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Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)


Simon

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2 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

In case people thought things were going to stay at '13 weeks'

 

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/02/texas-ban-medical-abortion/

 

A perspective reminder - a number of abortion clinics still died in Texas, and now getting prescriptive abortion medicine is illegal.

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-independent-clinics-fight-survive-under-restrictive-abortion-law-n1283696

 

So Texan women are going to have to pay to leave Texas, or travel very far out of their way, in order to get an abortion.  It's effectively being killed there regardless of the Roe v Wade decision.  But this will likely be replicated in many other states.

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On 12/3/2021 at 4:44 PM, wcw43921 said:

The Crumbleys Are On The Run.  But to where?  I doubt Canada would let them in, and no one in America can legally give them sanctuary.

 

This story doesn't suggest any circumstances whereby they could claim refugee status, so no, Canada wouldn't allow fugitives from American law into the country legally. They could slip in covertly, of course, but $4,000.00 US won't sustain two people for long in Canada.

 

(I tried not to mention "responsible gun owners" again, but failed my Ego roll.) 😞

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4 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

This story doesn't suggest any circumstances whereby they could claim refugee status, so no, Canada wouldn't allow fugitives from American law into the country legally. They could slip in covertly, of course, but $4,000.00 US won't sustain two people for long in Canada.

 

(I tried not to mention "responsible gun owners" again, but failed my Ego roll.) 😞


Yeah, well, these people aren’t exactly poster children for “responsible gun owners” - but I’m fairly old school and out-of-touch, so what do I know. 
 

(Darn, failed my EGO Roll too…)

 

I am curious to see if the charges against the parents stick. I’ve read Michigan doesn’t actually have any laws requiring safe storage, but their reported behavior makes it seem unlikely for them to escape a courthouse entirely unscathed. 

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3 hours ago, Tom said:

I am curious to see if the charges against the parents stick. I’ve read Michigan doesn’t actually have any laws requiring safe storage, but their reported behavior makes it seem unlikely for them to escape a courthouse entirely unscathed. 

Oxford is about 60 miles from me.  I know something about Michigan laws. 

 

The charges she laid weren't the right ones, as with Rittenhouse case.  The covering law (750.321) is driven by intent (always a hard thing to establish in cases) - involuntary means there wasn't intent, but still the death occured.  I don't see lesser charges listed, but I'm not digging into the filings, they may be there.  

 

The facts required to prove the case (that the parents caused the deaths unintentionally) also apply to the school officials that allowed him to return to class, and frankly those are more supportable and proximate - the school discovered the drawing, the school discovered the gun was carried in, the school saw the searches for ammunition, the school failed to act to protect their charges by allowing him to return to class without notifying appropriate mental health/child saftey organizations/the Sheriff's Department, etc (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/us/crumbley-parents-charged-michigan-shooting.html).  

 

She's weakened her own case by also charging the kid as an adult - it'll be harder to show negligence or causation on their part, since he is considered in the eyes of the legal system to be a competent adult, and therefore putatively able to know 'right' from 'wrong'.  Another hill to climb is the no prior bad acts/disciplinary problems on his record issue - even if there were parenting or gun storage laws they had fallen afoul of, there's no offical indication of an issue, until the shooting.

 

And, her arguments about clear cut warning signals will be are only from her vantage point (with the facts as presented by the article) - there's a wide variety of opinion on how people should raise their children, like it or not.   Yet another uphill fight the prosecutor will have is seating a friendly jury in that country - it only flipped from Republic control in this last election - for a very long time it has been a conservative chunk in southeastern Michigan, and there's a strong tradition of gun ownership, hunting 'up north' , outdoorsmanship, etc.

 

If she has charged lesser counts, or they are allowed a plea deal, they'll get some negative outcome. If it's balls to the wall like with Rittenhouse, expect a similar outcome.

 

I think it's a bad situation, I think that we should have better aligned laws than we do, but the law is the tool that the prosecutor has to work within, and making this a political statement as much as a legal one (see numerous clips of her talking about it) isn't helpful, at all.  Her 'thinking it's criminal' and being able to prove that statement in court, before a jury, limited by rules of evidence, are two very different things.

 

Someone made a comment about retainers/fees up thread - she has made this another cause celebre that will have defense donations pouring in, the Crumleys don't have to worry about how they'll pay for it.

 

 

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So you're saying there may be technical issues with the charges...as with Rittenhouse.  Fair enough.

 

NYT has this, in the story cited:

 

Quote

The day after Thanksgiving, he and his father had gone together to a Michigan gun shop to buy it. He and his mother spent a day testing out the gun, which was stored unlocked in the parents’ bedroom. On Monday, when a teacher reported seeing their son searching online for ammunition, his mother did not seem alarmed.

 

“LOL I’m not mad at you,” Jennifer Crumbley texted her son. “You have to learn not to get caught.”

 

That would seem to support SOME kind of charges against the parents, if it's true.  

 

Reports suggest the parents *should be* held accountable to a significant degree, and clearly the prosecutor feels that way.  Whether she's letting her anger influence her actions, rather than purely what's feasible under the law...well, that remains to be seen.

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51 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

So you're saying there may be technical issues with the charges...as with Rittenhouse.  Fair enough.

 

NYT has this, in the story cited:

 

 

That would seem to support SOME kind of charges against the parents, if it's true.  

 

Reports suggest the parents *should be* held accountable to a significant degree, and clearly the prosecutor feels that way.  Whether she's letting her anger influence her actions, rather than purely what's feasible under the law...well, that remains to be seen.

 

The law doesn't work on shoulda/coulda/woulda - specific things have to happen to set the crime and severity charged, and specific elements have to be proved, to support the charge.  The prosecutor charged involuntary manslaughter.  The facts don't appear to support that charge, from the story (no prior problems with discipline, for ex).  Additionally, the intervening actions of other adults dilute their responsiblity (the kid who is being charged as an adult, and the multiple school officials involved, who took no actions to prevent this obviously troubled teen from doing the crime).  Will the prosecutor be charging every school official who could have said 'Go home', but didn't?  Michigan doesn't have a safe storage law, and while I think they aren't fit parents or responsible gun owners, there's nothing else mentioned about charges they might actually be guilty of under the current laws.

 

Even if the county prosecutor manages to pull off a Clarence Darrow level case and convict, there are more levels of appeals to go through - all in settings that aren't emotionally charged by the case.

 

I don't know if the filings include lesser, more applicable crimes.  I hope they do, or that the judge that lands the case will allow them to be added early on (as opposed to Rittenhouse).

 

We'll see what actually goes forward when the charges are filed, not just talked about in a news article.

 

And, we'll probably see some new laws proposed in state government to tighten up laws around this sort of thing.  Since the State houses are controlled by the Republicans now, I wouldn't expect those to go anywhere.

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Seating a jury in these trials is going to be a serious problem.

 

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

I don't think anyone should be surprised anymore at anything they hear or read about the Trump administration.

 

Was thinking of this earlier.  The only surprising aspect is that, in the end, many of the people actually said No to some things.  Because if not, things could've been quite a bit worse.

 

Don't take that as a compliment to those officials, BTW.  

 

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