SwMoLib, Herbert is a New York Times columnist who sometimes crusades effectively against injustice--best known for publicizing the railroading of most of the black people in Tulia, Texas. (Just about an hour from me!)
Here's a previous Unfogged discussion of Herbert (and thank you J for leaving comment 101.)
Thanks for the history lesson on Bob. This has been an eventful day, knowledge-wise.
Oh, and silvana... Cory Maye DOESN'T deserve to die. Tookie, well... I'm not so sure, but why isn't the NAACP, the ACLU, or CourtTV even INTERESTED in Cory Maye's story? Go search their sites... nothing. I had to dig to find ANYTHING about Maye.
Can we not do the "Why don't these liberal groups take this cause up?" thing? Most likely, like the rest of us, they hadn't heard of Maye until a couple of days ago if that.
Maye's been dealing with this since around 2001, Matt. How long does it take for Jesse Jackson to get to a worthy cause?
To be fair, the *conservative* groups weren't exactly beating down the door, either; I found out about this on Hammer of Truth and The Agitator. And, eventually, on Battlepanda.
Now's the time for ALL groups, liberal and otherwise, to stop gabbing about poor Tookie and get on with THIS story.
Say, what's it like being a libertarian in SwMo? I drove through on the way to Lubbock, Texas, and it didn't seem like a very libertarian place. (Kawaii Jesus!)
I think the point is that the liberal and conservative groups were all in the same boat. If you look at the newspaper reports it makes it seem as though Maye is just a cop-killer. Not (I guess) till Balko dug deeper did we have any reason to think that there was more to the story--and so there was no one to take up Maye's cause.
(BTW, I used to volunteer for the ACLU in southwest PA, and they didn't take cases unless they were called in, and almost never took criminal defense cases. Just not enough resources.)
Well, thank God for Balko, and Gordon over at The Hammer of Truth... looks like they're the ones who did the legwork, especially Balko.
I can understand maybe the ACLU not being on this, but the NAACP? Maye is black. Why nothing there? And Court TV? They coulda done SOMETHING on this guy... they cover court cases, at least when they're not running "NYPD Blue" and other filler...
But the point is: SOMEONE'S gonna pick it up, and God willing, it'll make the major networks. I hope.
What can I say, silvana? I'm not politically-correct. I *did* delineate between the two types of Muslims, so why are you upset? I don't like walking on eggshells, and I did that post hoping CAIR would get pissed off at me. Looks like they don't dig deep enough.
I'm doing something good here, trying to help Maye, and you're nitpicking about a throwaway post. Lighten up! The world's gonna end one of these days, anyway. :)
See, being proud of avoiding political correctness usually has something to do with "I won't let concerns about being 'sensitive' interfere with The Truth," which at least has a certain demented logic to it. However, that post avoids anything even resembling the truth. It's just a list of rather odd racial slurs.
It's not a throwaway post. I'm not going to mince words - your remarks were and are extremely offensive, and your supposed delineation does absolutely nothing to improve your image.
Racism didn't really help Corey Maye either, now did it?
I didn't tell her to go digging up a BS post, dude. I came here b/c I saw the Maye link. She zeroed in on the ONE post, but not the second one where I said:
"Just in case I offended any "normal" Muslims, I apologize."
I don't know what else to say. Try to do something good for a guy on death row, and I get grief over "offending" someone... well, there is no right to not be offended in the Constitution. It ain't there.
The post is falsely self-righteous, as well. We do often torment women who were raped. They are often punished, by their families or by the courts. And we *rarely* through rapists in jail.
SwMo, I saw that post. When your comments consist of "I hate hummus" and "Achmed, you candy-ass," your pretend apology doesn't really cut it.
Luckily, people other than you are taking up the Maye cause, too. Look, if he still doesn't have a lawyer by the time I get my license, I'll take it up my damn self.
Well, it's radical Muslims who blow people up, beat their women (or worse) when they get raped, and God knows what else. I don't hate the ones who DON'T do that stuff, and made that rather clear.
How was I supposed to know, in the future, someone would zero in on one paragraph of pointing out unhinged radical religious extremists, would cause me this much grief? Jesus, okay, I get it.
Now, can we get back to Maye's plight, instead of this?
"People other than you"? I see... so now I'm some sort of ogre. How do you read my mind that way?
Michael, you're right about what happens to rapists here... we need to throw MORE of them away. I have no respect for men who mistreat women, anywhere on the planet.
Yes, I did... I delineated between "normal" Muslims, and the ones who do fiendish things. Sorry if I didn't go far enough... I'll have to run everything past a lawyer in the future, I suppose.
Shall we do the same exercise for "normal" Christians and the ones who do fiendish things? Because I can list all kinds of fucked up behavior from Christians here and elsewhere. How about Southerners? Hell, I can give you examples from my high school.
Nobody's perfect, apostropher. But right now, it's not unhinged Southern Baptists who are strapping pipe bombs to themselves for their god. And I have yet to meet a Pentecostal who stones his wife over adultery, although Pentecostals are an odd bunch.
Why the PC hands-off-on-Muslims thing? NOBODY is sacred beyond being poked at, IMO. Hell, my brother has a learning disability... do I go around punching people who yell "retard"? No.
SwMo, let me break it down for you. Saying racist things about people who do bad things is no better than saying racist things about good people. Get it?
People (namely, me) are attacking you because you are being pretty contradictory. You are pissed off because the NAACP isn't representing Maye, but Tookie? Screw him. You complain that racism influenced the verdict against Maye, and then you go make unrepentantly racist comments against Arabs.
I don't know what else to say. Try to do something good for a guy on death row, and I get grief over "offending" someone... well, there is no right to not be offended in the Constitution. It ain't there.
Ok, let's do this line by line then.
I thought I might try to get radical Islamists mad at me, and while I'm not very good at slamming anyone over their religious beliefs...
You are nevertheless doing it. If I pee on Baptists is that ok?
*ahem* Hey, you slimy bastards!
The Council for American-Islamic Relations?
WE don't beat our women if they get raped...
Not always, at any rate. Used to tho. Stopped.
WE put the rapist in prison!
Sometimes.
WE don't do genital mutilation on OUR women!
But we do do so on men.
You thugs like to have sex with camels!
Which thugs? CAIR? Is it too much to point that God-fearing Missoura farmboys fuck chickens on occasion?
I spit on your ancestors' haircuts!
One word: mullet.
Mohammed was a child molestor!
Abraham? Isaac? Moses? St. [insert here]
Go fornicate yourselves with those cactii in your desert wastelands!
As I recall, Saudi and the Sahara lack the cactii.
Mecca should be turned into a gay disco!
What did gays ever do to you?
I hate hummus!
But you like Wonderbread?
You Shiite-heads!
You really aren't good at this, are ye?
Come an' get me! I'm not only white,
Curiously enough, Arabs are Semitic and Caucasian. (Persians are, of course, Indo-Iranian and Caucasian, and Turks are Altaic and Caucasian.)
I was raised Baptist,
My condolences.
AND I'd have sex with a black Jewish woman!
With or without her consent?
Over here, Achmed, you candy-ass! You want some?
Dude, you might as well have yelled it out the door. It's one thing to wave your dick in the air, another to do so where the targets of same can see it.
YOU need to get searched at the airport before Grandma does!
Who? CAIR?
The Council on American-Islamic Relations can kiss my package!
You said fuck, by can't dick?
And another thi- Hey, sounds like someone's at my doo
{sigh} I'd give a C- for effort, but it would help if you actually located the target you're trying to hit. Even better if they noticed. F.
Well, now that I've been thoroughly psychoanalyzed... where's a "rolling-eyes" emoticon when you need one...
What can I say... I might as well lie down on the railroad tracks. I'm of no use to humanity whatsoever. Thanks for pointing out what a piece of shit I am, and here I thought I cared about my loved ones and good people and all that... I was just deluding myself.
How much for the shrink session? I'll send a money order.
I delineated between "normal" Muslims, and the ones who do fiendish things.
You really didn't, you only said you did. The actual comments you made ("Mohammed was a child molester", etc.) don't draw any distinctions. It's not only offensive, but poorly executed as well.
Well, Matt, pardon me for not having the future-telling foresight to say "the PROPHET Mohammed"... guess the fact that I think child molesters are scum of the earth, doesn't mean much, does it?
If you'd like to see people making fun of Muslims, please read the archives. The guy who runs this site was raised Shi'ite, and we mock him non-stop.
it's not unhinged Southern Baptists who are strapping pipe bombs
It is, however, unhinged Southern Baptists who strap their kids into the car and drive it into a South Carolina lake. Or shoot abortion clinic doctors. Or blow up the Oklahoma City Federal Building. This really isn't a road you want to travel. Nobody here is defending murderous zealots; conversely, nobody here is lumping together millions/billions of people based on the actions of a small crazed minority.
Goddamn, but Jews are greedy. And black people? Lazy! All kidding aside though, Asians are crappy drivers.
