Officer who fatally shot Philando Castile acquitted

[Matty]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/police-shooting-trial-philando-castile.html?src=twr&smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

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uh oh

[dead0man]

bad bad bad

That cop clearly messed up there and deserved to be punished.  And the defense attorney said the victim was stoned and that's why it went down the way it did?  Uggg!  No, the video clearly showed the victim doing everything he was told in a calm manner, then the cop put 7 rounds in him.  Travesty.

[Cactus Jack]

Say what you will about previous cases in the BLM movement, this has to be one of the most astonishingly stupid court decisions yet.

[Virginiá]

This is why people are furious at the police and the system in general. It keeps letting off police who deserve to be punished, and it tells the country that they can do whatever they want, without repercussions.

This is really something law-and-order folks ought to support addressing. You can't allow a massive portion of the country's populace to be treated like dirt by the authorities and expect everyone to just sit back and be docile.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Say what you will about previous cases in the BLM movement, this has to be one of the most astonishingly stupid court decisions yet.

[JA]

The injustice system demonstrates its institutional biases yet again. A human life was abruptly and prematurely ended without justifiable cause (i.e. self-defense); the lives of all who loved him have been changed forever. And the man who took his life, a person sworn to uphold the law and protect the citizens, and the judicial system that is supposed to bring those who do wrong to justice, have both failed this man's loved ones and, yet again, the African American community.

And people really wonder why there are so much distrust and hatred aimed at America's law enforcement and judicial system?

[JGibson]

A horrible court decision if you ask me.

[Person Man]

People have a right to be upset and they are going to be until we make things right.

[Green Line]

In this country, we convict based off the written law and evidence.  Don't like it, move to France.

[KingSweden]

bad bad bad

That cop clearly messed up there and deserved to be punished.  And the defense attorney said the victim was stoned and that's why it went down the way it did?  Uggg!  No, the video clearly showed the victim doing everything he was told in a calm manner, then the cop put 7 rounds in him.  Travesty.

[Devout Centrist]

Now, more than ever, we need the Black Lives Matter movement. It's clear systemic racism is entrenched deeply in our society. It's time for action, not feckless silence.

In this country, we convict based off the written law and evidence.  Don't like it, move to France.

Your manic episodes are getting harder to track. Not but two weeks ago, you were praising France as a center of the enlightenment. I suggest you take a break from the glowing screen in your office.

[Hollywood]

The prosecution's witness made multiple conflicting statements both out-of-court and in-court.  She is the very definition of an unreliable witness.  That's it!  Nothing special here.  Just a witness that is unable to keep a story straight from one day to the next. Maybe the Officer was guilty, but there's no way for a jury to come to that conclusion.  You can't really fix the system when your witness is at best inconsistent and at worst a liar.

[Beet]

The prosecution's witness made multiple conflicting statements both out-of-court and in-court.  She is the very definition of an unreliable witness.  That's it!  Nothing special here.  Just a witness that is unable to keep a story straight from one day to the next. Maybe the Officer was guilty, but there's no way for a jury to come to that conclusion.  You can't really fix the system when your witness is at best inconsistent and at worst a liar.

Don't introduce facts to contradict the circlejerk.

[ProgressiveCanadian]

There is no justice system in America.

[Suburbia]

It's sickening, but it does not warrant rioting and venturing in the suburbs causing trouble.

[MarkD]

First of all, I don't ever come to conclusions that any jury was wrong in its conclusion. I don't see the point in making an effort to form an opinion about the guilt of an accused person, no matter how much publicity there is around any case, because the decision is not up to me, unless I'm a juror. We obviously do not have a system of convicting people based on national opinion, it's up to juries to make the decision, so what difference does my opinion make? None. (There was an excellent episode of Law & Order, third season, called "Self-Defense," which illustrated why it's a bad idea to rely on public opinion to decide whether or not to prosecute or convict. Adam Arkin guest-starred in that episode portraying a Greek immigrant who was prosecuted for killing two black men who tried to hold up his jewelry store. The jury convicted him of one count of murder, despite the fact that public opinion was running to the contrary, with so much of the public believing that the Greek immigrant should be set free because he, supposedly, acted in self-defense. That episode reminds me of the fact that the general public is not aware of all of the same facts that the jury sees.)

This is why people are furious at the police and the system in general. It keeps letting off police who deserve to be punished, and it tells the country that they can do whatever they want, without repercussions.

This is really something law-and-order folks ought to support addressing. You can't allow a massive portion of the country's populace to be treated like dirt by the authorities and expect everyone to just sit back and be docile.

I have tried to think of a constructive solution to the problem that too many police seem to be trigger-happy around unarmed blacks, and the only thing I can think of is .... greater training of the police about the Constitution. Of course, police already are trained about the constitutional rights of criminal suspects regarding searches and seizures and how to interrogate a suspect without violating the suspect's rights. What about training them to understand the last clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment addresses the fact of how the police treat everyone they are sworn to serve and protect.

