The Goat Pen

https://reason.com/2020/05/07/she-said- ... er-to-lie/

The same bozos who tried to tie Mueller to a sexual assault. I believe prof bit on that one, if memory serves.

Much rather have Biden than Trump. At least he will surround himself with competent people unlike the hundreds of Trump stooges.

DOJ drops the case against Flynn. That’s not surprising after the revelation of documents proving the FBI’s outrageous prosecutorial misconduct against him.

This exposes the Deep State for exactly what it is - a cabal of crooked, partisan senior intelligence and law enforcement officials using the extremely powerful tools of their office to protect candidates/officials they like and attack candidates/officials they don’t like.

All the documents of FBI prosecutorial misconduct that just exonerated Flynn just became exhibit #1 in his upcoming lawsuit against Comey, McCabe, Strozk, et al.

DS can explain what a Bivins case is. When a law enforcement officer acts outside the scope of their office, the government will not defend them in court or pay any settlements on their behalf. Comey, McCabe, and Strzok are about to become extremely poor and Flynn is about to become extremely rich.

Trump will die in prison...

Hopefully quickly

so I finally got around to reading up on that Georgia shooting.

the father and son had surveillance video of a black man that, in their opinion, matched Arbery. Apparently with this justification, they were within their rights to attempt a citizens arrest and hold Arbery until police arrive to straighten it out.

Innocent or Guilty, Arbery was naturally upset with 2 men stopping him at gunpoint, but what he did next defies logic. He went around the truck and attacked the two men who were armed. His autopsy shows a palm injury where he grabbed the barrel of a shotgun.

I don't think those two men had any intention of shooting him - or at least went after him under the assumption he'd comply. But once Arbery grabbed the shotgun, the legality of this gets dicey, because now he became the aggressor and the son, who fired the shots has a right to self defense. That's a strange twist, but had Arbery simply complied, he'd might have felt culturally disadvantaged and racially profiled, but he would have got his day in court and likely, if innocent of the crime he was accused, and opportunity for civil suit. But his decision to attack , in those circumstances changes the situation.

This isn't as clean as the media would like for people to believe it - and those who are saying its the equivalent of a lynching are just as quick to pass judgement on leaked video that has been shortened to present a specific viewpoint.

Should they have gone after Arbery with guns versus following him and updating the police to his whereabouts? I can't imagine a justification to do so, however that all became moot once Arbery attacked. Those men will most likely go to trial, but more because of the national outrage and inevitable rioting/looting/burning of the city that will result if they don't. But the trial will come down to the question of whether they were justified in stopping a man they suspected of burglarizing their neighborhood, and if that question is answered with yes, then it will be hard to press them for murder

Georgia statutes

OCGA17-4-60 A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape ,a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.”

O.C.G.A. 16-11-126 (2010)
16-11-126. Possession and carrying a concealed weapon; penalty for violating licensing requirement


(a) Any person who is not prohibited by law from possessing a handgun or long gun may have or carry on his or her person a weapon or long gun on his or her property or inside his or her home, motor vehicle, or place of business without a valid weapons carry license.

(b) Any person who is not prohibited by law from possessing a handgun or long gun may have or carry on his or her person a long gun without a valid weapons carry license, provided that if the long gun is loaded, it shall only be carried in an open and fully exposed manner.

O.C.G.A. 16-3-23.1 (2010)
16-3-23.1. No duty to retreat prior to use of force in self-defense


A person who uses threats or force in accordance with Code Section 16-3-21, relating to the use of force in defense of self or others, Code Section 16-3-23, relating to the use of force in defense of a habitation, or Code Section 16-3-24, relating to the use of force in defense of property other than a habitation, has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and use force as provided in said Code sections, including deadly force.

https://heavy.com/news/2020/05/ahmaud-a ... o-georgia/

By their own admission, the gun-toting pair had confronted the jogger prior to what is seen in the video, and he fled. What would you do in that situation?
Two good ol' boys in a pickup, toting guns. Easy Rider redux.

Look at the video. The victim sees them - one guy in the bed of the truck with a .357, the other standing at the driver's side of truck with a shotgun. The jogger veers to run around the passenger side - shotgun guy crosses to other side of truck in his path, initiating a struggle.

And the Georgia statute says in order to make a citizen's arrest the arrestor has to witness the crime firsthand - not the case here. And now the pair have been arrested and charged, so here we go.

or within his immediate knowledge

I'm not clear of what that means, but a Georgia District Attorney believed them having surveillance video of a man matching Arbery likeness was enough. Now was he a friend of the former LEO? probably.

and I'm not saying they were right in what they did, its not a course of action I would have pursued or condoned

I'm just saying it not as clear as everyone makes it out to be. Georgia law in those 3 statutes is pretty clear. Perhaps Georgia lawmakers never envisioned a scenario where those 3 statutes would provide cover for these actions.