Wish I'd known that before I posted here, on the assumption that we'd be talking about Cory Maye, and not some post I tossed together to piss off RADICAL Muslims...
But I'm a white man... it's all OUR fault, anyway. We all deserve to die.
Listen, folks... I'm not sure what this site is about, I just stumbled here through a link about the topic we *should* be discussing... and next thing I know, someone's dug through my blog to find *gasp!* impolitic ramblings that one can hear (somewhat) on talk radio.
You all have fun. I don't think we're gonna work out. Apparently, I'm some sort of racist hatemonger, although my kid and my family and friends know otherwise.
I self-exiled myself from FReeperland, I'll go quietly from here. I can stir the gravy elsewhere.
Well, Matt, pardon me for not having the future-telling foresight to say "the PROPHET Mohammed"... guess the fact that I think child molesters are scum of the earth, doesn't mean much, does it?
You say that you don't mean to offend "normal" muslims, yet your comments are simply attacking Islam. Not Islamic terrorists, just Islam. It's rather ridiculous to issue a blanket smear, and then after the fact say "I only meant it for the people I don't like".
Normally, I wouldn't have done it, but on further reflection, I deleted both of the posts from my blog. Not that I still don't detest the "radical" Islamists, which I did point out were not the "normal" ones... but it might have not been a good idea to have the posts floating around in the ether - where they could be dragged out for no good reason other than to detract from the subject at hand.
We *still* don't have a Constitutional right to not be offended, though... remember that.
My way of saying "sorry", I s'pose, but I'm still out the door. Too bad, I mighta liked this site, but some people just don't like hearing uncomfortable things. I get 'em every day, that's why I rant. It's cathartic.
But you folks do your thing, and I'll do mine. Later.
Yet more evidence of the impossibility of predicting where an Unfogged thread will go from it's origins. Also, I'm pulling an all-nighter tonight, so expect me to be either dead on my feet or loopy at Town Tavern tomorrow. Or both.
swmo, i wish you wouldn't go away. it is so good to have a little diversity of region and background (at least i am betting that your presence here probably altered that)
that said, it is more than a little silly for you to call Mohammed a child molester... unless you want to say the same of the vast majority of Christian Europeans during the same time period - and their kings -- including one who was canonized as a saint. (le beau saint louis!)
also, do imagine for a moment how it would be if muslims wanted to initiate a dialogue between people and started it by saying that Jesus and his apostles believed in cannibalism (because of the Last Supper and communion rites)... not the best outreach effort, now, is it?
swmo, i wish you wouldn't go away. it is so good to have a little diversity of region and background (at least i am betting that your presence here probably altered that)
that said, it is more than a little silly for you to call Mohammed a child molester... unless you want to say the same of the vast majority of Christian Europeans during the same time period - and their kings -- including one who was canonized as a saint. (le beau saint louis!)
also, do imagine for a moment how it would be if muslims wanted to initiate a dialogue between people and started it by saying that Jesus and his apostles believed in cannibalism (because of the Last Supper and communion rites)... not the best outreach effort, now, is it?
saying that your friends & family know you're not racist is saying that *people exactly like you* don't think you're racist. i have no idea personally, not knowing you, but don't you think a better test would be *people who are different in some way from you* not finding you racist?
I like the "you have no Constitutional right not to be offended" trope -- I'm still trying to come up with something bizarrely and unforgivably offensive that I can do at dinner tonight, so I can spring that one on -gg-d.
Also: "I'm going to delete the posts but don't think I'm going to admit what you were saying about them has any validity." What the hell, is SW Missouri Libertarian Party a High School club or something?
I'm ridiculously confused. Is there a reason that two death-penalty cases in different states can't be protested at the same time? The case is two days public; maybe not harp on the lib'ruls for not supporting Maye when, like, no one heard about it till yesterday?
Not sure what SwMo guy's on, but it seems like he was trying to mock terrorists, but not only missed his target, but wasn't ballsy enough to make it funny.
(Like Deignan going on about 'You have messed with me, and I will spare no expense to take you down. (legally, I mean. That isn't a threat. I wouldn't threaten.)'
Eh, give SwMo credit for taking down the offensive post -- someone who can be embarrassed by having said something racist isn't beyond hope. Certainly, he was half-heartedly obnoxious, but that's a step up from wholeheartedly obnoxious. Who knows - he might get better someday.
give SwMo credit for taking down the offensive post
Fuck that. Unless he submits to the Shi'a led implementation of the Wolfson Protocol, no quarter will be given.
Really, the only information to be gleaned from the whole exchange is that no one should ever move to the southwest of Missouri. I gather he's the liberal there.
Back to the original bitch by SWMO and other conservatives.
Death penalty opponents are a rather small group, and there are a large number of people on Death Row. They are stretched to the limit. They're not even able to get good legal representation for most capital defendants, which seems to be Cory Mayes' story.
From a publicity standpoint, you can only have a few poster children. Celebrity and ideological politics have their effects too.
The real question is, "Why didn't the black helicopter 2nd amendment guys pick up this case instantly and get the guy a top lawyer?" It's their bread and butter.
It occurs to me that this fellow likely came over to accuse us liberals of not getting sufficiently outraged over Maye, and then when he found that we were sufficiently outraged over Maye, he used the forum to bash other liberals who (in his mind) weren't sufficiently outraged over Maye.
68, I think that's not so; he probably found this blog only through trackbacks about Maye outrage. And he had pretty much the same complaint about liberal groups posted on his blog.
Following the correspondence with the prosecutor in Maye's case at theagitator.com, I think that a number of people jumped the gun.
These items in particular, stated by the prosecutor albeit, jumped out at me:
As to why I he would not open, I can not say. The door to the other apartment was only a few feet from his front door. They heard the announcement from the team that went there and those people opened up. A witness testified a light went on in the front room of the apartment that the front door went into. When the shooting occurred may was in a back bedroom. Maye was the only person in the apartment other than the child.
If the witness is accurate, then police announced who they were, and why they were there, and Maye must have heard them because he turned on a light.
In other words, a reasonable jury could find, after listening to this witness, and perhaps viewing the small size of the apartment, that Maye did know that the people outside were police officers.
In the absence of the facts, it's remarkable how quickly we float to grand theories like "well it's racist Mississippi" and "the slain officer was the son of the police chief, so of course they railroaded the shooter" and ever more subtle investigations into the "ideologies" at play.
Bit of a straw man, Andrew; not sure the prosecutor's case counts as 'facts', exactly.
Reading over the interview at the Agitator, it seems that there's a lot of police actions (the warrants, the tips, etc) that really could stand to be explained, and the lack of an explanation seems to bear on whether their testimony can be trusted.
And under the jury's understanding of the facts, why on earth would he have shot at the police if he knew who they were? He wasn't wanted, he didn't have drugs (beyond 'traces') in his house; if he'd sat tight presumably they wouldn't have done a blessed thing to him beyond breaking his door and harassing him. Given the facts that Maye knew (that he wasn't in any particular legal jeopardy from the search) the jury would have had to have concluded that he not only knew that the people breaking into his home were police, but would have had to have had a motiveless hatred for the police of homicidal intensity. Doesn't the explanation that he didn't know wht was going on and was defending himself make infinitely more sense?
Or why didn't he keep shooting? He puts a bullet in an officer, he knows what's coming. Why not try to take more of them out, if it is only hatred of the police at work?
If we believe the police case that they announced themselves and he turned the front light on that doesn't prove he knew it was the police. Perhaps all he heard was a commotion out front.
Still, I think there are a whole lot more questions than answers at this point. Events can be slanted and skewed by both sides to present their case. That is what the trial and the jury are for.
But I personally have heard how stupid people on the jury can be. I have first hand knowledge of a jury I served on and some of the stupid comments during deliberation.
Another point is that, since the police seem to have changed their story about whether drugs were found in the house, they're not necessarily completely credible about other matters, including when they announced themselves. Anyway, I agree with Tripp in 83.
Given the facts that Maye knew (that he wasn't in any particular legal jeopardy from the search) the jury would have had to have concluded that he not only knew that the people breaking into his home were police, but would have had to have had a motiveless hatred for the police of homicidal intensity.
Apparently, the search warrant lists Maye's apartment as well, and the slain officer stated in his affadavit that he had observed large quantities of drugs being trafficked from both apartments. If the officer's observations were accurate, then Maye may not have known what the police knew. That he didn't have the drugs in his apartment at the time does not mean that he was without reason to fear arrest by the police, especially if he were involved in drug trafficking. Moreover, if he were so involved, then in addition to being in fear of the police, he might have been in fear of other individuals involved in trafficking.
So, with that in mind, the other explanations for Maye's actions include 1) fear that that the persons identifying themselves as police were not, in fact, police, and choosing to shoot first; 2) indecision as to what exactly to do, and shooting on instinct when the first cop came through the door; 3) an initial determination not to be taken that was removed by the sight of the rest of the SWAT team; 4) a calculated decision to shoot the first person through the door, and then, based upon whether the first person appeared to be a police officer, to lay down his weapon.
