Brett Kimberlin Ally Occupyrebellion Threatens Lee Stranahan’s Wife With Rape

This is the latest post in what I half-jokingly call The Kimberlin Saga^®.  If you are new to the story, that’s okay! Not everyone reads my blog.  The short version is that Kimberlin has been harassing me since last December, his worst conduct being when he attempted to frame me for a crime.  I recognize that this might sound like an incredible claim, but I provide video and documentary evidence of that fact; in other words, you don’t have to believe my word.  You only have to believe your eyes.  So, if you are new to the story, go to this page and you’ll be able to catch up on what has been happening.

Words cannot capture how disgusting this is:

While @stranahan is in Tampa this week, should Texas rapists be told where to find his wife since he supports the rapes of everyone else?
— Sheridan (@OccupyRebellion) August 27, 2012

I generally don’t throw additional attention toward this bucketful of crazy, but this is beyond the pale.  Indeed, in my opinion, it crosses the line into criminal conduct.  In my opinion, it is actually a threat.  Threats don’t have to be “I plan to do X to you” or “do this or I will do X.”  For instance, in Virginia v. Black, the Supreme Court held that merely burning a cross on another person’s yard can be interpreted as a threat, given the historical meaning of the act.  Twelve people of common sense can recognize that even if the magic words are not said, some words are intended as a threat.  In other words, the law is not an idiot.  And in my mind, this counts.

And if you agree that this is a threat, then this means Occupyrebellion could be in a world of hurt tonight.  For instance, here’s what the federal criminal law, 18 U.S.C. §875(c) says:

Texans Should Be Angry At Lavaca County District Attorney Heather McMinn For Wasting a Citizen’s and Grand Jury’s Time...

The other day I shared with you the story of a father who beat a man to death who was allegedly attempting to rape his four year old daughter.  And we have gotten enough of a picture to say that this is what happened; he was on top of her with his pants down, allegedly.  As I wrote there, I felt that barring something really surprising it looked like a justified killing—meaning it was either strictly in defense of his daughter, or an unintentional killing in the process of defending her.  And I felt that barring surprising evidence to the contrary, he shouldn’t have even been charged.

Well, they went to a Grand Jury anyway, and it came up goose egg.  They refused to even indict him.

And frankly that turns the case into an outrage.  Consider for instance this line in the article I just linked:

In declining to indict the 23-year-old father in the June 9 killing of Jesus Mora Flores, a Lavaca County grand jury reached the same conclusion as investigators and many of the father's neighbors: He was authorized to use deadly force to protect his daughter.

(Emphasis added.)  You got that?  Investigators didn’t think he committed a crime.  And they charged him anyway.

"He's a peaceable soul," V'Anne Huser, the father's attorney, told reporters at the Lavaca County Courthouse. "He had no intention to kill anybody that day."

(Emphasis added.)  I don’t want to focus on what his lawyer said, so much as he was forced to retain a lawyer.  Either he had to pay for that lawyer, or the citizens of Texas had to.

You want to know how heinous this is?  Here’s Heather McMinn, the District Attorney:

Notice that there is not one single word in that presentation discussing any evidence that his legal defense of the defense of his daughter was invalid.  So why did she even bother?

No, folks, it is an injustice that this even went to a Grand Jury.  And the citizens of Lavaca County, Texas, should have some hard questions for their District Attorney.

H/T: Hot Air.

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Sidebar: By the way, Shiner, Texas, is home of the beer Shiner Bock.  I don't drink at all, but people who do tell me it is an excellent brew, so consider raising a glass to this father.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.

“The Donning of a Hood Is Not Consistent With This Rule:” The Latest Martin/Zimmerman Shooting News Roundup

Update: As you will see below, several Cnn videos did not embed properly.  There is some kind of bug in their software that keeps causing the same video to embed.  So in each offending case, I replaced the video with a link.


Update (II): I just saw where ABC news admits that video it showed does in fact show evidence of Zimmerman being injured.  Scroll (way) down for the info.

So this is the latest in my Trayvon Martin round-ups.  You can see all the posts where I discuss the case by using this link to aggregate them.

