Jogging in Georgia while black.

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Athyrio said:
I made a mistake in saying crime in the same sentence that I said trespassing and now that others have dragged out the various and conflicting meanings of trespass and I have already explained to the legalistic purists here that I merely meant that he intruded upon some other person's property without their knowledge.
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Okay, but those conflicted meanings are coming from your posts, so I’m not sure why you’re blaming others for that.
 
Meadmaker said:
ETA: And my point in all this is that sometimes it's painful to participate in forum discussions, especially on controversial topics, because any deviations from the party line story are frequently met with accusations that must be on "the other side". Sometimes people speculate on things like whether it would be logical for Arbery to jog in that neighborhood, or what is the significance of Greg McMichael not giving a street name, or why someone visited a construction site, and whether a possible explanation is a plausible explanation. Just because someone brings up one thing from a news story that they don't think is correct does not mean that they support the side that would benefit if the thing in question were true.
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You seem to be defending one group’s right to speculate but admonishing another for doing the same.

Yes, sometimes irrelevant minutiae gets brought up and discussed to death. And sometimes a poster or group of posters seem to place a strange amount of importance on that minutiae. The rest of us are entitled to ask why they think it’s so important. And if their responses don’t make a lot of sense, or they choose to offer no response at all, we are entitled to express our opinions about why that is.
 
"Racism exists" is not "the party line."

At this point just start calling us "Sheeple" if you're going to use conspiracy theorist language.
 
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Meadmaker said:
I can think of two ways to answer why it matters.

1) I don't know, but the various media outlets that reported the lawyer's speculation that he might be getting water.

2) It has been said that the only reason one would have for visiting a construction site multiple times is to steal something. However, there are other reasons that he may have been on the construction site.

a) He was studying to be an electrcian (that's true, or at least it was said in this thread) and wanted to observe the house wiring.
b) He knew that the house was a source of water to use while running.


So, from a legal perspective, there is no real relevance to the question of what he was doing at the construction site. Nevertheless, public perception, including jury response to arguments, is colored by things which are not strictly relevant. If the public perception is that Arbery was a burglar, it will be harder to obtain a conviction of the McMichaels. I am not saying it should be harder, but it will be. Providing an explanation for his presence on the construction site that does not involve wrongdoing would make it more likely that a jury could be persuaded to convict his killer, and his killer's dad.

To put it in terms of your fill in the blank formulation, we can "logically" infer very little if we could determine that he was not getting water. There's the trivial "he was doing something else", but no other logical inferences. However, not all inferences that people make are logical. Giving an explanation of why he was there that does not involve unlawful activity would be persuasive to a lot of people, even if it wouldn't pass muster in the world of formal logic.

Finally, there's a variant on answer 1 above. It is, "I don't know if or why it matters. I saw a new story about it, so I said something about it,"

ETA: And my point in all this is that sometimes it's painful to participate in forum discussions, especially on controversial topics, because any deviations from the party line story are frequently met with accusations that must be on "the other side". Sometimes people speculate on things like whether it would be logical for Arbery to jog in that neighborhood, or what is the significance of Greg McMichael not giving a street name, or why someone visited a construction site, and whether a possible explanation is a plausible explanation. Just because someone brings up one thing from a news story that they don't think is correct does not mean that they support the side that would benefit if the thing in question were true.
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I think this is a really good elaboration on the complaint of gate-keeping and motive-questioning in 'while black' and other controversial threads. I think a way of mitigating outrage would be to think about the discussion as an analogue of a trial where many of the same tangential details will be raised by the defense or prosecution. Also, this discussion has no bearing on the outcome of the investigation, prosecution, or possible trial. Many posters seem to want to shame or ridicule other posters into submission even though most posters are engaging in similar baseless speculation on various minutiae.
 
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Darat said:
Do you realise what a damning thing you have posted about the USA justice system?
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If this situation draws attention to flaws in the system perhaps it will contribute to correcting them. I haven't seen much attention given to the officer's text to English about contacting his neighbor about problems with the property, but that seems totally inappropriate and evidence of major problems with the department. To be clear, even if it was appropriate or legal, it doesn't give the McMichael's police powers or unlimited latitude in responding to suspicious activity (I add this for the shamers, guilt-trippers, gate-keepers, and motive-questioners).
 
bluesjnr said:
How am I doing up till now? I could go on.
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You're doing a fantastic job of proving my point.

Even if we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Arbery was not getting water, we are still no closer to finding his actual motives for entering that building. Trying to figure out how thirsty he was, or what his cell phone data might show, or what kind of shorts he was wearing are not reasonable attempts at figuring out what actually happened that day. Rather, they are attempts to add fuel to the speculation machine - a machine that our culture is dedicated to booting up every time there's a high-profile death of a black man. "Ah, he got busted for smoking pot when he was a teenager." "Look! He's holding a GUN in one of his facebook photos!" "I don't know what he was doing in that building, but it was definitely unwholesome."

A lot of people in this country are more comfortable with the concept of a black criminal than they are with a black victim, so all the evidence has to be reshaped to the more psychologically pleasing hypothesis. I'm sick of it.

For the record, bluesjnr, this rant was not directed at you.
 
sir drinks-a-lot said:
Possible. But I don't think Arbery was out for that type of run as I've mentioned before. When I go for a run right from my house I sometimes don't take my phone because I know I won't need it for anything but music, and it's tough to carry.