None of these alternative explanations would be likely to remove criminal culpability.
I have no idea what the law is in Mississippi (when did they get that?), but it looks to me that jury would have had to conclude that 1) Maye intentionally fired on another person, and 2) a reasonable person in Maye's shoes would have believed the other person to be a police officer, and 3) that the shooting was not justified by self-defense.
If the jury found the witnesses on the scene who testified as to the manner of the announcement to be credible, then the jury would have a very difficult time believing that Maye did not know the person was a cop, and had a justification for self-defense. I don't know who those witnesses were, so I can't judge the jury's determination. But the facts that we do know could support a reasonable jury in finding as they did.
In other words, I agree with whoever said that this case bears more investigation, but the facts that we know don't justify a quick condemnation of the jury's verdict either.
I'd also be curious as to the law of self-defense in Mississippi. In many states, such as NY, there is a duty to retreat even if one's dwelling is invaded, while in other states there is an exception allowing one to shoot the invaders even if one might be able to retreat.
Since no one asked (ahem) I'm going to tell my stupid juror story on my own.
I served on a local jury involving a local construction company owner charged by the state with bid-rigging. One of the pieces of evidence the state brought were his phone records, and apparently documents like that have to be brought into evidence by someone who could vouch for their authenticity.
The phone company sent a scretary or someone like that to swear that these were the actual records for the phone on that date. The lady was nervous, probably because she had to speak in front of a large number of people.
The defence accepted the evidence without dispute. There was no cross-examination of the witness, who left in relief.
So during our delibertation an elderly women member of our jury was voting to let the guy off because, in her words, "there was something fishy about that phone company woman."
This was simply a tiny little detail in the grand scheme of the trial, and the phone records were not even disputed by the defense. Yet somehow this juror wanted to let the guy off because the phone company flunky was nervous in court?!
My point is that many cases cannot be properly summarized in an article or two, and even when a case comes before a jury there is no guarantee that the jury gets it 'right.'
That is one of the smaller reasons why I don't support the death penalty and I am proud that neither does my state. Death is forever.
Your 1 through 4 take as a premise the assumption that Maye had a fear of arrest sufficient to explain his intentionally shooting a cop. What evidence do you think the jury had to support such a belief beyind a reasonable doubt?
1) fear that that the persons identifying themselves as police were not, in fact, police, and choosing to shoot first;
So he had a reasonable belief that his home was being invaded by criminals? That sounds like self defense even if he were a drug dealer, and the same argument holds for 4 (4 might get you to reckless manslaughter, but not, I think, murder).
I'm not clear what state of mind you're positing in 2, but it sounds impulsive rather than premeditated, which again wouldn't be murder. 3 is your only story which sounds like murder, and it also sounds silly -- you're assuming that he heard and comprehended the announcement, but didn't hear what was going on well enough to figure out that there was more than one policeman.
I can't see how a jury could legitimately have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Maye intentionally shot a policeman knowing that he was a policeman.
I've got a quite recent "stupid juror" story that I am meaning to post on my blog once I figure out the hook. But the gist of it is one of the jury members saying he is not going to find the defendant guilty of a crime (of which he was clearly guilty) "because he is not a criminal."
The philosophers/students of logic on this forum might be able to help me out here: How would one name this fallacy? Clearly whether somebody is or is not "a criminal" depends on whether they have committed a crime; but the juror I am talking about -- and the one LizarBreath postulates -- want to make whether the person committed a crime dependent on whether s/he is "a criminal".
Tripp -- is that different from post hoc ergo propter hoc, or a misremembering of same? Because I don't think pheph identifies the fallacy I am talkin bout.
All criminals hate authority, come from poor families, and have a certain ethnic makeup. Tripp can't be a criminal because he comes from a rich family. Thus Tripp can't have comitted a crime.
I too two years of Latin but I can't say it has helped much.
I'd call it a version of ad hominem: I can dismiss/accept an argument by who (I think) the defendant is. I'd say ad h. rather than p.c.e.p.h because for many jurors, "criminal" is an identity-category rather than the consequence of an action..
Hey, what do y'all think about the musical "Guys and Dolls?"
I don't really like "If I Were A Bell" or whatever that song is called. Or "Adelaide's Lament".
I just don't know what to make of this, though, except to say that I was disappointed when I learned that Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River" wasn't just his take on the standard.
I loved that Malcolm in the Middle where he spends like three days writing a song only to discover he was re-writing an advertising jingle he heard a few years earlier.
I'd like to think I would have written "A Whiter Shade of Pale" if we didn't already have it. That tune is too good. I'd've called it "A Brighter Shade of Pail" and it would have advertised a neon mop bucket.
Isn't this the nominalist fallacy, or the psychologist's fallacy -- asserting that the component of a class must bear all the characteristics of the class? Hypostatizing the name of a class (in this case, "criminal") into a type to be matched by an individual case?
91 could be ad populum too. "fallacy by cause of popularity" (he isn't a criminal, therefore couldn't have done it) -- if popularity is equivalent to being perceived as upright, decent, whatever.
yikes. i should probably not edit other people's articles anymore if it causes me this much pain/procrastination.
I loved that Malcolm in the Middle where he spends like three days writing a song only to discover he was re-writing an advertising jingle he heard a few years earlier.
I did that once, writing lyrics to a song my bandmate had written (not the words themselves, but the vocal/melody part). That was embarassing when I figured it out a week later.
I once wrote a song that I later realized had the exact same chord progression, though in a different time signature and different accoutrements, as a song I was obsessed with when I was 14. That sucked.
Speaking of music, everyone, and I mean everyone, should check out this website.
So he had a reasonable belief that his home was being invaded by criminals? That sounds like self defense even if he were a drug dealer, and the same argument holds for 4 (4 might get you to reckless manslaughter, but not, I think, murder).
It's nowhere close to a good self-defense claim. That you were involved in a criminal enterprise and were in fear for your life is not going to justify your shooting of a police officer who enters your dwelling without his weapon drawn and after having knocked and announced himself. Can you just imagine the implications of the courts allowing such a defense? "It's okay to shoot the first cop through the door, even if they've announced themselves and enter without weapons drawn, if you are a criminal in fear of your life." Explanation 4 (he made a calculated decision to drop the first person through the door to see if he was a cop) would be murder anywhere.
I'm not clear what state of mind you're positing in 2, but it sounds impulsive rather than premeditated, which again wouldn't be murder.
That's going to be very jurisdiction-dependent, imho. But he had his weapon out, he aimed his weapon quite well, and he pulled the trigger. There's not much of a provocation defense either, imho. Sounds like enough presence of mind for murder to me. Further, there would also be a good depraved heart murder argument here.
3 is your only story which sounds like murder, and it also sounds silly -- you're assuming that he heard and comprehended the announcement, but didn't hear what was going on well enough to figure out that there was more than one policeman.
No, 3 (he initially decided not to be taken, but changed his mind when confronted with the SWAT team) just assumes that he made an aggressively bad decision which he amended upon contact with reality. And, really, I think we're taking the "rational man" hypothesis a little far here. We don't have to consider Maye to be fully rational to explain his actions.
I think the fallacy of the juror who assumes guilt because the accused is a criminal, incidentally, is that of petitio principii or "begging the question."
I've only heard their music. They don't, like, stand for something, do they? I'd say at the moment their song "Pieces" makes it into my top ten. I used it to warm up on the way to the theatre.
Ah, didn't know that. I've seem lower case letters meaning minor, but I think that has been pretty standard forever. And there is a big difference between major and minor so I'd hate to get those wrong.
I think they added the - so as to eliminate confusion, especially since charts are often written by hand, and handwriting varies from person to person, making it hard to distinguish between upper- and lowercase.
It's nowhere close to a good self-defense claim. That you were involved in a criminal enterprise and were in fear for your life is not going to justify your shooting of a police officer who enters your dwelling without his weapon drawn and after having knocked and announced himself.
Andrew- You're shifting your ground here -- under your theory (1), if he was in fear for his life, it was because he didn't know the person entering was a policeman. Without that knowledge, we're in the realm of self defense; with that knowledge, he isn't in fear for his life. Your (4) is just weird -- I suppose that it is possible for someone to decide "I am uncertain as to who will walk through that door, policeman or criminal -- I will shoot them before identifying them, despite the fact that I do want to shoot a criminal and do not want to shoot a policeman, because I am unwilling to accept the risk of waiting to distinguish between the two (as a corollary, I am capable of accurately aiming and firing a gun at someone before I can be certain of whether they are dressed in a police uniform)." I mean, theoretically possible I suppose, but what kind of evidence would you need to be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant had gone through that thought process?
And of course, all of these arguments depend on the knowledge that Maye was a criminal who was afraid of being apprehended by the police, which the jury had no admissible evidence to support.