Now as preliminary matter let’s remind ourselves about the law again.  Whether Zimmerman was following Martin or not is beside the point; there is no law that says that you must run the other way when you think a person is a criminal.  At most it goes to Zimmerman’s credibility—that is if he lied about that element of the story, one wonders what else he might’ve lied about, and if he told the truth about it, you have that to contend with, too.

What does matter are three crucial questions:

1.      Who struck the first blow?

2.      At the moment he shot, did Zimmerman have a reasonable fear that Martin was about to either kill him or cause serious bodily injury?

3.      If Zimmerman struck the first blow, could he have reasonably escaped without endangering his own life?

And let’s point out something else.  Once he invokes the self-defense defense—as he is almost sure to do so at trial—it is not his burden to prove he acted in self-defense.  Instead it is the State of Flordia’s burden to prove he did not.  So bluntly, it was self-defense until proven otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt.  That is how the presumption of innocence works and it works that way in every state but one.

What The Narrative Against Zimmerman^® maintained from the very beginning was that this was a case of profiling—a euphemism for racism, really, in this case.  You could see it from the beginning that The Narrative Against Zimmerman^® was that George was a typical white racist who assumed that a black child was a criminal based on nothing more than the color of his skin and hunted him down and killed him in the street.  The irony of all of this, is that it represents the left’s “profile” of a bigoted shooting.  They were so attached to this Narrative^®, that when it turned out that Mr. Zimmerman was not exactly a white dude, they called him remarkably a “white Hispanic.”  And meanwhile, they maintained it was somehow unfair and wrong to point out any facts that might support Zimmerman’s initial suspicions.  I would go as far as to say that if George Zimmerman had been named Jorge Zapata, this story never would have gained national attention.  But because he had a “white” sounding name, The Narrative^® was set.

By the way, as a general rule black people are most likely to killed by black people, white people are most likely to be killed by white people, and “other” is most likely to be killed by “other.”  That is by FBI statistics, which you can read about at the link.

“What makes all these people who are threatening George any better than the person they think he is?” The Latest Zimmerman/Martin News Roundup

Okay, we have a lot of news stories and commentary to aggregate, so let’s jump into it.

As a way of review, in my legal analysis (here and here) there are three crucial questions to determine whether Zimmerman validly invoked self-defense:

1)      Who struck the first blow? 

2)      At the moment Zimmerman shot Martin, did Zimmerman have a reasonable fear that Martin was about to inflict legal force on him?

3)      If Zimmerman struck the first blow, did Zimmerman have a reasonable opportunity to escape?

I say that having reviewed enough evidence that it makes it pretty clear that there was some kind of fight between them before Zimmerman shot him.  Obviously things would be very different if Zimmerman shot him with no fighting beforehand.  So pay close attention and you will see that, maddeningly, for the most part the only person who can answer those questions is Zimmerman.

First, for the first time we have heard George Zimmerman’s account.  Via the Orlando Sentinel (hat tip to Dustin in the comments):

With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk, leaving him bloody and battered, law-enforcement authorities told the Orlando Sentinel.

That is the account Zimmerman gave police, and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say. There have been no reports that a witness saw the initial punch Zimmerman told police about...

In his version of events, Zimmerman had turned around and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from behind, the two exchanged words and then Trayvon punched him in the nose, sending him to the ground, and began beating him.

Here’s a Video I Missed

A news report just after the incident:

And do listen to the end.  His parents deserve your respect and sympathy.

The guy in the red sweater was Zimmerman.  It’s another instance where the crucial moment wasn’t seen, but still it contradicts the narrative that Zimmerman shot the kid in cold blood, or Charles Johnson’s misleading statement that:

Zimmerman ... chased the boy down, and shot him in the street.

It seems safe to say that Martin and Zimmerman got into a fight.  Which doesn’t justify shooting the kid automatically.  Instead that turns on the following questions:

Who struck the first blow?

Did Zimmerman have a reasonable fear that Martin was about to subject him to lethal force?

If Zimmerman struck the first blow, did he have a reasonsable chance to escape?  (because contrary to what you heard, there are some circumstances where you are required to retreat in Florida)

If Martin struck the first blow and the answer to the second question is yes, then Zimmerman was justified in shooting.  Even if Martin didn't intend to do serious bodily harm to him, even if he had a chance to escape.

