Here is the same video I saw earlier today.
I don’t think I’ve seen any information about the person taking the video, and whether they were anything other than a bystander filming.
I also just realized this took place back in February. I wonder what took so long for the video to come out?
The sad thing will be that the dead guy will be painted as a criminal, stuff from his past will come out, and whether or not any of that has anything to do with the facts of this particular incident and the law, won’t matter. Sadly, there will people who think that because of his past he deserved to be killed. That he deserved to be killed for what he may have been doing.
When the facts about him come out, he may not appear as the most sympathetic person but the issue is whether it’s OK for citizens to pursue someone they suspect of a crime, while displaying guns, as well as take it to the point where they actually try and stop the person, again while displaying guns, and then use lethal force. Again, people will fall on different sides of this not because of the law but because they will see someone who has a criminal past and who may have indeed been casing the neighborhood (although it was in broad daylight) so they will think one less criminal to worry about.
This isn’t a prediction on my part; it’s already happening.
Again, we’re not here to discuss heresay, make generalized political inferences or engage in speculation about these events or their ramifications. Take that to PWI.
This is to discuss lethal force events from a legal and tactical perspective.
From the victims perspective fighting back in that moment was by far the best course of action. there is no way i could fault him for that. When the “enemy” is chasing you with cars and guns intent on killing you, and you are unarmed and on foot, the best chance you have is to surprise them at close range and attempt to disarm one of them.
without the benefit of hindsight, what would you have done in his situation?
I probably wouldn’t be out for a run, for starters. Swinging a kettlebell in my driveway at least puts a 70lb projectile in my hands.
The footage is somewhat incomplete, but I’m seeing the guy running towards the truck and it appears the driver is outside the vehicle on the driver’s side. The runner went to the opposite side and falls out of the camera frame for a bit. It looks like he closed the distance on the guy with the shotgun to fight for that gun. It sounded like the first shot was fired during this moment, but again the footage is incomplete.
That’s still a bit speculative.
As to what I would do, well, I carry concealed to have options besides hand-to-hand combat against two guys armed with guns, should such a situation materialize for me. In hindsight, he should have just kept running. Couldn’t have ended any worse.
Right, you’re not a runner, are always strapped in public, and also not black in an area with a “history”. You obviously are not him haha.
I was just asking to try and put yourself in his shoes that day and think about what you would have done.
On a semi-related note, what are the general laws around citizens arrest, and using guns to make the arrest, and also to defend yourself against someone trying to make an armed citizens arrest?
I really couldn’t say. Looked like a split-second fight or flight situation. I probably could have outrun those guys in the truck, but not their bullets. Fight, I suppose.
That’s a good question. I can’t answer it in full because I don’t know the ins-and-outs of “citizens arrest”.
I do know that assaulting someone and calling it a “citizens arrest” is unlikely to fly in any US Jurisdiction. You can’t do that. If someone came into my home and I subdued him until police arrived, that would likely be a perfectly legal detainment of a person.
Similarly, I’ve held a guy down at work. He got to get up when I said it was okay for him to get up. I de-facto “arrested” him because he was my prisoner at that moment, fully under my control and I was keeping him there against his will.
The cops were on their way at that point and I’m sure I would have been 100 percent justified in my actions, which would have amounted to a “citizens arrest”. Plus it was all on video. I let the guy bolt before the cops showed up. He didn’t hurt me, he seemed really sorry and I was ready to go home instead of making a statement to the cops.
Everyone wins.
I’m trying to make the point that the question is, from the pursuers POV, whether or not what they did was justifiable from a legal perspective. The idea that you think someone is up to no good being enough justification to take the kind of action they did. That’s not being political. The fact that some people think it is justification and use the dead guy’s past to back their position up is not political. Again, the point being, is it OK to do what they did even if it turns out he was up to no good or had a criminal record. It’s a question of when you can take action and be legally justified. The moral and common sense questions are a different matter. The reason why I say it’s sad that the dead guy is being crucified in some media outlets is not about politics, but about the idea that it might lead some to believe it’s legally OK to do what the father and son did because the dead turned out to not be a saint.
I see that now.
Generally speaking, no. This is not okay in any jurisdiction in the United States. I imagine this would be a form of assault in most cases.
See above. Lethal force is only justified in defense of self and others to avoid the imminent threat of death or great bodily harm.
Brandishing a gun is usually considered escalating an encounter to lethal force levels, even before a round is fired.
Ability?
Opportunity?
Jeapordy?
All seemingly present whenever someone with brandishing a gun demands that you do just about anything when you’re somewhere that you have a right to be, like a public road.