That's why everything hinges on whether they had a right to stop him.

A felony had been committed. They had immediate knowledge of that felony that led them to believe that Arbery committed it (arguable point but in the aftermath you can only make assumptions about what evidence they had or didn't have but you can't argue with what they believed.) And that alone eliminates premeditated, and him grabbing the shotgun based on the coroners report might also eliminate second degree

"At least three African Americans carrying large rifles" escorted MI State Rep. Sarah Anthony into the State Capitol, a week after armed white men swarmed the building

A black lawmaker came to Michigan’s capitol with an escort of armed black citizens on Wednesday, days after white protesters with guns staged a volatile protest inside the state house, comparing the Democratic governor’s public health orders to “tyranny”.

The state representative Sarah Anthony, 36, said she wanted to highlight what she saw as the failure of the Michigan capitol police to provide legislators with adequate security during the protest, which saw demonstrators with rifles standing in the legislative chamber above lawmakers.

“When traditional systems, whether it’s law enforcement or whatever, fail us, we also have the ability to take care of ourselves,” she told the Guardian. Anthony became the first African American woman elected to represent her district in Lansing, Michigan’s capital, in 2018.

One of Anthony’s constituents, a black firefighter, organized Wednesday’s capitol escort. While early reports focused on three black men with large rifles escorting Anthony, there were six participants, including two women, and some of them were armed with handguns, Lynn said. Five of the participants are black and one is Hispanic. Michael Lynn Jr, a Lansing resident, said he was frustrated to see his legislator being violently intimidated in her workplace. He said the escort was the first time he had ever chosen to openly carry his AR-15 rifle.

Lynn said he did not want to see a black woman who had been elevated to political office feeling threatened “because of the white supremacists in the yard” and wanted “to make sure that would never happen again”.

“Being a black and brown female Democrat in the capitol now is a dangerous job,” Lynn said. “This is an environment that Donald Trump has nurtured.”


Anthony described last week’s protest, which drew hundreds of people, as “one of the most unnerving feelings I’ve ever felt in my life”.

“If I don’t vote the way that these people want me to vote, are they going to rush the and start shooting us?” she said. “You could feel the floor rumbling. You could hear them yelling and screaming.”

Despite the armed escort, Anthony said she was “actively working to prohibit open carry” of firearms in the state capitol, which is currently legal.

Sorry, eCat, that’s a stretch. You can’t make a citizens arrest on every black man because there was a black man in your video footage of the crime. When they confronted him the first time, the guy probably said, fuck you, and rightfully so. They aren’t the police.

If two random strangers came up to you with a gun and said you are white and bald, the guy who robbed the gas station was also white and bald. Stay right here until we call the cops. Are you going to listen to them? Especially if you had other things you had to do?

It probably is a stretch if you're basing it on all black men look alike. As I said though, at this point all we can do is make assumptions about whether they did or did not have valid evidence to perform a citizens arrest. The District Attorney whatever timeframe ago determined they did.

but if two random strangers came up to me with a gun, what I'm *not* going to do, is lunge toward the gun and try to take it away from them. I would be pissed these dumbasses are threatening me with a gun, and I'd certainly give them a piece of my mind but I would wait until the police arrived and then tear their ass up for wasting my time. Then I'd do whatever I could to make sure they received some kind of punitive damage for pulling a stunt like that.

so yea, I"m going to listen to anyone , especially 2 men, that have guns pulled on me.

I'm not sure how attempting to detain him before makes their case worse, wouldn't that work in their favor that they didn't just show up to shoot the guy?

eCat wrote: ↑Fri May 08, 2020 9:55 am
I'm not sure how attempting to detain him before makes their case worse, wouldn't that work in their favor that they didn't just show up to shoot the guy?

He ran away on their first attempt - obviously frightened - and now they're not letting him run away this time. It's easy to say what one of us would do in this situation....as if one of us could even reprise that kind of situation. But the black guy - he probably pictured himself in a shallow grave or weighted down at the bottom of a lake. There's history about that sort of thing..

I don't think it was premeditated murder, but it was murder all the same. Thanks to the video the pair will probably get some sort of manslaughter conviction and serve a year or two in a workhouse. Or maybe they'll get a couple of hung juries and beat it entirely. It is GA, after all.

Yeah a black man in Redneck Georgia being chased by 2 rifle toating good old white boys. What could possibly go wrong?

I can see manslaughter

but they are being tried for murder

So is Trump...

I wonder what the general reacation would've been if this had happened under Obama's presidency and the two killers had been black and their victim white...

we wouldn't have heard about it