anything about punishment at all but here you are, peddling your enabling crap, just like I knew one of you would. You’re here proselytizing, like a Jehovah’s Witness.
Well, I’m not playing along. I said societies can’t function under Blackstone’s formulation and my stance is not gonna change because you don’t like it. You can’t bully me into submitting to your dogmatic cult bullshit.
It’s called Perverse Jury in the UK and it’s always caused major shocks when it’s happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#England_and_Wales
Judges don’t like it and politicians have considered making it illegal. It’s been really heating up recently (2021 & 2023) with environmental protestors being acquitted after juries refused to find them guilty.
Judges have tried to avoid it in those cases by blocking the defendent from explaining their moral argument. People were acquitted of the crime but then convicted of contempt of court for breaching the judges orders.
They wouldn’t have to feed the homeless if the city did a better job at helping them.
If not even California can make meaningful steps towards permanent supportive housing, it sure as shit won’t happen in Texas.
In CA, like everywhere, it’s just a problem of money. NYC has a mandate to offer everyone temporary housing if they need it. Recently Texas and Florida have strained the system by sending thousands of migrants to NYC (100K total).
Most of them are able to find temporary housing because the city pays for it. The SF Bay Area and Los Angeles could easily do the same, but they just don’t want to spend the money. They need to raise taxes slightly and get it done.
Its not even a thing of money.
cause other countries have proven, Giving the homeless apartments and support will let the overwhelming majority of them get back on their feet, find jobs, and take over all the payments htemselves.
and its proven that doing this is cheaper than keeping people on the street.
Cruelty is the point, not a lack of resources.
You think “cruelty is the point, not a lack of resources” in San Francisco? It’s one of the most homeless-friendly and expensive places in the country.
Stop just copying and pasting catchphrases.
If your precious san fran was super homeless friendly, they wouldnt be on the streets. They wouldn’t be handwaving money as a reason for ignoring them.
They can easily fix the problem. They just don’t want to.
So yes. Its cruelty. thats the point.
You cant use money as an excuse to sit on your hands and do fuck all, especially if you are claiming to be the most homeless friendly area in the country, When a simple act of kindness in giving them housing, medical care, and financial aid, to get them back on their feet so they can take over the financials for themselves, is not only a good moral choice, its also the cheaper, more financially pragmatic option
But why help people and elevate them, when you can keep markets artificially inflated and line your pockets.
The peope being cruel and the people trying to help others are different groups, they both exist in most ‘liberal’ cities. Like Seattle, they have good resources for needy people compared to a lot of cities but the police are also known to have significant problems with white supremacists. And the business associations are allied with the police.
There’s a GIGANTIC difference: CA is trying, TX is not.
You’re actually entirely backwards there, and I’m no fan of Texas, but they have done a far better job than any of the coastal states, at least in the major metros. Google it, I’m not kidding.
The onus of providing sources is on the person making the claim. Please provide them yourself.
Or if they shot the homeless.
Put me on the jury. If the city can make a convincing case that permits are needed to ensure safe food handling practices are being followed, and that permits are granted freely when reasonable requirements are met, they’ll get their fine (they won’t).
Ok, you’re on.
So what happens if they just can’t find anyone willing to say the fine is okay?
They’ll just postpone it indefinitely and keep trying to find a jury pool.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury…
I’m probably not quoting (with emphasis added) any sort of amendment to a document that forms the supreme law of the land though.
This is Texas we’re talking about, when has something as pesky as the US Consitution gotten in their way of doing whatever the fuck they want?
“The Earth is at least six thousand years old so ten years in jail while we look for a jury is negligible in comparison your honor” - Some Texan prosecutor
It’ll probably get dismissed. You have a right to a fair and speedy trial (6th Amendment) as long as you don’t waive the speedy trial which happens and is why some people spend years in prison without a trial…and probably plea out eventually.
When people want to know what anarchism is, it’s this organization. In many places where it operates it isn’t legal, but what good is the law when it stands between people and freely feeding their community.
And if you don’t have a local chapter and want to you can just start your own. There’s like four rules and you don’t need to get approval, from anyone. It’s completely decentralized. Hell you can operate one across the street from another.
Humanity prevails
LOL the city leaders are so desperate to act out their cruelty and cannot understand that the citizenry is capable of human empathy.
I mean most of them aren’t inherently evil at least not more evil than they are lazy. I’m sure if they were given the chance to just ignore the homeless population they would much prefer that. But they’re wealthier constituents the business owners and the elite don’t like seeing the homeless people around and they don’t like the increased crime that comes with it. Having a homeless population around does have some ramifications. It does make a number of their constituents uneasy and they would be very happy to get rid of the problem.
They’re trying to make them more uncomfortable so they move on. It’s not a good answer it’s not a moral answer it’s not a right answer but it’s not just out of pure evil. Most of them anyway.
Where are the benevolent philanthropists to show us the light with their “elite” luminary brains?
See, this is the shit American and Canadian cities waste time and resources on instead of actually helping people in need.