If Zimmerman struck the first blow, he did have a reasonable fear, and he did not have a reasonable chance to escape (for instance, if he was still on the ground), again he is innocent.

And the key thing is this.  As far as I can tell, the only living witness to those crucial moments is Zimmerman.  The only person who can answer those crucial questions, who is alive, is Zimmerman.  So barring surprising evidence to the contrary, I don’t see how they can even justify trying him.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.

New York Times: Hey, Isn’t It Great the Way Obama Brought his Race Into the Trayvon Martin Case?

Earlier today I talked about this statement by Obama:

Update: That video is not loading, so here's a substitute.

And among other things, I had this to say about it:

[H]ere is the absolute worst part of what Obama said:

“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves.”

At the beginning of the statements Obama notes that as head of the executive branch that might very well prosecute George Zimmerman for a crime, he is limited in what he can say.  He rightly recognizes that if he makes statements indicating any kind of prejudice in the case he could harm the ability of the government to prosecute it.  And please note when I say “prejudice” I don’t mean merely if he expresses any bias based on race, sex, etc. but any pre-judgment, any kind of judgment before the facts are in.

But ironically that very statement exposed himself to charges of prejudice—the kind of prejudice you think of first when you think of the word, bias based on race.  He just implied that because of racial affinity he feels particularly bad about the Trayvon killing.  So then since a hypothetical son of Barrack and Michelle Obama would not look like George Zimmerman, does that mean he feels less sympathy for him?

And indeed Trayvon does not look particularly much like Barrack or Michelle Obama.  The only way you could say that Obama’s hypothetical son would look like Trayvon is if you think all black people look alike, and gee, I thought that was a racist point of view?

One does have to wonder how this will play in the Hispanic community, too.  While the President didn’t indict Zimmerman, his racially charged remarks might play badly.  The President should have made no reference to the race of anyone involved; and indeed all good people feel sympathy for the Martin family, regardless of skin color.  If you don’t feel bad for them, yeah, I think there is something wrong with you.

But according to Jackie Calmes and Helene Cooper of the New York Times, this is swell:

President Obama did not mention race even as he addressed it on Friday, instead letting his person and his words say it all: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

Weighing in for the first time on the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot and killed a month ago in Florida by a neighborhood watch volunteer, Mr. Obama in powerfully personal terms deplored the “tragedy” and, as a parent, expressed sympathy for the boy’s mother and father.

“I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids,” Mr. Obama said. “Every parent in America,” he added, “should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together — federal, state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”

While speaking movingly from his perspective as the father of two girls, one a teenager, Mr. Obama notably made no reference to the racial context that has made the killing of Trayvon and the gunman’s claim of self-defense a rallying point for African-Americans. Since Mr. Obama first began campaigning to be “president of all the people,” as his advisers would put it when pressed on racial issues, he has been generally reluctant to talk about race. And after his historic election as the first black president, Mr. Obama learned the hard way about the pitfalls of the chief executive opining on law enforcement matters involving civil rights.

Trayvon Martin Shooting Roundup

There’s a lot of idiocy going around these days, starting with the President’s reaction via Michelle Malkin:

There’s a lot there.  Some of it is uncontroversial.  The assertion that this is a tragedy seems pretty safe.  As I said yesterday, it seems extremely safe to believe that Martin was innocent in all this.  I say that even though I noted evidence that Martin attacked Zimmerman.  As I noted in the comments it was very possible for us to have seen a scenario of cascading errors.  Zimmerman erroneously believed that Martin was “up to something” so he followed him.  Martin saw this man following and got scared and reasonably attacked Zimmerman believing he was defending himself.  Zimmerman reasonably got scared that Martin was pulling a gun on him and drew first and fired.  That is pure speculation, but it is very easy to imagine that kind of cascading reasonable errors that led to this death.  In any case, a young man who by all indications was doing absolutely nothing wrong is dead and even if it is not a crime, it is a tragedy.

