Whose responsibility is it to protect unhoused when it’s freezing outside? An Ohio pastor opened his church to the homeless and was charged by city.
Whose responsibility is it to protect unhoused when it’s freezing outside? An Ohio pastor opened his church to the homeless and was charged by city.
If this goes to a jury trial, everyone on that jury should fucking nullify.
If you don’t know, jury nullification is an implicit property of jury trials. The court can’t make you show your work or tell you that your verdict is wrong, so you can give any answer you want. That means if someone is up for something you think is bullshit, like helping the homeless or enjoying marijuana in their backyard, you can just say Not Guilty. The court can’t do shit to you so long as you don’t scream “NULLIFIED FUCKERS” as you’re doing it.
That said, everyone involved in pushing these charges along should probably be voted out of office or run out of town. They’re trying to kill people, just slowly and via exposure.
Yes, that’s part of it. But what they really want is to scare the rest, for you and me and everyone else to see these headlines and feel what we’re feeling.
Every single one of these headlines where big government brings down its full weight onto people that help others, everyone from this pastor to people who leave water in the desert to people who help ladies get abortions to even a single miscarriage that they know will offend sensibilities (Brittany Watts), are psychological pre-enforcement for an authoritarian government.
Every single one screams: step out of line with society, and look what will happen to you too.
It’s two birds with one stone. Clearing out the visible proof of their own inhumanity and raging mismanagement of this country’s wealth and power by letting the poor and unhoused freeze to death is only one part of it; they absolutely want that message to hang out there, unacknowledged in the freezing air, of what happens to people when they fall out of favor with society’s masters.
Just to add, if you’re selected for jury duty you should stop taking about it the day you receive the summons. Nobody needs to know what you think about nullification during that time and being in favor of it will get you removed from a bunch of courthouses. It’s the jury version of saying “bomb” in an airport.
So just make sure you know your local laws about unanimous decision vs majority decision. In the first, you can just be the stick in the mud. Question everything. In the second you actually have to convince 4 other people to vote with you.
I guess I know how I’m getting out of jury duty next time
Oh it’s not a good idea to do that. You can easily end up spending the weekend in jail for contempt of court.
DAs are fully aware of juror’s ability to exonerate defendants just because they don’t agree with the law.
It’s unlikely something like this would go to court unless the community has some massive hate-boner for the homeless.
All it takes is 1 person to vote not guilty and all the effort has been wasted getting a conviction.
A lot of places have moved to majority voting for non felonies. And most everywhere will not give you a jury trial unless there’s more than X amount of prison time involved.
A lot of misdemeanors are literally just the defendant, the judge, and the prosecutor, going over the plea deal the prosecutor got the defendant to agree to in a room with just the two of them.
Can you give me more information on this?
I thought accused criminals were entitled to a jury by their peers. I understand that a lot of people may wave their trial by jury, but I don’t know if it’s possible to have that choice taken away from you.
Some states let you decide, I think California is like that. Other states, like Arizona, just will not provide a jury or defense lawyer if they aren’t going to sentence you to enough jail time.
Of course you still have to tell employers, loan agents, and rental housing offices that you were convicted of a crime. So you’re going to lose your job, housing, and credit. But they say it’s constitutional because you’re not going to jail.
Now let’s talk about debtor’s prison. Because you probably just got a fine from that sham trial. If you can’t pay the fine with no job, no apartment, and no credit, they will arrest you and jail you on contempt of court with no trial.