VERBATIM POST
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In NY (as with the rest of the country) it is legal to kill someone who presents an unambiguous and credible intent to murder you.
However, if you do it with their firearm in NY you will go to prison for five years. Even when the shooting is is ruled justifiable homicide.
In a case seen as a test of the battered-woman defense, Barbara Sheehan, 50, was acquitted of second-degree murder last month after her lawyers successfully argued that she fired a gun at her husband only after he threatened to kill her.
So he threatened to kill her and she shot him. The jury bought it - that the threat was credible and he intended to actually imminently commit murder, making her shooting him justified under the law. So far we're good. But then...
She was sentenced in state Supreme Court in Queens to five years in prison and two years of probation on the unlawful gun possession charge, based on her use of her husband's weapons. She had faced a possible sentence of 3-1/2 to 15 years.
She shot him with his gun, and since we all know that The Second Amendment does not apply in New York (because the people of NY refuse to demand the protection of their right to keep and bear arms) she goes to prison for two to five years because she exercised her lawful right to prevent her own death using a weapon owned by the person who threatened to kill her.
Let's take this out of the realm of the "battered wife" issue for a moment and focus on something that might well happen to you.
You're walking down the sidewalk in Queens. Suddenly a man pops out from around a corner and sticks a gun in your face, demanding your wallet. You withdraw your wallet to comply, and as you do so a car backfires nearby, startling the robber. He turns and you grab his pistol, successfully relieving him of it.
He then pulls a second weapon from his belt and is about to shoot you with it.
If you drop him -- a perfectly legal shoot anywhere in the United States under these circumstances -- you go to prison for 2-5 years for unlawfully possessing the weapon you just successfully defended yourself with and which you took from your assailant!
If the people of New York allow this to stand then there is never a purpose for any justice-minded person to ever set foot in that city again.
This is where Jury Nullification would come in handy, except most judges would never permit it in their courtroom, and would likely hold anyone in Contempt for even trying to raise the issue.
ReplyDeleteRemember JFK: If you make peaceful revolution impossible you make violent revolution inevitable...
We've crossed that threshold.
Kerodin
III
I'm afraid so.
ReplyDeleteThis is implementing policy from the bench under the guise of law. No more is the court system relied upon to interperate and ajudicate law they are used to make law to forward a political policy.
ReplyDeleteHere we go again but... power corrupts. The judicial system is a candle in the wind, another branch of congress granted far more reaching power than congress cause they gotta die to replace em.
After Indiana's supreme court ruling big blue and his cousin fed's incestuous relationship has born a rather difficult foe to deal with.
Mozart
a rather difficult foe to deal with.
ReplyDeleteIndeed.
I would love to see this happen to herr bloomberg. Oh that's right the rules don't pertain to politicians. What a country.
ReplyDeletethe rules don't pertain to politicians. What a country.
ReplyDeleteAbove and beyond the law.
"...If the people of New York allow this to stand then there is never a purpose for any justice-minded person to ever set foot in that city again."
ReplyDelete"There is never a purpose for any justice-minded person to ever set foot in that city again."
FTFY.
I remember when my brother worked in the "Fisheries" department in NYC between his Master's and Doctor's and I went to visit him with my mother. He asked if I wanted to go on a subway, so I said sure. As the doors opened and I glanced at the hordes, he stated "This is how the pigs live." Never forget that. Now I did like being able to drink at 18, bars being open all night and I got to go to the Peppermint Lounge.:)
ReplyDelete