Vigilante Incident in Georgia
“Vigilantism” found in Christian’s holy book of “Genesis”
Americans today Stage Usual Hands Wringing Fest
- · Candidate Biden, Pandering to a tribe, sees “lynched before our very eyes.”
- · Candidate Trump, Pandering to a tribe, declares “a very sad thing… will be given full report ….”
- · “Conversation” never converses.
- · “Lessons [never] learned.”
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igilantism
Circa Fifth or Fifteenth through Twenty-first Centuries
Exacting “perceived justice, summarily, without legal authority” is vigilantism
and vigilante ethos, which predates introduction of the word vigilante into the
English language; and, conceptually and psychologically, extends from the “Dark
Age and medieval aristocratic custom of private war or vendetta” to “modern
vigilante philosophy.”
Vigilantism was “extremely powerful in Westphalian Germany [Westphalia
is a region of northwestern Germany] during the 15th century, during medieval
times; exercised by secret societies and used to punish felons.”
Vigilantism in the United States of America (a people descended from Germany
and from many other lands colonized by “Christian” Western powers) dates to America’s founding
(circa 1776) when citizen arrest “became known as a procedure based in common
law and protected by the Constitution of the United States.” A civilian arrests
a person whom the arresting citizen “has seen or suspects of doing something
wrong.”
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020 Posse or old-time Vigilante hunt for blood
The Christian Science Monitor’s
linguistically and historically selective headline “A modern posse shot Ahmaud
Arbery. Has stand your ground gone too far?” Convenes a Conversation of sorts
Law
and Civilian Society
“… [T]he right of citizens to
arrest fellow citizens focuses on the need to actually witness the crime. The
legal principle is rooted in English common law dating back to 1285, which
empowers anyone witnessing a crime to make a ‘hue and cry’ against the
criminal.”
However, as police officers took over the arrest function for the state
and as the desire for accuracy increased, “the role of citizens in law
enforcement declined.”
Modern-day
Legitimate Law Enforcing Agency
American University Washington College of Law professor Ira Robbins (2016)
“Unlike citizens, ‘peace
officers [are] given greater leeway to investigate and arrest for criminal
conduct that they did not personally witness, the presumption being that those
responsible for enforcing the law [are] presumptively more reliable than the
average private citizen.”
University of California at Los Angeles School of Law professor Adam
Winkler
When a high-profiled
weapons organization teaches people “that they are the ones responsible for
standing up to criminals and tyrants, and that [they] can’t trust the
government” to protect them, this group is urging people to heavily arm
themselves for combat, “…take the law into their own hands …, and to act out of
… their [paranoia and prejudice].”
Self
defense
Duke University School of Law professor Joseph Blocher
“There’s a study
that shows people honestly believing that they’re engaging in self-defense, but
actually engaging in assaults or brandishing or murder, which ties together a
lot of what we’re seeing with open carry that looks like intimidation rather
than what is protected by law.”
“In other words, once the fight starts, the
self-defense argument is available to everybody.”
“Self- defense” in the Ahmaud Arbery, Gregory and Travis McMichael case
in Georgia
- · “There’s no indication that either one of the McMichaels were threatened or about to be threatened or that … anything dangerous was going to happen to them ….” [Brunswick Defense attorney James Yancey]
- · The assailant “was protected by the state’s ‘stand your ground’ law, which allows citizens to use lethal force when they deem a situation to be life-threatening.
We are “left to say, ‘There’s this thing called a phone, and this
number called 911,’” Brunswick Defense attorney James Yancey said.
911
Calls Preceding Shooting
- Call one: a male caller reports “another man was in a house that was ‘under construction.’” The “dispatcher asked if the man was ‘breaking into it right now?’ The caller replied: ‘No … it’s all open.’ After the caller said the man was now ‘running down the street,’ the dispatcher said police would respond. The dispatcher then asked at 1:08 pm: ‘I just need to know what he was doing wrong. Was he just on the premises and not supposed to be?’ The caller replied in a garbled manner: ‘And he’s been caught on camera a bunch at night. It’s kind of an ongoing thing.’ The caller identified the man as a ‘black guy, white T-shirt.’”
- Call two begins at 1:14 pm: a male caller reports “‘I’m out here at Satilla Shores …. There’s a black male running down the street.’” The 911 dispatcher asks: “‘Where at Satilla Shores?’ The caller replies ‘I don’t know what street we’re on.’ The caller was then heard shouting: ‘Stop! … Watch that. Stop, damn it! Stop!’ The dispatcher tries to speak to the caller but does not receive a reply for several minutes. The caller later hung up.”
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nvarnished
- · February 23, 2020, an unarmed man is either jogging or running along a road in Satilla Shores, a community in unincorporated Glynn County near Brunswick, Georgia.
- · Two armed vigilantes in a pickup truck confront the unarmed man.
- · One of the armed men shoots the runner or jogger dead.
- · An individual in a second vehicle videotapes the incident.
- · May 2020, after the videotape is released to the public, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrests and charges the two armed vigilantes “with murder and aggravated assault.”
Sources
Christian Science Monitor “A modern posse shot Ahmaud Arbery. Has stand
your ground gone too far?” Patrik Jonsson Staff writer May 8, 2020 https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2020/0508/A-modern-posse-shot-Ahmaud-Arbery.-Has-stand-your-ground-gone-too-far
Wikipedia
Vigilantism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilantism
Shooting of Ahmaud Arbery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Ahmaud_Arbery
Star Tribune. “Georgia father son charged with murder in
shooting death of black runner.”Russ Bynum and Ben Nadler Associated Press May 8,
2020. https://www.startribune.com/georgia-governor-calls-shooting-video-absolutely-horrific/570287602/
Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB - © All Rights
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