The fact that it took 10 minutes suggests that he wasn't fully cutting off his air or blood flow, that fact helps his self defense case. It takes mere secondsto choke someone unconscious if you fully cut off their air and blood flow. If you only want to keep the person down you don't fully cut off air or blood flow.
No. It doesn't. Not one iota, even. All it does is show he had a lot of time to adjust his actions in a way that could have prevented the death. The self defense case doesn't need help either, btw. That is plainly established. Thompson subdued Hernandez as an act of self defense. Everyone acknowledges this. Extremely few, if any, think Thompson acted with intent to kill. However, intent does not need to be established for their to be a crime committed. You'd know this if you took 5 seconds to run a google search before popping your mouth off like you always do.
I wonder if he would defend that dude in the convenience store in Oklahoma that executed that unconscious robber on the floor. Probably so.
This is as close of a representation of Bobby's understanding of the law as I can glean from his statements in this thread: 1) intent absolves absolutely 2) actions as part of self defense are immutably and universally protected from criminal prosecution Please enroll in law school, Bobby. We need folks to pad out the bottom of the GPA curve.
New Rule. . if you can get someone to take a swipe at you . . . .you have free reign to kill them Rocket River
Also, that's about as easy of a murder charge as you'll find when it comes to a charging decision by a prosecutors' office.
https://www.click2houston.com/news/...e-retried-after-jury-deadlocks-at-first-trial Isa fishal. New trial with less of a chance of getting off. I bet he would take it all back.
No, you clearly misunderstand what I was saying. If you want to prove murder, then you need intent among other things. If you want to prove manslaughter, you have to prove that he acted recklessly which is defined in Texas as So that means that you have to prove that any ordinary person would believe that him holding down the attacker would cause the man to die and that he disregarded that knowledge. Now given that he didn't actually have a rear naked choke locked in as evidenced by the man not losing consciousness within seconds, we also know that he wasn't cutting off his air with the choke because in the video we can hear the drunk pisser making all kinds of noises....when you are legitimately choked, you don't make any noises let alone loud ones that would be picked up camera. Now perhaps as time went on that eventually happened, but it was pretty clear that the intention was to just keep the man subdued till police arrived and I'm not sure that an ordinary person would think that a guy who was breathing well enough to keep making plenty of noise for minutes while struggling to get free and continue his attack would all of a sudden die. I argue that it's an accident that could have happened to anyone in that situation who was trying to restrain a drunk attacker while waiting on police. A reckless act would be if he had just started beating the guy and kicking him while he was down. Merely restraining a person I don't think qualifies. I'll take these two together, if you are a prosecutor in Texas, you aren't a very good one if you think this is a good case to go after a murder conviction because any murder charge, be it first or second degree, would be pretty easy to beat due to lack of intent, lack of knowledge, and the self defense angle. Now perhaps you are one of those amazing prosecutors who say murder when they mean manslaughter, but that's not the best first impression now is it?
Arkansas prosecutor but the Texas statutes are similar. The State brings charges for what they can prove. I believe at least Murder 2 is provable in this instance. I’ve seen the video footage and I believe a prosecutor could present the evidence to a jury objectively and reasonably expect a guilty verdict. Many offices will bring the highest charge possible. You’re not far off when you mention manslaughter, and yes I’m sure they flirted with the idea and/or actually offered a plea for manslaughter. It’s not admitting defeat, it’s getting a punishable conviction. We let people plea down because juries are unpredictable. But if they balk, you go to trial guns blazing (particularly with video evidence like this) Self defense: I’ll just say that no jurisdiction in this country adheres to “any force can be met with deadly force”. You must reasonably fear for your life. I was focusing on your example when you claimed that the defendant here could’ve shot the guy if he had a gun. It would be a stretch for that to apply. Bottom line: I think you can confidently march forward and argue intent. Whether reckless or purposeful use of deadly force. What bothered me most is that at the beginning of the thread you acted like it was feasible for them to consider nolle prossing (not filing) any charges. I mean cmon. There’s a dead body and a clear video of a strangulation. The elected prosecutor in this county would be run out of town by sundown if no charges were filed...