I am faintly irritated by the President’s assertion that this is an occasion to re-examine the law.  As I pointed out yesterday, this really had little to do with the no-retreat rule in Florida.  Incidentally I will take this moment to point out that I was trivially wrong on one point.  If Zimmerman threw the first punch the law in Florida apparently would impose on him a duty to retreat (remembering that it only applies if one can reasonably do so in safety—you don’t have a duty to run when you know you are likely to be shot trying to escape).  Which means that far from being a radical jurisdiction, Florida is solidly in the mainstream of most states.  Most states only impose a duty to retreat on aggressors outside their own homes.  But as I showed when discussing the Bobbitt case (not the famous Bobbitt case), the Florida courts radically imposed a duty to retreat even on a battered wife in defending her own life in her own bedroom.  That seems to be a bit much.

Every state in the union recognizes a right to self-defense that goes by whether one reasonably believes they are in danger.  No matter how robust or stingy the right of self-defense is, it always has that core where you have a right, under the right circumstances, to kill another based on a reasonable fear of death, serious bodily injury and so on.  And since it goes on your perception of the danger, rather than the reality of it, mistakes like this are inevitable.  That is, it is inevitable that sooner or later an innocent man will be mistakenly thought to pose a threat.

Would we really want any other rule?  Imagine that you face a situation where you believe that your life is in danger.  If you sincerely believed you were in danger, would hesitate to use whatever force is necessary to save your own life?  And remember the same rule applies to the defense of others.  So if you really believe someone has a gun to the head of a loved one, would you hesitate to do everything necessary to protect that person’s life?  Outside of military conscription, the law cannot and should not expect you to risk your own life, period.  That is why, while I think Roe v. Wade was generally wrongly decided, I do believe a woman has an absolute right to abort a fetus if her life is in danger—because it is just self-defense.

And most people get that.  For instance, I think it is safe to assume that everyone has watched the movie Die Hard.  For the five people who haven’t, the set up is that terrorists take over an office building and off-duty cop John McClane is trapped in the building and doing what he can to stop the bad guys.  And one of the best parts of the movie is the relationship between McClane and Al Powell, another cop on the outside.  They only talk on the radio for much of the movie, only meeting in person at the end, and by then they are friends for life.  In one powerful scene, John asks why Al chose a desk job.  Al replies:

I shot a kid.  He was 13 years old.  Ohhh, it was dark, I couldn't see him.  He had a ray gun, looked real enough.  You know, when you're a rookie, they can teach you everything about being a cop except how to live with a mistake.  Anyway, I just couldn't bring myself to draw my gun on anybody again.

He’s not saying he was demoted or imprisoned for it.  Just that he felt so horrible about the thing that he couldn’t bring himself to draw his gun any more (which makes it that much more powerful at the end when he does use his gun to save his new friend).  I don’t think a single person watching that movie thinks that Al did the wrong thing, and certainly no one thought he should go to prison.  If you thought that, then I start to think there is something wrong with you.

What all of this is, is the worst example of “there oughta be a law” syndrome, which was classically lampooned by this bit from the Onion:

Truck Accident That Killed Rafters in Canyon Sparks Truck-Canyon-Rafter Reform Debate

There is no realistic and just way to avoid every failure—to prevent every innocent person from being killed.  And saying this means we need to reform the law only ensures that injustice will occur.

But I am burying the lede here, because here is the absolute worst part of what Obama said:

“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves.”

At the beginning of the statements Obama notes that as head of the executive branch that might very well prosecute George Zimmerman for a crime, he is limited in what he can say.  He rightly recognizes that if he makes statements indicating any kind of prejudice in the case he could harm the ability of the government to prosecute it.  And please note when I say “prejudice” I don’t mean merely if he expresses any bias based on race, sex, etc. but any pre-judgment, any kind of judgment before the facts are in.

But ironically that very statement exposed himself to charges of prejudice—the kind of prejudice you think of first when you think of the word, bias based on race.  He just implied that because of racial affinity he feels particularly bad about the Trayvon killing.  So then since a hypothetical son of Barrack and Michelle Obama would not look like George Zimmerman, does that mean he feels less sympathy for him?

