An off-topic comment by The Lab Manager on a completely unrelated post by Peter Grant caught my eye this morning.
In other news, three awesome White men defending their community against a black criminal got life in prison for defending their community and for being White. It’s an anti-White justice system. It is sickening that those on the right are okay with this.
He’s referring to the sentencing of Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers. And he’s full of shit. The folks who think Arbery was caught in the commission of a crime, and that the McMichaels and Bryan were righteous angels, seem to me to fall into one of three — sometimes overlapping — categories.
1. Racists who assume Arbery got what he deserved because he’s Black.
2. Clueless people who haven’t reviewed the evidence, and watched at most a snippet of video, and get their “news” from Category 1 sources.
3. Those who do not understand law.
I won’t deign to guess into which category our pointy-haired manager falls.
This case was local to me, so I paid it close attention. I’ve written a lot about the case; you can read those link for the detailed analysis which I won’t repeat here. I’ll just summarize.
Arbery’s killers broke the living shit out of Georgia’s [then] “citizen’s arrest” law. The law required knowledge of the comission of a specific crime, not mere suspicion.
Arbery’s killers never even invoked citizen’s arrest until after the second crooked prosecutor invented it for them months later. And then changed their stories as to what crime(s) they suspected.
Arbery’s killers attempted to present “evidence” of Arbery’s criminal past, which the judge properly disallowed because at the time of the killing the perps did not know who Arbery was or his alleged past; thus, it had no bearing on their actions that day.
Arbery’s criminal past — again, which the McMichaels and Bryan didn’t know — included a conviction for firearm possession on school property* some years before, and allegations of shoplifting which led to no arrests much less convictions. His history included no burglary claims.
Arbery’s actions — entering a house under construction and leaving — were duplicated many times by White people (recorded on surveillance video), yet the McMichaels and Bryan never pursued and killed the Whites.
The owner of the house under construction is on public record stating that nothing was stolen. By anyone.
Arbery had never even been given a trespass citation, so under Georgia’s trespass law, even entering the construction site was not a crime in itself. By him or the many Whites who did the same thing.
Even the commonly seen claim that Arbery attacked Travis McMichael is disproven by the last moments of the video showing Arbery attempting to evade McMichael and Travis moving to intercept him.
The McMichaels’ and Bryan’s guilt was obvious to anyone who objectively reviewed the evidence: video, police reports, witness statements, court filings, and more. Sentencing, though, is a little trickier. If I’d been doing the sentencing, I’m not sure I’d have gone quite the same way.
These idiots are clearly a danger to the community if left on the loose. Prison time is called for. But life without parole also sentences Georgia taxpayers to paying for these scumbags’ upkeep for the rest of their lives.**
In the case of Travis McMichael, even though he actually pulled the trigger, he’s a young punk. It’s possible he could learn better, and cease to be a community threat.
Greg McMichael not only is old enough to kknow better, but he was former law enforcement*** and damned well should have known better. I just might have sentenced him harder than his trigger-pulling son. His son, after all, could have been following the lead of his father who he expected to be familiar with the law. Maybe.
Bryan… probably got about the right sentence. His actions that days were as culpable as Greg McMichael, but he may not have had the same expected level of knowledge. The potential for parole seems appropriate.
All in all, I’m glad I wasn’t the one who had to decide on the specific sentences.
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* Someone even more familiar than I with that school said that unarmed students are probably the exception.
** In the case of McMichael the elder particularly, that may be short. He is a former law enforcement officer, who helped put other criminals behind bars and killed an unarmed Black. He’ll probably have to be kept in a segregated population.
*** “Former law enforcement” is another bucket of worms. McMichael lost his POST certification twice yet continued unlawfully working as law enforcement. When this was revealed, defense attorneys gleefully chortled and rubbed their hands in anticipation of possible conviction reversals in all the cases McMichael had tainted with his unlawful participation. That fallout is still raining down.