"No State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

What has the Supreme Court said about what that means? In Strauder v. West Virginia, 1880, the Court said, "What is this but declaring that the law in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the States, and, in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color?" The Supreme Court has also said that the EP Clause does not only address discriminatory legislation, but also discriminatory law enforcement techniques. In Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 1886. In that case, a city ordinance that pertained to building safety regulations was written as to be racially neutral, but the city's bureaucrats who enforced he regulations were consistently enforcing them in a discriminatory manner. The victims of that discrimination were not blacks, but people of Chinese ancestry. "It appears that both petitioners have complied with every requisite, deemed by the law or by the public officers charged with its administration, necessary for the protection of neighboring property from fire, or as a precaution against injury to the public health. ... And while th(e) consent of the supervisors is withheld from them and from two hundred others who have also petitioned, all of whom happen to be Chinese subjects, eighty others, not Chinese subjects, are permitted to carry on the same business under similar conditions. The fact of this discrimination is admitted. No reason for it is shown, and the conclusion cannot be resisted, that no reason for it exists except hostility to the race and nationality to which the petitioners belong."

Over the decades, the Supreme Court eventually devised a very strict legal "test" to ensure that government complies with the Equal Protection Clause whenever the kind of discrimination is occurring is racial discrimination. The test has come to be known as the "strict scrutiny test," and a crucial element of how the test works is that the Court does not accept any racial stereotypes as an excuse for why people are being treated unequally to one another. There is another kind of legal test that the Court uses in most of its cases involving discrimination based on non-racial characteristics. The "rational basis test" is the most commonly used way of scrutinizing most instances of some people being treated differently that other people. The latter test allows an imperfect generalization to be used as an excuse for why people are treated differently. The former test does not allow those imperfect generalizations. The differences between these two tests reinforces the fact that racial equality is an equality of the highest importance under the Equal Protection Clause.

In Loving v. Virginia, 1967, the Court said: "Over the years, this Court has consistently repudiated '[d]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry' as being 'odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.' At the very least, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications, especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the 'most rigid scrutiny,' and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate. Indeed, two members of this Court have already stated that they 'cannot conceive of a valid legislative purpose . . . which makes the color of a person's skin the test of whether his conduct is a criminal offense.' ... There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause." (Internal citations omitted.)

Maybe if more police officers were trained about the intended meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, and trained to see how the Supreme Court has been interpreting and enforcing that Clause, it might make many of them less trigger-happy around blacks.

[they don't love you like i love you]

In this country, we convict based off the written law and evidence.  Don't like it, move to France.

The evidence (that video) is pretty strong.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Couldn't the police be fitted with tasers or stun guns, and only be allowed to even withdraw their firearms in absolute emergencies?

(Keep in mind I don't have much experience with guns or armed police, given in this country one cannot even carry pepper spray as a private citizen for whatever reason; so I may talking out my arse).

[they don't love you like i love you]

My Facebook feed is furious.

[SingingAnalyst]

I don't blame people for being upset. Clearly Castile was not reaching for a gun, yet the officer apparently thought he was, and shot him.

An all around tragedy, and my thoughts and prayers go out to Castile's family.

Clearly, it is very difficult to convict a cop.

I hope the Castile family pursues other legal avenues.

This may be a very, very naive question-- but should President Trump speak out? Express his shock and outrage at the verdict (while admitting that it's very difficult to convict a cop), express sympathy and prayers for the Castile family-- and express his support for any legal action the Castile family might take? It would certainly seem like the Presidential thing to do-- and it might even momentarily distract people from the Russia fiasco.

[fhtagn]

Say what you will about previous cases in the BLM movement, this has to be one of the most astonishingly stupid court decisions yet.

[Xing]

Seems like justice is a hard thing to come by these days.

[Tintrlvr]

Say what you will about previous cases in the BLM movement, this has to be one of the most astonishingly stupid court decisions yet.

But novice juries are a totally reasonable way to decide criminal cases!

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Couldn't the police be fitted with tasers or stun guns, and only be allowed to even withdraw their firearms in absolute emergencies?

(Keep in mind I don't have much experience with guns or armed police, given in this country one cannot even carry pepper spray as a private citizen for whatever reason; so I may talking out my arse).

The sentiment is quite good. The big problems with ever implementing it here are that A) police officers and unions would revolt, and B) in a country as heavily armed as the US, there will inevitably be some high-profile incident where the police legitimately did have a need for their firearms. (See the recent Congressional baseball shooting.)


What I'd like to personally see is:

*a firearms license requirement, with strict standards for training required, and a background check for violent crimes or mental illness.

*a sea-change in how we approach policing, with an end to both using law enforcement for revenue,  and to the quasi-military nonsense.

[dead0man]

Couldn't the police be fitted with tasers or stun guns, and only be allowed to even withdraw their firearms in absolute emergencies?

that's how it's supposed to work now.  The vast majority of cops never shoot anybody and those that do are almost always in the right (or at least not wrong).....but that said, this kind of sh**t (like in this story) still happens too much it seems.