Now that's a lot more like what I was expecting you to say. I still disagree that you could get a murder 2 conviction because it would be hard to prove that the accused "intended to cause serious bodily injury and committed an act that was clearly dangerous to human life and this act caused the death of an individual", I just think that standard is too difficult to prove. I know some like to take the shotgun approach and just throw out there any charges even remotely possible hoping they'll get a hit on at least a few of them, but I have mixed feelings about that approach. I think that the elements of self defense could have led to no charges if the race, sex, or ethnicity of the victim were different or if the attacker was just a white guy. That said, I'm not married to that position and I freely admit that I could be wrong.
Just re-watched the video. That’s cold-blooded murder dude. You have to admit it. Was the drunk guy whooping his a** beforehand? Or was it just a punch? Yeah, it’s wrong to pee in front of kids in public. Undoubtedly. But that was clear excessive force. You can disparage the victim all you want, but he needlessly lost his life because of the man on top of him I would take that trial for murder any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Not solely because I think a conviction is likely, but because my ethical duty is to seek justice. If the victim was white it would be no different.
He wound up with two black eyes, so the drunk guy had to have landed a few and if let up, he likely goes right back at it. I agree with you that it is tragic that the man lost his life, but I believe that it was a result of an accident while a non-professional was attempting to restrain him till the police arrived. I don't believe that rises to the standards of a criminal offense. We'll see what happens, as a general rule I don't side with attackers when their intended victims fight back and it ends poorly for the attacker so that's my bias here.
Ok I wasn’t aware that he had two black eyes. I’ll admit that’s a mitigating factor. I think BY FAR the biggest aggravating factor is that he held him for 10+ minutes as you guys discussed earlier. I would still let a jury decide if this is murder or not.
The second worst part of the video I watched was the old biker dude who repeatedly told the camera person to stop filming and shoved the camera away. It’s infuriating to see someone interfere with evidence that could either convict or exonerate a suspect. I mean..why would anyone in this day and age think it’s illegal to videotape someone being strangled in public?!
Yeah that's really annoying, I think if there was video that went on longer it would help one way or the other. What I was looking for was a situation where the guy on the ground went limp and the guy on top stayed on top. As far as I can tell, that never happened, and from what we know when he did go limp they attempted CPR. If he had stayed on top after the man went limp, then I'd fully support murder charges. As long as someone is kicking and screaming, I think it's reasonable to stay on top of them.
No. It's just that you're a very potent combination of stupid and confident. Proof: Here you are using intent as some type of immunity. Stupendously wrong. Like, "google it and you'll see you're wrong immediately" levels of wrong. Here you are on one of many occasions using self defense as another type of open-and-shut immunity. This is also absurdly wrong. Thank you for finally taking the time to understand these concepts which apparently eluded you all day yesterday. This is the first correct thing you've said in this entire discussion. Swing and a miss. All this proves is that his RNC was suboptimal. Not surprising given he isn't an expert. Once again, whether he intended to apply a RNC (assuming in the best case scenario he didn't purposefully do so) is irrelevant to whether manslaughter/criminal negligence happened. You are playing this weird, legally nonsensical game in your head where as long as the man on the ground wasn't being immediately and forthrightly killed, then no crime was committed. That's not how this works. Not at all, in fact. Once again, "accident" does not absolve someone of a crime. The best argument you've made is that it's unreasonable to think from the video evidence that Thompson could or should have known he was endangering Hernandez's life. That's a very gray area that will end up being the deciding factor in round 2. That's not recklessness. That's battery. Jesus. I believe Jayzers was speaking to your hypothetical scenario of Thompson pulling out a gun after the man was subdued (and somehow NOT being a murderer in that scenario). Regardless, given the man is a trained expert in a specialized field you know virtually nothing about (at least as evidenced by all of your posts here so far), you should probably shut the hell up and listen for once.