#94: Why not just call it the Republican fallacy? Some people are criminals, some people are Christians, some people are evil, some people are law-abiding citizens, and therefore anything that those people actually *do* is condemned / excused on grounds of their identity. So, if PK grows up and slashes someone's tires, he's just acting like a teenage boy who needs a good talking to; but if some poor brown kid does it, he's obviously a criminal in the making and we should have a zero tolerance policy in order to keep him in line and/or get him off the streets before he does something worse.
#142: Also, honestly--why would anyone assume that a person breaking into their house was a policeman? If I heard someone coming through the front door in the middle of the night, my first thought would not be, "oh, I bet it's the cops."
I think Lizardbreath nailed it; to show that he wanted to kill a cop, you have to show that he knew or had a reasonable suspicion the person entering was a policeman; if you can't show that the most you can show is that he either made a split second decision to kill a cop (that's going to require some other proof) or that he thought that someone was breaking into his house. (And still, how do you get to the death penalty for an unpremeditated crime?)
And I don't know whether they took the jury to the apartment, but the hallway outside my door is acoustically very live; everything echoes. If a cop bangs on my door late at night, even announcing himself and breaks in, it's really, really likely I haven't heard anything but a bunch of shouting.
I protest applying 'Republican' to the ad hominem type fallacy, though; there certainly seem to be a lot of self-identified liberals that make similar sweeping value judgments ("I've never met a Christian, but here is what they believe...").
The fallacy is sort of like the fundamental attribution error, in which people are excessively likely to attribute behavior to a fixed characteristic of a person (or thing) rather than to situational factors or chance.
Well, I was joking about the "Republican" thing. But I honestly do think that one fundamental difference between right-leaning arguments and left-leaning arguments seems to be that the former seem largely based on identity, the latter on actions.
You're shifting your ground here -- under your theory (1), if he was in fear for his life, it was because he didn't know the person entering was a policeman. Without that knowledge, we're in the realm of self defense; with that knowledge, he isn't in fear for his life.
I'm not shifting ground, though perhaps I didn't communicate explanation 1 well enough. Each explanation supposes that the jury believed the witnesses who stated that the police banged loudly on Maye's apartment door---loudly enough to wake the people in the next apartment apparently---and announced themselves as police. The explanations attempt to reconcile Maye's actions with the (assumed here for argument) fact that he heard people banging on his door, identifying themselves as police.
So in explanation 1, Maye's fear is that the people outside are lying about being police. He doesn't answer the door; he grabs his firearm; and he shoots the first person through the door.
This action is NOT reasonable, and would not be justified under any jurisdiction's self-defense doctrine. The policy implications by themselves would prevent any court from subscribing to it, regardless of the formal doctrinal strength of the argument (which, in all likelihood, would be very weak in any jurisdiction).
theoretically possible I suppose, but what kind of evidence would you need to be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant had gone through that thought process?
None. Once the jury decides that Maye must have heard the police outside, and heard the announcement of their identity, and fired deliberately at the officer entering his apartment, they need not settle upon a definitive theory of why Maye fired. Certainly, if Maye did hear those things, he made a very bad decision--- but people often make bad decisions.
And of course, all of these arguments depend on the knowledge that Maye was a criminal who was afraid of being apprehended by the police, which the jury had no admissible evidence to support.
These explanations are simply plausible ways of arranging the pieces around the jury's decision to believe the witnesses who testified as to the existence and volume of the police announcement of their presence and their demand that Maye open the door. They don't beg the question. The point is that there are alternative ways of arranging the pieces to a "motivationless desire to kill police officers," as you stated above.
Hey, thanks for posting about the Maye case, but... pardon my ignorance...
Who is Bob Herbert?
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:10 PM
Holy socks! It's the entire southwest Missouri Libertarian party!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:11 PM
No, just its humble Chairman... out stirrin' the puddin' in the ether. Thanks for making me feel like many people, though... :)
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:14 PM
Wouldn't ya know, there was a link that explains who Bob Herbert is, and I looked right at it. Must be the NyQuil.
Thanks again, though, seriously, for posting the Cory Maye link. This story needs to be everywhere. Screw "Tookie".
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:20 PM
SwMoLib, Herbert is a New York Times columnist who sometimes crusades effectively against injustice--best known for publicizing the railroading of most of the black people in Tulia, Texas. (Just about an hour from me!)
Here's a previous Unfogged discussion of Herbert (and thank you J for leaving comment 101.)
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:23 PM
Screw "Tookie"
Don't worry, they're about to.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:23 PM
Thanks for the history lesson on Bob. This has been an eventful day, knowledge-wise.
Oh, and silvana... Cory Maye DOESN'T deserve to die. Tookie, well... I'm not so sure, but why isn't the NAACP, the ACLU, or CourtTV even INTERESTED in Cory Maye's story? Go search their sites... nothing. I had to dig to find ANYTHING about Maye.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:30 PM
Can we not do the "Why don't these liberal groups take this cause up?" thing? Most likely, like the rest of us, they hadn't heard of Maye until a couple of days ago if that.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:37 PM
No one is disputing that the case of Corey Maye is a troubling one. People are talking about Tookie because he's set to die tonight, for God's sake.
I am sure other groups will be taking up Maye's cause soon.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:39 PM
Maye's been dealing with this since around 2001, Matt. How long does it take for Jesse Jackson to get to a worthy cause?
To be fair, the *conservative* groups weren't exactly beating down the door, either; I found out about this on Hammer of Truth and The Agitator. And, eventually, on Battlepanda.
Now's the time for ALL groups, liberal and otherwise, to stop gabbing about poor Tookie and get on with THIS story.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:41 PM
Say, what's it like being a libertarian in SwMo? I drove through on the way to Lubbock, Texas, and it didn't seem like a very libertarian place. (Kawaii Jesus!)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:43 PM
It's a tough sell, Matt... it's Repub country down here in the Springfield area, tho' there are Dems a-plenty, if you look hard enough.
Sure not a lot of right-thinking, small-government folk in these necks of the wood, that's for certain.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:47 PM
Maye's been dealing with this since around 2001, Matt
Yeah well, Tookie was originally convicted in 1979 but the hubbub only started in the last year, so I'm not sure your argument carries much weight.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:50 PM
Thing is, Tookie is a thug.
Cory Maye isn't.
And I'll bet you $3.50 that Tookie HAS killed more than Cory Maye. And, with malice. Lots of malice.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:52 PM
Dude, you first posted about this yourself all of three days ago, as far as I can tell. So maybe no one else had heard about it, just like you?
You're not helping Maye's cause by yelling at people.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:53 PM
I'm not yelling, I'm helping. Sorry if you got the wrong impression. I can be a bit blunt at times.
No, I hadn't heard about it; none of the news outlets were talking about it. Their loss... Maye's loss, even worse.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:56 PM
I think the point is that the liberal and conservative groups were all in the same boat. If you look at the newspaper reports it makes it seem as though Maye is just a cop-killer. Not (I guess) till Balko dug deeper did we have any reason to think that there was more to the story--and so there was no one to take up Maye's cause.
(BTW, I used to volunteer for the ACLU in southwest PA, and they didn't take cases unless they were called in, and almost never took criminal defense cases. Just not enough resources.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 10:58 PM
Well, thank God for Balko, and Gordon over at The Hammer of Truth... looks like they're the ones who did the legwork, especially Balko.
I can understand maybe the ACLU not being on this, but the NAACP? Maye is black. Why nothing there? And Court TV? They coulda done SOMETHING on this guy... they cover court cases, at least when they're not running "NYPD Blue" and other filler...
But the point is: SOMEONE'S gonna pick it up, and God willing, it'll make the major networks. I hope.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:02 PM
Matt, I don't think I'd bother trying to talk some sense into him.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:10 PM
I think the point is that there is only room for ONE token criminal of the week! And my token cause is better than your token cause!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:14 PM
What can I say, silvana? I'm not politically-correct. I *did* delineate between the two types of Muslims, so why are you upset? I don't like walking on eggshells, and I did that post hoping CAIR would get pissed off at me. Looks like they don't dig deep enough.
I'm doing something good here, trying to help Maye, and you're nitpicking about a throwaway post. Lighten up! The world's gonna end one of these days, anyway. :)
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:14 PM
SwMo, you do realize that you're stirring up shit and that telling people to "lighten up" does *not* help things?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:18 PM
I'm not politically-correct.
See, being proud of avoiding political correctness usually has something to do with "I won't let concerns about being 'sensitive' interfere with The Truth," which at least has a certain demented logic to it. However, that post avoids anything even resembling the truth. It's just a list of rather odd racial slurs.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:20 PM
And I'm a little confused about how getting a bit hysterical in the comments at Unfogged is helping Maye.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:20 PM
SwMo, spend enough time here and it will become apparent that nobody here is politically correct. Quite the opposite, really. Try to keep up.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:21 PM
It's not a throwaway post. I'm not going to mince words - your remarks were and are extremely offensive, and your supposed delineation does absolutely nothing to improve your image.
Racism didn't really help Corey Maye either, now did it?
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:22 PM
I didn't tell her to go digging up a BS post, dude. I came here b/c I saw the Maye link. She zeroed in on the ONE post, but not the second one where I said:
"Just in case I offended any "normal" Muslims, I apologize."
