Amerika

Self-defense and the castle doctrine are widely misunderstood, apparently, but they are applied fairly uniformly: if a situation not of your making thrusts risk of violence upon you, you can use violence to end the situation for yourself, others, or in some cases, your property.

This is not legal advice, but an analysis of the facts of these cases. Karmelo refused to leave an area where he had no legal permission to be, provoked a physical response, and then retaliated with a knife when he was losing.

Normally, these are open-and-shut cases. You will get murder one if you are a White guy because you had the intent to cause violence. It depends of course on the judge and jury you get, but the law is pretty consistent so there is not a huge amount of wiggle room.

We knew that going on, but we also know that Leftist lawfare judges like to throw spanners in the works to cause a few months of terror before a higher court spanks them down. We all remember Judge Boasberg and his cozy relationship with Letitia James.

However, assuming functional courts, we can look at some cases to see why they were decided as they were. First up, Jacob Bard in self-defense of another:

The defense alleges Bard’s actions were legally justified and followed days of escalating threats and violence directed at his sons and other students. According to the release, Bard and his wife had repeatedly contacted Kentucky State University and campus police to report what they describe as armed assaults, threats and security failures in the days leading up to the shooting.

Attorneys claim Bard and his wife traveled to KSU on Dec. 9 to withdraw their son from the university for safety reasons and requested a police escort to retrieve his belongings. The release states that despite the presence of armed campus police officers, a group of 20 to 30 people allegedly gathered inside the dormitory lobby and attacked Bard’s family when they entered the building.

According to the defense, Bard armed himself after seeing what he believed was an imminent threat to his family. Attorneys allege that during the confrontation, Bard’s son was knocked to the ground and beaten by multiple people, prompting Bard to fire his weapon. The release claims Bard stopped shooting once his son was able to escape and immediately surrendered to police.

He went to a place he had a legal right to be, and contacted authorities for his safety, but when his son was threatened, ventilated one of the people who had been making threats against him. There was an actual threat against life and health by the actions of the crowd.

Maybe that will sink in better if we look at what the grand jury decided:

Commonwealth’s Attorney Larry Cleveland stated that he presented the entire case to the 12-member grand jury. That included security videos of the events leading up to the shooting.

After three hours of testimony and deliberation, the jury returned a no true bill.

Cleveland said he was not particularly surprised by the outcome and had been conflicted about the case from the beginning.

“Very conflicted about the case from day one. Felt that Mr. Bard could meet the requirements of the defense of others, but at the same time, a young man was killed, and another young man was seriously injured,” Cleveland said.

It was an emotional case; as the DA said, death and injuries happened. But the outcome was not surprising because the defense was necessary and there was no other way to get out of the situation. If bringing campus security does not deter them, the bad guys are not going to stop.

Then consider one of the original self-defense cases involving race, that of Dr Ossian Sweet:

Dr. Sweet, a graduate of Howard University Medical School, bought this two-story brick house in an all-white Detroit neighborhood in 1925. On July 14, the neighborhood’s residents protested his plans to move in and stated that they intended to retain what they called “the present high standards of the neighborhood.”

On September 8, Dr. Sweet, his wife, and nine gun-carrying associates moved into the house under police escort. The next night a large crowd of whites began pelting the house with rocks and bottles; they then rushed the house. A volley of gunshots issued forth from the second story windows, killing one man and seriously wounding another. The Detroit police arrested Dr. Sweet and his companions and charged them with first-degree murder.

Subsequent trials upheld the right of Sweet and his companions, regardless of race, to protect life and property in dangerous situations. Today the Dr. Ossian Sweet House continues to illustrate the role of “ordinary” places in the extraordinary history of American race relations.

In his house, he was attacked by a mob, and fired back. The cops did not like it, nor did the local authorities, but the law was not on their side. He was where he legally belonged, doing legal things, and had fear of imminent threat to life and property including the lives of others.