This can change if the other person is committing a crime, like breaking into your house. That’s not what was happening here.
Barring some bombshell revelation about what else this jogger may have been up to or the presence of other weapons that changed the lethal force dynamic in play, I don’t think these guys will be free men much longer.
Comparing this to the time I technically did arrest a citizen, as a citizen, many things were different. First off, I was assaulted while acting reasonably as an agent of an establishment. While I defended myself the bartender called the police. I subdued the guy by eventually getting full mount on him and threatening him with destruction of his left shoulder.
He quit.
I told him I’m holding him right there.
He understood.
I made the call to let him walk out before the cops arrived, but had I chosen otherwise I could have pressed assault and trespassing charges right then, right there with video evidence in-hand.
That’s the sort of scenario where I’m confident a citizen can arrest someone and remain under the mantle of legal conduct. It is worth pointing out that you can always be sued in Civil Court, so if this guy was a sleazeball in addition to a bad fighter he could have had his lawyer uncle sue me and the bar, but that didn’t happen.
Long story short, chasing people down you think did something wrong is not okay. Chasing people down with guns drawn is probably felony assault in most jurisdictions.
You have to use reasonable force. One unarmed man vs three men, at least two of them armed, and the unarmed guy ends up dead. Maybe that sounds reasonable to some.
I understand. It is becoming a political issue, and a race issue, and maybe it is those things but I was just saying that the people who are engaging in that and saying it’s all good because he was a criminal at some point are setting themselves up for a bad day if they end up trying to play Wyatt Earp.
It’s amazing people have to actually say that. It should be obvious.
It was a teachable moment.
…and they’re not.
Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced. Both men face charges of aggravated assault and murder.
It also seems that the person filming was a neighbor who was also involved in trying to chase this guy down. I’m curious if charges of some kind will be brought against him
This part of the article blew my mind.
George Barnhill, one of the prosecutors who first handled the case, defended the actions of the McMichaels and their neighbor in the truck. In a letter to the Glynn County Police Department obtained by NBC News, Barnhill wrote that the men had “solid first hand probable cause” to chase Arbery, a “burglary suspect,” and stop him.
Barnhill also said that after he watched the video of the incident, “given the fact Arbery initiated the fight” and grabbed the shotgun, he believed Travis McMichael “was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself” under Georgia law.
That’s absurd in my opinion. No details were given about what this probable cause might be, but even if that were rock-solid, the lethal force reasoning is very flawed in my opinion. This means the prosecutor expects people to assume good will if a group of angry men chase you down to confront you with guns drawn on a public road.
Absurd. People had every right to be very upset at the lack of arrests. It boggles the mind how a lawyer could look at that video, knowing that all three men were chasing Arbery down in two separate vehicles, and conclude Arbery initiated the violence. Barring some kind of bombshell revelation or new video, I can’t see how these guys have a chance at acquittal.
Even if strict Duty To Retreat clauses are in place in GA (I’m not sure if they are), I’d argue that Arbery satisfied that requirement as well when he clearly ran to the opposite side of the truck before he decided to close the distance and (presumably) fight for his life.
We haven’t really talked about Duty To Retreat a lot in here. Some states have it, the ones that don’t are generally called “Stand Your Ground” states. If anyone is curious.
First things first, I hope they build a solid case and lock father and son up for a very long time. As part of that, I hope there’s no prosecutorial over-reach, as in, I hope they don’t charge them with 1st degree murder, when 3rd degree murder would have been more appropriate and more likely to get a conviction. I’m not a lawyer, all that’s over my head, but sometimes it’s very obvious when politics takes priority over justice, justice is poorly served.
Second, I hope the douche-bag DA who initially let them go without pressing charges gets shit canned. This looks like the good old boys network at it’s worst. As a layman, It seems to me that if you’re going to recuse yourself, you have to do that right off the bat. He saw fit to be involved, until there was a public outcry. And in his letter recusing himself, he makes a case for the defendants. What the fuck. Is he now their legal counsel?
This is an interesting point to think about. It gets to the idea of what is a fight. You have the whole, who threw the first punch mentality. As if a fight starts at that point.
Also, is it even correct to use the term “fight” when that is very vague and almost meaningless in a legal sense. Assault is a legal term. Did the jogger assault the guy who ended up killing him? Maybe I look at these things from a self-defense perspective in which the idea of a fight is not in my thinking. If someone attacks me and we end up looking like we are fighting, I don’t think I am fighting. I think I am defending myself from an assault. In my mind, if I were to say to the cops, “that guy attacked me and then we ended up fighting,” doesn’t sound correct. He attacked me and I defended myself.