I don't know what else to say. Try to do something good for a guy on death row, and I get grief over "offending" someone... well, there is no right to not be offended in the Constitution. It ain't there.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:22 PM
The post is falsely self-righteous, as well. We do often torment women who were raped. They are often punished, by their families or by the courts. And we *rarely* through rapists in jail.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:22 PM
*Cory
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:22 PM
oi. "throw"
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:23 PM
Really, what good are you trying to do? I'm very unclear on that.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:24 PM
SwMo, I saw that post. When your comments consist of "I hate hummus" and "Achmed, you candy-ass," your pretend apology doesn't really cut it.
Luckily, people other than you are taking up the Maye cause, too. Look, if he still doesn't have a lawyer by the time I get my license, I'll take it up my damn self.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:25 PM
Well, it's radical Muslims who blow people up, beat their women (or worse) when they get raped, and God knows what else. I don't hate the ones who DON'T do that stuff, and made that rather clear.
How was I supposed to know, in the future, someone would zero in on one paragraph of pointing out unhinged radical religious extremists, would cause me this much grief? Jesus, okay, I get it.
Now, can we get back to Maye's plight, instead of this?
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:26 PM
How was I supposed to know, in the future...
You should have expected that, unless you are an idiot.
And no, you did not make any distinctions between Muslims at all clear.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:29 PM
"People other than you"? I see... so now I'm some sort of ogre. How do you read my mind that way?
Michael, you're right about what happens to rapists here... we need to throw MORE of them away. I have no respect for men who mistreat women, anywhere on the planet.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:29 PM
Yes, I did... I delineated between "normal" Muslims, and the ones who do fiendish things. Sorry if I didn't go far enough... I'll have to run everything past a lawyer in the future, I suppose.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:31 PM
Shall we do the same exercise for "normal" Christians and the ones who do fiendish things? Because I can list all kinds of fucked up behavior from Christians here and elsewhere. How about Southerners? Hell, I can give you examples from my high school.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:34 PM
Nobody's perfect, apostropher. But right now, it's not unhinged Southern Baptists who are strapping pipe bombs to themselves for their god. And I have yet to meet a Pentecostal who stones his wife over adultery, although Pentecostals are an odd bunch.
Why the PC hands-off-on-Muslims thing? NOBODY is sacred beyond being poked at, IMO. Hell, my brother has a learning disability... do I go around punching people who yell "retard"? No.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:38 PM
SwMo, let me break it down for you. Saying racist things about people who do bad things is no better than saying racist things about good people. Get it?
People (namely, me) are attacking you because you are being pretty contradictory. You are pissed off because the NAACP isn't representing Maye, but Tookie? Screw him. You complain that racism influenced the verdict against Maye, and then you go make unrepentantly racist comments against Arabs.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:39 PM
I don't know what else to say. Try to do something good for a guy on death row, and I get grief over "offending" someone... well, there is no right to not be offended in the Constitution. It ain't there.
Ok, let's do this line by line then.
I thought I might try to get radical Islamists mad at me, and while I'm not very good at slamming anyone over their religious beliefs...
You are nevertheless doing it. If I pee on Baptists is that ok?
*ahem* Hey, you slimy bastards!
The Council for American-Islamic Relations?
WE don't beat our women if they get raped...
Not always, at any rate. Used to tho. Stopped.
WE put the rapist in prison!
Sometimes.
WE don't do genital mutilation on OUR women!
But we do do so on men.
You thugs like to have sex with camels!
Which thugs? CAIR? Is it too much to point that God-fearing Missoura farmboys fuck chickens on occasion?
I spit on your ancestors' haircuts!
One word: mullet.
Mohammed was a child molestor!
Abraham? Isaac? Moses? St. [insert here]
Go fornicate yourselves with those cactii in your desert wastelands!
As I recall, Saudi and the Sahara lack the cactii.
Mecca should be turned into a gay disco!
What did gays ever do to you?
I hate hummus!
But you like Wonderbread?
You Shiite-heads!
You really aren't good at this, are ye?
Come an' get me! I'm not only white,
Curiously enough, Arabs are Semitic and Caucasian. (Persians are, of course, Indo-Iranian and Caucasian, and Turks are Altaic and Caucasian.)
I was raised Baptist,
My condolences.
AND I'd have sex with a black Jewish woman!
With or without her consent?
Over here, Achmed, you candy-ass! You want some?
Dude, you might as well have yelled it out the door. It's one thing to wave your dick in the air, another to do so where the targets of same can see it.
YOU need to get searched at the airport before Grandma does!
Who? CAIR?
The Council on American-Islamic Relations can kiss my package!
You said fuck, by can't dick?
And another thi- Hey, sounds like someone's at my doo
{sigh} I'd give a C- for effort, but it would help if you actually located the target you're trying to hit. Even better if they noticed. F.
ash
['Keep trying.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:40 PM
Well, now that I've been thoroughly psychoanalyzed... where's a "rolling-eyes" emoticon when you need one...
What can I say... I might as well lie down on the railroad tracks. I'm of no use to humanity whatsoever. Thanks for pointing out what a piece of shit I am, and here I thought I cared about my loved ones and good people and all that... I was just deluding myself.
How much for the shrink session? I'll send a money order.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:44 PM
I delineated between "normal" Muslims, and the ones who do fiendish things.
You really didn't, you only said you did. The actual comments you made ("Mohammed was a child molester", etc.) don't draw any distinctions. It's not only offensive, but poorly executed as well.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:44 PM
Well, Matt, pardon me for not having the future-telling foresight to say "the PROPHET Mohammed"... guess the fact that I think child molesters are scum of the earth, doesn't mean much, does it?
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:46 PM
If you'd like to see people making fun of Muslims, please read the archives. The guy who runs this site was raised Shi'ite, and we mock him non-stop.
it's not unhinged Southern Baptists who are strapping pipe bombs
It is, however, unhinged Southern Baptists who strap their kids into the car and drive it into a South Carolina lake. Or shoot abortion clinic doctors. Or blow up the Oklahoma City Federal Building. This really isn't a road you want to travel. Nobody here is defending murderous zealots; conversely, nobody here is lumping together millions/billions of people based on the actions of a small crazed minority.
Goddamn, but Jews are greedy. And black people? Lazy! All kidding aside though, Asians are crappy drivers.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:47 PM
Wish I'd known that before I posted here, on the assumption that we'd be talking about Cory Maye, and not some post I tossed together to piss off RADICAL Muslims...
But I'm a white man... it's all OUR fault, anyway. We all deserve to die.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:49 PM
But I'm a white man
Me too. And a Southerner. And married with kids!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:50 PM
Listen, folks... I'm not sure what this site is about, I just stumbled here through a link about the topic we *should* be discussing... and next thing I know, someone's dug through my blog to find *gasp!* impolitic ramblings that one can hear (somewhat) on talk radio.
You all have fun. I don't think we're gonna work out. Apparently, I'm some sort of racist hatemonger, although my kid and my family and friends know otherwise.
I self-exiled myself from FReeperland, I'll go quietly from here. I can stir the gravy elsewhere.
You folks have a government-approved day! :)
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:55 PM
Well, Matt, pardon me for not having the future-telling foresight to say "the PROPHET Mohammed"... guess the fact that I think child molesters are scum of the earth, doesn't mean much, does it?
You say that you don't mean to offend "normal" muslims, yet your comments are simply attacking Islam. Not Islamic terrorists, just Islam. It's rather ridiculous to issue a blanket smear, and then after the fact say "I only meant it for the people I don't like".
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-12-05 11:55 PM
So, does anyone want to explain to me if I'm using "Kawaii" right?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:04 AM
Normally, I wouldn't have done it, but on further reflection, I deleted both of the posts from my blog. Not that I still don't detest the "radical" Islamists, which I did point out were not the "normal" ones... but it might have not been a good idea to have the posts floating around in the ether - where they could be dragged out for no good reason other than to detract from the subject at hand.
We *still* don't have a Constitutional right to not be offended, though... remember that.
My way of saying "sorry", I s'pose, but I'm still out the door. Too bad, I mighta liked this site, but some people just don't like hearing uncomfortable things. I get 'em every day, that's why I rant. It's cathartic.
But you folks do your thing, and I'll do mine. Later.
Posted by SwMoLibertarian | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:05 AM
Yet more evidence of the impossibility of predicting where an Unfogged thread will go from it's origins. Also, I'm pulling an all-nighter tonight, so expect me to be either dead on my feet or loopy at Town Tavern tomorrow. Or both.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:07 AM
But what does SwMoLibertarian think about poor spellers? Or info theory?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:20 AM
"it's" should be "its"
Wolfson, can I have a macro that will write the first line of this comment?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:21 AM
swmo, i wish you wouldn't go away. it is so good to have a little diversity of region and background (at least i am betting that your presence here probably altered that)
that said, it is more than a little silly for you to call Mohammed a child molester... unless you want to say the same of the vast majority of Christian Europeans during the same time period - and their kings -- including one who was canonized as a saint. (le beau saint louis!)
also, do imagine for a moment how it would be if muslims wanted to initiate a dialogue between people and started it by saying that Jesus and his apostles believed in cannibalism (because of the Last Supper and communion rites)... not the best outreach effort, now, is it?