Arbery didn't look like he was on a serious run to me. He was walking when he arrived at the construction site and it didn't look like he had been running for a while. But I could be wrong.

In either case, I'm pretty sure he had a cellphone, and that would tell us.
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What software are you using that gets you motive and seriousness from grainy video? Does it have voice control because that is some serious BladeRunner ******
 
Scopedog said:
If this situation draws attention to flaws in the system perhaps it will contribute to correcting them. I haven't seen much attention given to the officer's text to English about contacting his neighbor about problems with the property, but that seems totally inappropriate and evidence of major problems with the department. To be clear, even if it was appropriate or legal, it doesn't give the McMichael's police powers or unlimited latitude in responding to suspicious activity (I add this for the shamers, guilt-trippers, gate-keepers, and motive-questioners).
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The only fact that is immediately relevant is that English did NOT call McMichael. The McMichaels were not responding to any call for help. They weren't authorized to act as English's agents (and I dont know if they even could be). They decided to play cops'n'robbers all on their own.
 
I Am The Scum said:
You're doing a fantastic job of proving my point.

Even if we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Arbery was not getting water, we are still no closer to finding his actual motives for entering that building. Trying to figure out how thirsty he was, or what his cell phone data might show, or what kind of shorts he was wearing are not reasonable attempts at figuring out what actually happened that day. Rather, they are attempts to add fuel to the speculation machine - a machine that our culture is dedicated to booting up every time there's a high-profile death of a black man. "Ah, he got busted for smoking pot when he was a teenager." "Look! He's holding a GUN in one of his facebook photos!" "I don't know what he was doing in that building, but it was definitely unwholesome."

A lot of people in this country are more comfortable with the concept of a black criminal than they are with a black victim, so all the evidence has to be reshaped to the more psychologically pleasing hypothesis. I'm sick of it.

For the record, bluesjnr, this rant was not directed at you.
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You're doing a lot of assuming and editorializing in your post. People take interest in these cases for all sorts of reasons. One reason is to try and figure out the legal ramifications and determine the legal status of the incident; who is guilty and of what? Murder? Manslaughter? Neither?

Another reason is to come to a moral conclusion about the incident. For example, some might believe the legal ramifications are such and such, but in contrast to that (or in agreement with it) the moral ramifications are such and such.

Yet another reason is that people are just interested in playing detective and trying to piece together as accurate a picture of what happened leading up to an including the incident. Look at the famous Zodiac case, for instance. People endlessly discuss unknowns and hypotheticals in the case. But only a buffoon would suggest that those doing so are trying to somehow claim that the Zodiac killer wasn't guilty of murder, or that the tiny details "matter" in whether or not the killer was guilty.

With these high profile cases, people tend to make quick conclusions (often for reasons of politics or bias) on day one and be very vocal about them. Then they're stuck defending that position despite whatever new evidence comes in. Of course, this is exasperated by the media which does the same. In fact, one of the reasons this case has received so much attention is that there may be a juicy racial element - 98.8% of opinions on that were probably made on the first viewing of the video.
 
Bob001 said:
The only fact that is immediately relevant is that English did NOT call McMichael. The McMichaels were not responding to any call for help. They weren't authorized to act as English's agents (and I dont know if they even could be). They decided to play cops'n'robbers all on their own.
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Their state of mind may be relevant. Perhaps it would transfer some liability to the department if they thought (mistakenly or unmistakenly) they could investigate suspicious activity on their own initiative. I suppose the former Officer McMichael should know whether and what latitude the department can extend to civilians (probably none) but if that's a common practice for the department even during former Officer McMichael's time at the department then it may present a significant problem for the department.
 
whoanellie said:
Thanks. In my experience, people checking out construction sites out of curiosity is quite common. My wife and I have done it numerous times.
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I hope you've checked your local building regulations for the range of skin colours which can be allowed to safely inspect the sites. Safety First!
 
Scopedog said:
Their state of mind may be relevant. Perhaps it would transfer some liability to the department if they thought (mistakenly or unmistakenly) they could investigate suspicious activity on their own initiative. I suppose the former Officer McMichael should know whether and what latitude the department can extend to civilians (probably none) but if that's a common practice for the department even during former Officer McMichael's time at the department then it may present a significant problem for the department.
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You are doing what a lot of people did in the thread about Jean’s murder and looking too much into details which will be irrelevant to the actual prosecution and therefore the defence.

All the prosecution will do is establish the actual actions of the murderers as they occurred, and that is the only case the defence will be able to challenge. The defence may try to bring in other areas but they are very unlikely to be allowed to by the judge (if the judge and prosecutor are at least awake - which may be a tall ask given the apparent state of the area’s justice system!)

We often think that court cases are like the TV shows we watch, superficially they are but not really, the surprise witness, the unveiling of something unknown in the court, these just don’t really happen in real criminal cases. Such a case is the prosecutor saying “I will show that the accused did x, y, z at a,b,c time which is murder (will use the appropriate term for the legislation)” and that is what the defence has to defend.

The only aspects that the defence would be able to bring across may have been the likes of “you armed yourself because you knew the victim was armed” or “you approached the victim because you had seen him breaking the law in the area in the past”. But we know they didn’t know that or and hadn’t seen him breaking the law.

This is going to be rather open and shut case.
 
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