Reasonable Beliefs: Prejudice, Myth and Reality in the Trayvon Martin Shooting (Or “Why Han Solo Had the Right to Shoot Greedo First”)

Strap yourself in because this is a long one.

So here we go again, a local criminal incident becomes national news, for some reason and thus all of the world pretends to know something that it cannot know.

We saw this before in the Duke non-rape case.  Those Duke lacrosse players were accused of raping that woman and somehow people just knew that they were guilty.  I remembered wondering immediately why they were so sure.  Hopefully they at least read a few newspaper accounts, but they didn’t look in the alleged victim’s eyes as she described what happened to her, or in the eyes of the accused as they denied it.  So for me the only logical position was to be agnostic—maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, we’ll have to wait and see.  But these people were somehow sure.  There was no word for it but prejudice.  As I wrote in a different context:

To pre-judge a person is to literally “judge before.”  Before what?  Before it is appropriate, before you have all the facts.  Of course normally we think of prejudice as being based on specific traits.  Racial prejudice is to judge a man by his skin color, rather than getting enough facts to judge him as an individual.  But it can be based on anything.

And there was definitely some kind of premature judgment in that case because eventually it was revealed that one of the accused was on video at an ATM at the time he was supposedly committing rape.  And after that the entire case fell apart.

What was the prejudice there?  Well, besides the Hatfield and McCoy feud between alumni of Duke and Carolina, you have to think there was leftover jock resentment, and also part of the calculus is that it fit the sad historical pattern of black women being victimized by white men, and the historical concern that her rights would not be vindicated because she was black.  These are valid to an extent, but just because historically African American women have been victimized by white men, didn’t mean that those particular white men did so; and not only did the local authorities take her claims of rape seriously, but Nifong was so zealous in his prosecution that he ended up violating ethical rules and being disbarred.

And we see this in other instances, where reporters sitting there with the bare text of transcripts decide that a person convicted by a jury of their peers twenty years ago was absolutely definitely innocent, even though an appropriately skeptical person standing from afar wonders how they can be so sure when they never looked the witnesses in the eye.  And certainly the chronic failure by reporters to understand the law itself only compounds the error.

So we have another case of a racially charged incident and everyone pretends to know what happened.  I have looked at the news reports and at this point in time, if you cut through all the clutter one simple truth emerges: at the crucial moment where the law decides whether George Zimmerman committed unlawful murder or justifiable homicide under the principle of self-defense, there is only one living witness: George Zimmerman.

For instance, there are numerous 911 recordings aggregated at this post over at Mother Jones.  It and the reportage generally puts certain facts beyond dispute.  George Zimmerman was doing some unofficial “neighborhood watch” work when he became concerned that Trayvon Martin might have been engaged in criminal conduct.  I will assume his family is correct in insisting that he wasn’t engaged in criminal conduct—and to do so would be out of his character.  And there is certainly no dispute that Martin was unarmed, although he had a bag of skittles and an Ice Tea on him.  So Mr. Zimmerman called the police and as he called them pursued Mr. Martin.  Then at some point the call ended and... some kind of confrontation happened and Mr. Martin ended up dead.  So it seems an innocent man died.  And thus we get this push across the country for Zimmerman to be prosecuted.

But let’s clear out some myths, first.  First, people always seem to take it as a given that it is self-evidently murder to kill an unarmed man.  That is not the case.  The lawfulness of your conduct is not determined by whether the defendant is actually in danger, but whether the defendant is in reasonable fear.

[Please note this is not legal advice.  This is only a discussion of the law for the purpose of discussing the merits of the law so we as citizens can decide whether to change the law.  For legal advice, you need to hire your own lawyer.  I am a lawyer but I am not your lawyer.]

Kill Your Parents, Get their Money

So a man in Canada kills his parents, with an axe, and is rewarded for it by inheriting their money.  You see, there is a statute that says that if you are held criminally responsible for a person’s death, that you can’t inherit from them, but the problem is that he was acquitted by reason of insanity. 

Sick, yes, and its tempting to blame the courts.  But, I won’t.  I get the feeling that the actual blame lies with the legislature in Canada.  Is it so hard to understand that sometimes people kill without being held legally liable?

Anyway, you can read about it, here.