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 7:10 AM
swmo, i wish you wouldn't go away. it is so good to have a little diversity of region and background (at least i am betting that your presence here probably altered that)
that said, it is more than a little silly for you to call Mohammed a child molester... unless you want to say the same of the vast majority of Christian Europeans during the same time period - and their kings -- including one who was canonized as a saint. (le beau saint louis!)
also, do imagine for a moment how it would be if muslims wanted to initiate a dialogue between people and started it by saying that Jesus and his apostles believed in cannibalism (because of the Last Supper and communion rites)... not the best outreach effort, now, is it?
saying that your friends & family know you're not racist is saying that *people exactly like you* don't think you're racist. i have no idea personally, not knowing you, but don't you think a better test would be *people who are different in some way from you* not finding you racist?
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 7:14 AM
I like the "you have no Constitutional right not to be offended" trope -- I'm still trying to come up with something bizarrely and unforgivably offensive that I can do at dinner tonight, so I can spring that one on -gg-d.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 7:15 AM
is it worse to double-post or apologize for double-posting?
i'll just keep hitting the brandy snifter over here. (um)
made from mirabells though -- yum!
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 7:34 AM
Also: "I'm going to delete the posts but don't think I'm going to admit what you were saying about them has any validity." What the hell, is SW Missouri Libertarian Party a High School club or something?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 7:36 AM
56: Just say "fart." Farty farty fart!
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 7:47 AM
"Just in case I offended any "normal" Muslims, I apologize."
This has got to be the funniest non-apology apology ever.
Posted by JP | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 7:59 AM
I'm ridiculously confused. Is there a reason that two death-penalty cases in different states can't be protested at the same time? The case is two days public; maybe not harp on the lib'ruls for not supporting Maye when, like, no one heard about it till yesterday?
Not sure what SwMo guy's on, but it seems like he was trying to mock terrorists, but not only missed his target, but wasn't ballsy enough to make it funny.
(Like Deignan going on about 'You have messed with me, and I will spare no expense to take you down. (legally, I mean. That isn't a threat. I wouldn't threaten.)'
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 8:28 AM
Eh, give SwMo credit for taking down the offensive post -- someone who can be embarrassed by having said something racist isn't beyond hope. Certainly, he was half-heartedly obnoxious, but that's a step up from wholeheartedly obnoxious. Who knows - he might get better someday.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 8:39 AM
I agree.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 8:41 AM
give SwMo credit for taking down the offensive post
Fuck that. Unless he submits to the Shi'a led implementation of the Wolfson Protocol, no quarter will be given.
Really, the only information to be gleaned from the whole exchange is that no one should ever move to the southwest of Missouri. I gather he's the liberal there.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 8:51 AM
Wow, that was a fun read.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 8:52 AM
Back to the original bitch by SWMO and other conservatives.
Death penalty opponents are a rather small group, and there are a large number of people on Death Row. They are stretched to the limit. They're not even able to get good legal representation for most capital defendants, which seems to be Cory Mayes' story.
From a publicity standpoint, you can only have a few poster children. Celebrity and ideological politics have their effects too.
The real question is, "Why didn't the black helicopter 2nd amendment guys pick up this case instantly and get the guy a top lawyer?" It's their bread and butter.
What race is Corey, anyway?
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 8:53 AM
I feel kinda bad for driving someone away, but only a little bit.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 8:54 AM
It occurs to me that this fellow likely came over to accuse us liberals of not getting sufficiently outraged over Maye, and then when he found that we were sufficiently outraged over Maye, he used the forum to bash other liberals who (in his mind) weren't sufficiently outraged over Maye.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 8:59 AM
Good for you, Silvana.
He also nitpicked us, and then accused us of nitpicking him.
My sister ilived in SE Kansas right near SW Mo., and that's a hellhole.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 9:35 AM
Good for you, Silvana.
He also nitpicked us, and then accused us of nitpicking him.
My sister ilived in SE Kansas right near SW Mo., and that's a hellhole.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 9:36 AM
68, I think that's not so; he probably found this blog only through trackbacks about Maye outrage. And he had pretty much the same complaint about liberal groups posted on his blog.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 9:41 AM
Good for you, Silvana.
He also nitpicked us, and then accused us of nitpicking him.
My sister ilived in SE Kansas right near SW Mo., and that's a hellhole.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 9:41 AM
Not my fault.
Posted by m going to | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 9:42 AM
What race is Corey, anyway?
He's black. The second picture down in this story is of him.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 10:05 AM
Oh curse, curse you ALL!
You drove our self-confessed libertarian away before I got a chance to mock his libertatianism!
Dang it all. That is something I am good at and enjoy doing, too!
Really, you can't just be all upfront and confrontational at the start. Ya gots ta draw them out a bit before you swing the hammer.
Hmmpf.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 10:17 AM
According to Matt F's link, Maye seems to have gone to Jackson and razed the state legislature.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 10:20 AM
This post shows that it is possible that the facts are different from what Corey's lawyer said. Someone should still investigate things though.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 10:38 AM
Someone should still investigate things though.
Reprieve perhaps.
Posted by jayann | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 10:57 AM
Following the correspondence with the prosecutor in Maye's case at theagitator.com, I think that a number of people jumped the gun.
These items in particular, stated by the prosecutor albeit, jumped out at me:
As to why I he would not open, I can not say. The door to the other apartment was only a few feet from his front door. They heard the announcement from the team that went there and those people opened up. A witness testified a light went on in the front room of the apartment that the front door went into. When the shooting occurred may was in a back bedroom. Maye was the only person in the apartment other than the child.
If the witness is accurate, then police announced who they were, and why they were there, and Maye must have heard them because he turned on a light.
In other words, a reasonable jury could find, after listening to this witness, and perhaps viewing the small size of the apartment, that Maye did know that the people outside were police officers.
In the absence of the facts, it's remarkable how quickly we float to grand theories like "well it's racist Mississippi" and "the slain officer was the son of the police chief, so of course they railroaded the shooter" and ever more subtle investigations into the "ideologies" at play.
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 11:05 AM
Bit of a straw man, Andrew; not sure the prosecutor's case counts as 'facts', exactly.
Reading over the interview at the Agitator, it seems that there's a lot of police actions (the warrants, the tips, etc) that really could stand to be explained, and the lack of an explanation seems to bear on whether their testimony can be trusted.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 11:21 AM
And under the jury's understanding of the facts, why on earth would he have shot at the police if he knew who they were? He wasn't wanted, he didn't have drugs (beyond 'traces') in his house; if he'd sat tight presumably they wouldn't have done a blessed thing to him beyond breaking his door and harassing him. Given the facts that Maye knew (that he wasn't in any particular legal jeopardy from the search) the jury would have had to have concluded that he not only knew that the people breaking into his home were police, but would have had to have had a motiveless hatred for the police of homicidal intensity. Doesn't the explanation that he didn't know wht was going on and was defending himself make infinitely more sense?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 11:42 AM
Or why didn't he keep shooting? He puts a bullet in an officer, he knows what's coming. Why not try to take more of them out, if it is only hatred of the police at work?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 11:49 AM
If we believe the police case that they announced themselves and he turned the front light on that doesn't prove he knew it was the police. Perhaps all he heard was a commotion out front.
Still, I think there are a whole lot more questions than answers at this point. Events can be slanted and skewed by both sides to present their case. That is what the trial and the jury are for.
But I personally have heard how stupid people on the jury can be. I have first hand knowledge of a jury I served on and some of the stupid comments during deliberation.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 11:59 AM
Screw the radical Muslims. The people I hate are the irrational bigoted Libertarians.
Not all Libertarians, mind. Just the irrational bigoted ones.
Oh, wait....
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:00 PM
Another point is that, since the police seem to have changed their story about whether drugs were found in the house, they're not necessarily completely credible about other matters, including when they announced themselves. Anyway, I agree with Tripp in 83.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:18 PM
Given the facts that Maye knew (that he wasn't in any particular legal jeopardy from the search) the jury would have had to have concluded that he not only knew that the people breaking into his home were police, but would have had to have had a motiveless hatred for the police of homicidal intensity.
Apparently, the search warrant lists Maye's apartment as well, and the slain officer stated in his affadavit that he had observed large quantities of drugs being trafficked from both apartments. If the officer's observations were accurate, then Maye may not have known what the police knew. That he didn't have the drugs in his apartment at the time does not mean that he was without reason to fear arrest by the police, especially if he were involved in drug trafficking. Moreover, if he were so involved, then in addition to being in fear of the police, he might have been in fear of other individuals involved in trafficking.