Karmelo Anthony of course had none of those things; his case is most similar to that of Rachel Wade, a White girl who is still in prison today:

Wade, at 5-foot-4 and 110 pounds, had no criminal record and testified that she had never been in a fight before. She said she headed to a friend’s house with a knife only after being told that 5-foot-9, 166-pound Ludemann was heading to her home.

Instead, Ludemann and her friends found her outside the friend’s house. “I didn’t think they would attack me if they saw the knife,” she said.

She testified that she swung the knife after being hit three times but wasn’t aware she had stabbed Ludemann until one of the victim’s friends told her so.

During cross-examination, Wade — who worked at a restaurant — acknowledged Thursday having thrown the knife into a neighboring yard, but said, “I didn’t know what happened, and I didn’t want anybody else to get hold of it.”

Like Karmelo, she took a knife away from her house and in response to a fistfight, stabbed the other party, then threw away the knife (much like Karmelo did, but she did it more effectively). Not surprisingly, the jury wondered why she had not stayed home.

They also probably wondered why police were not involved, and why a fistfight was escalated to murder. In any case, they gave her a sentence comparable to what Karmelo Anthony received, and no one seemed to mind at all. There were no riots at least.

Now let us look at the case that irked Black Americans before Karmelo Anthony went down. Self-defense applies when the other guy is armed like you, even if you actually chased him with a reasonable suspicion that he was stealing, as the Rick Chow case shows us:

Prosecutors said Chow acted in anger because he wrongly thought the teen had stolen four bottles of water from the store. A defense lawyer said Chow fired to defend his son, Andy Chow, only after the teen pointed a gun at him.

“This case is not about a shoplifter. This case is about a father who sees a gun pointed at his son and had to make a decision,” defense attorney Shaun Kent told jurors during closing arguments. The defense attorney said Andy Chow testified that Carmack-Belton pointed a gun at him.

Prosecutors acknowledged Carmack-Belton had a semiautomatic pistol, but they say it fell on the ground during the chase, and he never threatened anyone with it. Prosecutors said Chow chased the teen more than 130 yards from the store.

Pursuing a thief is not illegal, especially if thievery was common. When the perp pulls out a gun, you are then entitled to defend yourself or your son in order to avoid death or serious danger. The other party represents a threat not of a fistfight, but deadly force.

Now consider what happened in the case of Ahmaud Arbery, who was stealing and tried to take a gun after it was brandished but did not have a gun:

The elder McMichael, a neighbourhood resident, told police he believed Mr Arbery resembled the suspect in a series of local break-ins. Police have said no reports were filed regarding these alleged break-ins.

The McMichaels armed themselves with a pistol and a shotgun and pursued Mr Arbery in a pickup truck through the neighbourhood. Mr Bryan later joined the pursuit.

Mr Arbery was unarmed.

After getting out of his truck, Mr McMichael fired his shotgun at Mr Arbery during a struggle. He claimed self-defence, saying that Mr Arbery grabbed at his gun.

Three shots were fired.

In this case, they could not argue that they were at risk until the gun became the object of a tussle (allegedly). Arbery was unarmed. They also outnumbered the dead man three to one, which meant that his fear of encountering them was justified.

Because of the politically-charged nature of the case, they received staggering sentences. Although these laws are dubious, hate crime charges were filed because of a history of racially-charged text messages sent between the defendants.

Federal prosecutors used those posts and messages in 2022 to persuade a jury that Arbery’s killing was motivated by “pent-up racial anger.”

Even if the appeals judges had thrown out their hate crime convictions, the trio faced no immediate reprieve from prison. That’s because they’re also serving life terms for murder after being convicted in a Georgia state court.

More than two months passed without arrests, until Bryan’s graphic video of the killing leaked online. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police as outrage over Arbery’s death became part of a national outcry over racial injustice. Charges soon followed.

They got life sentences for being part of the group, in addition to the hate crime sentences. So much for the idea that White people get away with murder and Black people are convicted for legitimate self-defense.

Tags: ahmaud arbery, greg mcmichael, hate crime, jacob bard, karmelo anthony, ossian sweet, rachel wade, rick chow, self-defense, travis mcmichael, william bryan