So if the defense is that the jogger assaulted the guy who shot him, does that defense hold water if the shooter was already breaking the law?
That will be up to the courts to decide, but I don’t see that being particularly likely. They’ve both been charged with aggravated assault, which I think is due to their actions in the lead-up to the shooting. Generally speaking, brandishing a gun at someone in public is a form of assault. The exact charge will depend on jurisdiction and circumstances.
I found a good primer on Georgia laws pertaining to brandishing, and how misdemeanor assault can escalate all the way to aggravated assault before anyone is even injured in an encounter.
To expand on this a bit, there are MANY cases where you can defend yourself prior to actually taking any damage. I’ve done this on several occasions working bar security. There’s no clear cut standard for when you are justified in initiating force in self-defense, but it is actually clearer than you might imagine.
Much of this comes down to the “reasonable person standard”, discussed in more depth above.
Can you stand in front of a judge and explain why you had to use the amount of force you did?
Not got much to add - I’m a Brit and our laws are substantial different to the states RE self defence. And that’s ignoring the obvious probability of coming across firearms.
However - looking at the video above - the poor jogger was screwed. Game Theory states that in he had three choices and several out comes based of each of them.
Choice A - Run:
Out come 1 - they catch you injury you but don’t kill out
Out come 2 - they catch and kill you
Out come 3 - you escape possibly injured.
Choice B - surrender:
Out come 1 - they take you into their custody. Possibly injured.
Out come 2 - they kill you.
Choice C - fight
Out come 1 - they don;t have the nerve to pull the trigger you win a fist fight
Out come 2 - they don;t have the nerve to pull the trigger they win fist fight
Out come 3 - they do have the nerve to pull the trigger but miss - you win a fist fight
Out come 4 - they do have the nerve to pull the trigger and kill you.
The fact is these are all based off of snap judgements. Which are effected by everything in the environment. From your history to the weather / what you had to eat that day. I’m not saying eating toast on a wet day makes you more aggressive but dehydration low blood sugar will alter the way you think.
If it was me given the choice I’d take the surrender option. However - this is with a clear head. I mean its one thing to kill a man in a struggle for a weapon. Its and other to blow a man away in cold blood as hes lying there arms out stretched. That’s not to say it wont happen. However - its a probability game. however you don’t know if the victim had had other “events” with local vigilantes before…
Personally - I think they poor dude was dead no matter what. These guys were out for blood. There is a dude on the back like he’s part of some 1800’s lynch mob. This was vigilante justice at it worst. If he’d of tried to surrender I feel there would have been shots fired anyway.
Good post and these are the type of snap judgments you have to make when violence materializes, even in a land like the U.K. where defending yourself can land you in jail. That said, your statement I quoted is pure speculation.
You could also speculate that these were untrained men with guns who were not expecting this guy to fight back in any way at all. Now, in a matter of seconds, you’ve got a life-and-death struggle for the gun on your hands, what do you do?
This speaks to the importance of properly charging the crime when there is social pressure to pursue 1st degree murder and get the maximum sentence possible. @Uncle_Gabby touched on this earlier.
Indeed - I made sure my post was very much only opinion. I can;t say for sure what would have happened. Its a “feeling” nothing more.
My person feeling on this is - if you bring the weapon to the fight - you have a duty of care to everyone there to make sure its not fired. UNLESS there is no other option.
I’m not saying go in unarmed. But there must be accountability.
I mean from the victims POV - two guys have approached him with shotguns. I might want to even them odds REALLY quickly. The fact he went to grab a gun is hardly surprising.
This is an interesting statement. I’ve spent a few nights in a cell. And some time in the dock. Both times the case was dismissed due to self defence. Go me!
There a few factors - mainly I happen to know the law around UK self defence (having been a self defence instructor we employed a lawyer to help write part of the course). So I know how to “present” my case. What to say and what not to say.
Also - I’m white and fairly middle class. Again - Go me!
But the idea that you can not defend yourself is not correct.
You just have to know what to know what to say. And how to say it.
Generally speaking, your personal feeling is recognized in most US jurisdictions. Concealed carriers especially are going to have their conduct judged under a higher standard of care than an unarmed civilian engaging in the same behavior.
A judge might be lenient on a 21 year-old who drank too much, started a fight and landed in jail because of it. A judge might not be so lenient on a 21 year-old who behaved the same way while carrying concealed.
Specific justifications for using lethal force in the US are covered above.
Clever and well-played, but didn’t you just affirm it with your anecdote?