So, with that in mind, the other explanations for Maye's actions include 1) fear that that the persons identifying themselves as police were not, in fact, police, and choosing to shoot first; 2) indecision as to what exactly to do, and shooting on instinct when the first cop came through the door; 3) an initial determination not to be taken that was removed by the sight of the rest of the SWAT team; 4) a calculated decision to shoot the first person through the door, and then, based upon whether the first person appeared to be a police officer, to lay down his weapon.
None of these alternative explanations would be likely to remove criminal culpability.
I have no idea what the law is in Mississippi (when did they get that?), but it looks to me that jury would have had to conclude that 1) Maye intentionally fired on another person, and 2) a reasonable person in Maye's shoes would have believed the other person to be a police officer, and 3) that the shooting was not justified by self-defense.
If the jury found the witnesses on the scene who testified as to the manner of the announcement to be credible, then the jury would have a very difficult time believing that Maye did not know the person was a cop, and had a justification for self-defense. I don't know who those witnesses were, so I can't judge the jury's determination. But the facts that we do know could support a reasonable jury in finding as they did.
In other words, I agree with whoever said that this case bears more investigation, but the facts that we know don't justify a quick condemnation of the jury's verdict either.
I'd also be curious as to the law of self-defense in Mississippi. In many states, such as NY, there is a duty to retreat even if one's dwelling is invaded, while in other states there is an exception allowing one to shoot the invaders even if one might be able to retreat.
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:30 PM
Also, re. duty to retreat, keep in mind he also had a child with him. So it's not just defending the dwelling, it's defending the child.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:35 PM
And then there's Florida.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:35 PM
Since no one asked (ahem) I'm going to tell my stupid juror story on my own.
I served on a local jury involving a local construction company owner charged by the state with bid-rigging. One of the pieces of evidence the state brought were his phone records, and apparently documents like that have to be brought into evidence by someone who could vouch for their authenticity.
The phone company sent a scretary or someone like that to swear that these were the actual records for the phone on that date. The lady was nervous, probably because she had to speak in front of a large number of people.
The defence accepted the evidence without dispute. There was no cross-examination of the witness, who left in relief.
So during our delibertation an elderly women member of our jury was voting to let the guy off because, in her words, "there was something fishy about that phone company woman."
This was simply a tiny little detail in the grand scheme of the trial, and the phone records were not even disputed by the defense. Yet somehow this juror wanted to let the guy off because the phone company flunky was nervous in court?!
My point is that many cases cannot be properly summarized in an article or two, and even when a case comes before a jury there is no guarantee that the jury gets it 'right.'
That is one of the smaller reasons why I don't support the death penalty and I am proud that neither does my state. Death is forever.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:50 PM
Andrew --
Your 1 through 4 take as a premise the assumption that Maye had a fear of arrest sufficient to explain his intentionally shooting a cop. What evidence do you think the jury had to support such a belief beyind a reasonable doubt?
1) fear that that the persons identifying themselves as police were not, in fact, police, and choosing to shoot first;
So he had a reasonable belief that his home was being invaded by criminals? That sounds like self defense even if he were a drug dealer, and the same argument holds for 4 (4 might get you to reckless manslaughter, but not, I think, murder).
I'm not clear what state of mind you're positing in 2, but it sounds impulsive rather than premeditated, which again wouldn't be murder. 3 is your only story which sounds like murder, and it also sounds silly -- you're assuming that he heard and comprehended the announcement, but didn't hear what was going on well enough to figure out that there was more than one policeman.
I can't see how a jury could legitimately have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Maye intentionally shot a policeman knowing that he was a policeman.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:54 PM
I've got a quite recent "stupid juror" story that I am meaning to post on my blog once I figure out the hook. But the gist of it is one of the jury members saying he is not going to find the defendant guilty of a crime (of which he was clearly guilty) "because he is not a criminal."
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:54 PM
Actually, I think that's pretty much how most people approach these issues.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 12:59 PM
And worse, the reverse: "Well, they may not have proved this, but he wouldn't be on trial if he wasn't a criminal."
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:00 PM
The philosophers/students of logic on this forum might be able to help me out here: How would one name this fallacy? Clearly whether somebody is or is not "a criminal" depends on whether they have committed a crime; but the juror I am talking about -- and the one LizarBreath postulates -- want to make whether the person committed a crime dependent on whether s/he is "a criminal".
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:06 PM
Isn't that "post hoc ergo hoc," meaning assuming something is proven before it is proven?
Or maybe I misremember and my mind is a teenage waseteland.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:12 PM
Tripp -- is that different from post hoc ergo propter hoc, or a misremembering of same? Because I don't think pheph identifies the fallacy I am talkin bout.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:15 PM
post hoc ergo propter hoc
This means "after, therefore because of", right?
I never learned Latin, but I've heard of this phrase before.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:16 PM
Yeah right. Makes a little more sense as "after this, therefore because of this"
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:17 PM
I got it wrong.
"Post hoc ergo hoc" or "post hoc ergo propter hoc" means assuming that one thing caused another just because the first thing came first.
Just because the rooster crows and the sun rises does not mean the crowing caused the sun to rise.
Nah, I think maybe this is the 'proof by assertion' fallacy.
Tripp can't have committed a crime because I assert Tripp doesn't commit crimes.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:26 PM
Maybe it's the package deal fallacy.
All criminals hate authority, come from poor families, and have a certain ethnic makeup. Tripp can't be a criminal because he comes from a rich family. Thus Tripp can't have comitted a crime.
I too two years of Latin but I can't say it has helped much.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:30 PM
couldn't you also cut throught the knot by just saying "ad hominem"?
post hoc ergo propter hoc is the correct phrase - you guys just remembered different parts of it. and i would say it's only valid for 93 - but not 91.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:31 PM
Sure didn't help my typing.
Hey, what do y'all think about the musical "Guys and Dolls?"
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:31 PM
I'd call it a version of ad hominem: I can dismiss/accept an argument by who (I think) the defendant is. I'd say ad h. rather than p.c.e.p.h because for many jurors, "criminal" is an identity-category rather than the consequence of an action..
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:32 PM
Luke, be a Jedi tonight...
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:33 PM
I think I have just been like triple-pwned.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:33 PM
Unassisted triple-pwns are rare, but have happened a few times.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:37 PM
Hey, what do y'all think about the musical "Guys and Dolls?"
I don't really like "If I Were A Bell" or whatever that song is called. Or "Adelaide's Lament".
I just don't know what to make of this, though, except to say that I was disappointed when I learned that Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River" wasn't just his take on the standard.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:38 PM
Luke, be a Jedi tonight...
Great, now I've got that running through my head.
Okay, you asked for it:
It's a small world after all,
It's a small world after all,
It's a small world after all,
It's a small, small world.
Try getting rid of that ditty!
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:39 PM
I actually find the national anthem peculiarly catchy.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:40 PM
I'm a Barbie Girl
In a Barbie World
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:42 PM
Good King Wenceslaus looked out on the Feast of Stephen
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:43 PM
Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla Wash., an' Kalamazoo.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:44 PM
When I'm with you
(when I'm with you)
You make me feel
(make me feel)
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:44 PM
Tripp -- best way to get rid of annoying ear worms is to listen to some good music.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:44 PM
I loved that Malcolm in the Middle where he spends like three days writing a song only to discover he was re-writing an advertising jingle he heard a few years earlier.
I'd like to think I would have written "A Whiter Shade of Pale" if we didn't already have it. That tune is too good. I'd've called it "A Brighter Shade of Pail" and it would have advertised a neon mop bucket.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:46 PM
How would one name this fallacy?
Isn't this the nominalist fallacy, or the psychologist's fallacy -- asserting that the component of a class must bear all the characteristics of the class? Hypostatizing the name of a class (in this case, "criminal") into a type to be matched by an individual case?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:48 PM
91 could be ad populum too. "fallacy by cause of popularity" (he isn't a criminal, therefore couldn't have done it) -- if popularity is equivalent to being perceived as upright, decent, whatever.
yikes. i should probably not edit other people's articles anymore if it causes me this much pain/procrastination.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:48 PM
You could have written "Anna Got her Doritos [Ba-by]" as a snack-food jingle.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:49 PM
I loved that Malcolm in the Middle where he spends like three days writing a song only to discover he was re-writing an advertising jingle he heard a few years earlier.
I did that once, writing lyrics to a song my bandmate had written (not the words themselves, but the vocal/melody part). That was embarassing when I figured it out a week later.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:50 PM
118 to 115 of course. I like "nominalist fallacy" and am going with it.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:51 PM
Jeremy,
Thanks. I like that. It sounds kinda like mid 60's music.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:52 PM
The top Google hit for "nominalist fallacy" is kind of instructive I think.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:53 PM
I like "nominalist fallacy" and am going with it.
Go, and sin boldly.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:53 PM
I once wrote a song that I later realized had the exact same chord progression, though in a different time signature and different accoutrements, as a song I was obsessed with when I was 14. That sucked.
