It's About Liberty: A Conservative Forum
Topics => Judiciary, Crime, & Courts => Topic started by: AlanS on January 26, 2016, 12:13:45 PM
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When your best defense is breaking the law for the better good, the possibilities are endless.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/25/can-breaking-the-law-be-a-legal-defense.html (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/25/can-breaking-the-law-be-a-legal-defense.html)
First, they’ll focus on Snohomish County, Washington, where, last Friday, Seattle-area jurors found the so-called Delta 5 not guilty of obstruction for blockading a regional oil facility in 2014. The protest and the acquittal were notable as part of a growing wave of anti-oil-gas-and-coal citizen actions that has swept the country in the past few years, and the courtroom in Snohomish County was treated to a master class on why principled lawbreaking is just the tonic needed to cure our government’s woeful inaction on warming.
But what law students of the future will learn about the Delta 5 trial is something a bit more arcane, if no less momentous. For the first time in the United States, a jury heard testimony that defendants’ criminal actions were justified by “climate necessity”—that is, the argument that it’s better to break the law while getting in a few punches at the fossil fuel system than to sit back and lawfully watch the world burn. It’s a defense that’s been tried a handful of times, but in the U.S. has never made it past the judge’s bench slap. (One group of protesters used it successfully in England in 2008.)
In a last minute letdown in the Delta 5 case, the Snohomish County district judge barred the jury from actually considering the necessity defense. The cat was already out of the bag by then, though, and having at least heard the first American climate-necessity defense, the jury acquitted on the obstruction charge and convicted on trespassing. The defendants are appealing that conviction as well as the judge’s denial of their defense. In this case as in others that came before it, the judge decided that there were lots of things one should do to fight climate change besides engaging in civil disobedience—at least until the courthouse is underwater, presumably.
This precedent will not go as they planned.
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Wow. I'm sure they'll be applying that logic to those who break the law to save the unborn.
(http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p98/IronDioPriest/mushroom_cloud.jpg)
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While you're digesting this bit of idiocy keep in mind that Snohomish County is (slightly) right of center.
!
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In not too long it will be necessity to kill non-contributing zeros who think they have a right to what you produce....
and I am just waiting for Pan to change this thread title...
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When the legal system breaks down there is only one way left to protect one's stuff. It will be implemented. Guaranteed.
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In not too long it will be necessity to kill non-contributing zeros who think they have a right to what you produce....
and I am just waiting for Pan to change this thread title...
Wouldn't think of it. It's a legitimate phrase. 'Sides, my email addy is pandorasbox, soooo .......
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Bleep 'em! "Cry 'Havoc' "!
::viking::
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When the legal system breaks down there is only one way left to protect one's stuff. It will be implemented. Guaranteed.
::curtsy4::