{"id":1601,"date":"2011-07-21T12:14:24","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T17:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=1601"},"modified":"2011-07-21T12:14:24","modified_gmt":"2011-07-21T17:14:24","slug":"resisting-arrest-when-police-have-wrongly-invaded-your-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=1601","title":{"rendered":"‘Resisting arrest’? When police have wrongly invaded your home?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There’s something wrong with the “justice” system when a jury convicts a man of a crime, but sends a note to the judge saying<\/a>, “We\u2019ve all reached a verdict. To us we feel he has been wronged. Please consider that in his sentencing.”<\/p>\n

In other words, the jury felt that the accused was actually the victim in the case, but they still did what the judge and prosecutor told them to do.\u00a0That’s wrong. (They’ve probably never heard of jury nullification<\/a>, because judges work pretty hard to make sure jurors aren’t aware of their real rights and responsibilities.)<\/p>\n

A Texas jury convicted a man of resisting arrest after police mistook him for a burglar and broke into his home — and he tried to escape from them. Police say a neighbor reported — wrongly — seeing a black male kicking in a door to the house. For some odd reason, this Hispanic man apparently didn’t trust that police who had just broken into his own home had his best interests at heart.<\/p>\n

The man’s attorney says his client has the mind of a child and also struggles with the English\/Spanish language barrier, but I’d say the guy showed good judgement in resisting the people who were breaking in and trying to grab him, whether they were dressed in police costumes or not.<\/p>\n

The Fourth Amendment<\/a> to the U.S. Constitution starts out this way:<\/p>\n

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated….”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This man wasn’t secure in his person or his house. He was pepper-sprayed, shot with a pepper ball gun and wrestled to the ground by nine police officers. Any sane person doing nothing wrong in his own home would resist, too. Police can’t have the presumption that they’re doing right. We have to have that presumption for ourselves. It should be anywhere, but at the very least, we should have it in our homes.<\/p>\n

This story comes via a link at Radley Balko’s site, the Agitator.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s something wrong with the “justice” system when a jury convicts a man of a crime, but sends a note to the judge saying, “We\u2019ve all reached a verdict. To us we feel he has been wronged. Please consider that in his sentencing.” In other words, the jury felt that the accused was actually the Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-pP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1601"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1607,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601\/revisions\/1607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}