Speaking of music, everyone, and I mean everyone, should check out this website.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:56 PM
*with* different accoutrements.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 1:57 PM
that I later realized had the exact same chord progression
To a blues guitarist this sounds kinda funny.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:00 PM
I once wrote a song that I later realized had the exact same chord progression...That sucked.
Quick, somebody tell the 50s and 60s!
I used to think that a new set of chords must have been invented around the time of color TV.
Also, Pandora? Gary was blogging that months ago.
Posted by Sam K | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:00 PM
Auto-pwned. Color TV was 50s.
Posted by Sam K | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:02 PM
Well, it was an odd chord progression, so it was a little weirder than realizing there are 80,000 songs that go G...C...D...G, for example.
and pwned.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:04 PM
So he had a reasonable belief that his home was being invaded by criminals? That sounds like self defense even if he were a drug dealer, and the same argument holds for 4 (4 might get you to reckless manslaughter, but not, I think, murder).
It's nowhere close to a good self-defense claim. That you were involved in a criminal enterprise and were in fear for your life is not going to justify your shooting of a police officer who enters your dwelling without his weapon drawn and after having knocked and announced himself. Can you just imagine the implications of the courts allowing such a defense? "It's okay to shoot the first cop through the door, even if they've announced themselves and enter without weapons drawn, if you are a criminal in fear of your life." Explanation 4 (he made a calculated decision to drop the first person through the door to see if he was a cop) would be murder anywhere.
I'm not clear what state of mind you're positing in 2, but it sounds impulsive rather than premeditated, which again wouldn't be murder.
That's going to be very jurisdiction-dependent, imho. But he had his weapon out, he aimed his weapon quite well, and he pulled the trigger. There's not much of a provocation defense either, imho. Sounds like enough presence of mind for murder to me. Further, there would also be a good depraved heart murder argument here.
3 is your only story which sounds like murder, and it also sounds silly -- you're assuming that he heard and comprehended the announcement, but didn't hear what was going on well enough to figure out that there was more than one policeman.
No, 3 (he initially decided not to be taken, but changed his mind when confronted with the SWAT team) just assumes that he made an aggressively bad decision which he amended upon contact with reality. And, really, I think we're taking the "rational man" hypothesis a little far here. We don't have to consider Maye to be fully rational to explain his actions.
I think the fallacy of the juror who assumes guilt because the accused is a criminal, incidentally, is that of petitio principii or "begging the question."
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:04 PM
Silvana, btw, Gary may or may not have been blogging about Pandora months ago (but he probably was). I just happen to listen to it all the time.
Posted by Sam K | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:10 PM
andrew makes a good call for 93: begging the question, petitio principii.
one of my favorite fallacies, both in practice and as a phrase: Misleading Vividness.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:18 PM
Back in the olden days we called GCDG I IV V I, using roman numerals. Lowercase for the minor chords. Do they still do that?
So what was the progression?
My personal musical preoccupation is with the full guitar sound from, say, SUM 41. I really like that full sound.
Posted by TRipp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:21 PM
Misleading Vividness
Didn't they have a top 40 hit in the late 80's?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:24 PM
Yes they still use Roman numerals for the chords.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:24 PM
Tripp likes Sum 41? Who'da thunk it.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:53 PM
Back in the olden days we called GCDG I IV V I, using roman numerals. Lowercase for the minor chords. Do they still do that?
Yeah, this is standard music theory shorthand.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 2:56 PM
ben,
I've only heard their music. They don't, like, stand for something, do they? I'd say at the moment their song "Pieces" makes it into my top ten. I used it to warm up on the way to the theatre.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 3:04 PM
Though with jazz notation, I've seen a - instead of lowercase to indicate a minor chord (II-7 would be a II minor 7 chord, for example).
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 3:04 PM
Ah, didn't know that. I've seem lower case letters meaning minor, but I think that has been pretty standard forever. And there is a big difference between major and minor so I'd hate to get those wrong.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 3:12 PM
I think they added the - so as to eliminate confusion, especially since charts are often written by hand, and handwriting varies from person to person, making it hard to distinguish between upper- and lowercase.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 3:16 PM
It's nowhere close to a good self-defense claim. That you were involved in a criminal enterprise and were in fear for your life is not going to justify your shooting of a police officer who enters your dwelling without his weapon drawn and after having knocked and announced himself.
Andrew- You're shifting your ground here -- under your theory (1), if he was in fear for his life, it was because he didn't know the person entering was a policeman. Without that knowledge, we're in the realm of self defense; with that knowledge, he isn't in fear for his life. Your (4) is just weird -- I suppose that it is possible for someone to decide "I am uncertain as to who will walk through that door, policeman or criminal -- I will shoot them before identifying them, despite the fact that I do want to shoot a criminal and do not want to shoot a policeman, because I am unwilling to accept the risk of waiting to distinguish between the two (as a corollary, I am capable of accurately aiming and firing a gun at someone before I can be certain of whether they are dressed in a police uniform)." I mean, theoretically possible I suppose, but what kind of evidence would you need to be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant had gone through that thought process?
And of course, all of these arguments depend on the knowledge that Maye was a criminal who was afraid of being apprehended by the police, which the jury had no admissible evidence to support.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 3:54 PM
#94: Why not just call it the Republican fallacy? Some people are criminals, some people are Christians, some people are evil, some people are law-abiding citizens, and therefore anything that those people actually *do* is condemned / excused on grounds of their identity. So, if PK grows up and slashes someone's tires, he's just acting like a teenage boy who needs a good talking to; but if some poor brown kid does it, he's obviously a criminal in the making and we should have a zero tolerance policy in order to keep him in line and/or get him off the streets before he does something worse.
#142: Also, honestly--why would anyone assume that a person breaking into their house was a policeman? If I heard someone coming through the front door in the middle of the night, my first thought would not be, "oh, I bet it's the cops."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 4:29 PM
You'd make a lousy felon, B. Better just stick to the libel.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 4:34 PM
Oh, that's right--being as I am not "a criminal" I'm not expected to think that midnight breakins are cops. My bad.
I've committed a couple misdemeanors, though. Never convicted.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 4:41 PM
I think Lizardbreath nailed it; to show that he wanted to kill a cop, you have to show that he knew or had a reasonable suspicion the person entering was a policeman; if you can't show that the most you can show is that he either made a split second decision to kill a cop (that's going to require some other proof) or that he thought that someone was breaking into his house. (And still, how do you get to the death penalty for an unpremeditated crime?)
And I don't know whether they took the jury to the apartment, but the hallway outside my door is acoustically very live; everything echoes. If a cop bangs on my door late at night, even announcing himself and breaks in, it's really, really likely I haven't heard anything but a bunch of shouting.
I protest applying 'Republican' to the ad hominem type fallacy, though; there certainly seem to be a lot of self-identified liberals that make similar sweeping value judgments ("I've never met a Christian, but here is what they believe...").
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 5:26 PM
The fallacy is sort of like the fundamental attribution error, in which people are excessively likely to attribute behavior to a fixed characteristic of a person (or thing) rather than to situational factors or chance.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 5:29 PM
Well, I was joking about the "Republican" thing. But I honestly do think that one fundamental difference between right-leaning arguments and left-leaning arguments seems to be that the former seem largely based on identity, the latter on actions.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 5:36 PM
Lizard,
You're shifting your ground here -- under your theory (1), if he was in fear for his life, it was because he didn't know the person entering was a policeman. Without that knowledge, we're in the realm of self defense; with that knowledge, he isn't in fear for his life.
I'm not shifting ground, though perhaps I didn't communicate explanation 1 well enough. Each explanation supposes that the jury believed the witnesses who stated that the police banged loudly on Maye's apartment door---loudly enough to wake the people in the next apartment apparently---and announced themselves as police. The explanations attempt to reconcile Maye's actions with the (assumed here for argument) fact that he heard people banging on his door, identifying themselves as police.
So in explanation 1, Maye's fear is that the people outside are lying about being police. He doesn't answer the door; he grabs his firearm; and he shoots the first person through the door.
This action is NOT reasonable, and would not be justified under any jurisdiction's self-defense doctrine. The policy implications by themselves would prevent any court from subscribing to it, regardless of the formal doctrinal strength of the argument (which, in all likelihood, would be very weak in any jurisdiction).
theoretically possible I suppose, but what kind of evidence would you need to be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant had gone through that thought process?
None. Once the jury decides that Maye must have heard the police outside, and heard the announcement of their identity, and fired deliberately at the officer entering his apartment, they need not settle upon a definitive theory of why Maye fired. Certainly, if Maye did hear those things, he made a very bad decision--- but people often make bad decisions.
And of course, all of these arguments depend on the knowledge that Maye was a criminal who was afraid of being apprehended by the police, which the jury had no admissible evidence to support.
These explanations are simply plausible ways of arranging the pieces around the jury's decision to believe the witnesses who testified as to the existence and volume of the police announcement of their presence and their demand that Maye open the door. They don't beg the question. The point is that there are alternative ways of arranging the pieces to a "motivationless desire to kill police officers," as you stated above.
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 12-13-05 8:49 PM