[flagged]

In the US, the 8th Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, which courts have interpreted again and again as requiring that punishment be proportionate to the conduct. Weems v. United States (1910), for example, struck down a 15-year hard-labor sentence for a man who engaged in criminal fraud.

Do you think Alex Pretti or Renee Good deserved 15 years of hard labor for disobeying ICE? How about just five years? Because what actually happened was they were executed on the spot.

There is no FAFO exception in the US Constitution.

▲

sejje 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Cruel and unusual punishment is about sentencing, after a trial. These folks didn't go through a trial.

No, I don't think either person deserved fifteen years of hard labor, or five years.

What actually happened is not that they were executed on the spot, no.

	▲	sowbug 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not a particularly strong argument that these agents didn't violate the 8th amendment because they violated the 6th amendment right to trial.

▲

datsci_est_2015 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We’re not sure what your point is. “Things of a similar nature have happened in the past” is not a particularly strong argument.

> In every state of the US (and most countries), people disobeying law enforcement will die. If you want to live, you comply, and you fight in court.

This is naked bootlicking. You only support it because you view it as “your team” or “your tribe” and do not feel threatened by it. Tables turn in time. Maybe you are not old or wise or well-read enough to recognize that.

▲

sejje 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't view law enforcement as my team. But I do want the laws enforced.

▲

goatlover 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

ICE has been breaking a lot of laws in Minnesota and ignoring Constitutional rights. Neither of the shootings have been justified based on video evidence, and the administration has blatantly lied and engaged in covering for the agents involved so far.

	▲	sejje 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		One of them was very justified. Pretti was a cluster like I said. I don't think he should have been shot, but it's going to be really hard to find anyone guilty. They're hands on with an armed person who is resisting them, and he is shot in the chaos. I personally believe the first shot was by the officer who drew, but was unintentional and I don't think he realized it was his own gun. The time from him being disarmed to the first shot was well under a second, wasn't it? Not enough time to send a memo to everyone about the current status of the armed opposition.

▲

simoncion 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The violence in Minnesota--that is, law enforcement killing people who are not obeying them--is nothing new. Happens in every state every day.

Sure, agreed.

> ICE deporting people isn't new, either.

Yeah, agreed.

> What's new is the folks trying to stop federal agents from doing their jobs...

Nah. Cops of all flavors have been lying (even under oath) about how they beat the shit out of (or assaulted with chemical weapons (or killed)) someone because "I was afraid for my life", "I was being obstructed during the discharge of my lawful duties", and similar for ages. That's nothing new.

What is probably new is the scale of the deployments of killer cops. What's definitely new is the extent of the media coverage of the obviously-illegal-but-roughly-noone-will-be-punished actions of many of those cops.

That these cops are injuring folks, stealing and breaking their property, kidnapping folks, and killing folks is one huge fucked-up thing. The other huge fucked-up thing is that approximately noone will ask "So, why aren't these cops immediately in jail awaiting trial? Why don't the courts think this is obviously illegal? What has gone wrong here?". Instead, this will generally be pinned on either the Trump Administration, or Trump personally... so once he's out of office, folks will go "Job's done!" and nothing will change to fix the underlying long-standing problem. [0]

[0] Do carefully note: I'm absolutely not saying that the Trump Administration (or perhaps Trump, himself) is blameless. They absolutely are responsible for the flood of poorly-trained ICE officers who pretty clearly have orders to engage in domestic terrorism. I'm pointing out that these domestic terrorists absolutely should be immediately sent to jail for what they've done. Trump and the Trump Administration have pretty much nothing to do with the fact that USian cops can kidnap, brutalize, steal, and murder with almost complete impunity... that's a long-standing problem.

▲

crawfordcomeaux 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Normalizing state-sanctioned extra-judicial murder along with a message of compliance? Maybe go find videos of where compliance got people killed because the fact is the slave catchers enjoy brutality and murder.

▲

sejje 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not normalizing it, it's already normalized. We have accepted this kind of policing forever.

Nothing in Minnesota has changed the game, except masks maybe, since they're being doxxed.

▲

ModernMech 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We have not accepted anything. Hence the protests. Maybe you have accepted it but you don’t speak for everyone.

▲

sejje 4 hours ago | parent [-]

No, that's the thing. We accepted for a long time. Literally not one thing about any of this is new, except the politicians and reporters decided we need to focus on Minneapolis this month.

The same thing has been going on the same way for decades.

	▲	ModernMech 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It not being new doesn't mean it's been accepted though. Acceptance implies consent. Protest (also not new) is evidence of non consent.

▲

goatlover 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not since George Floyd and certainly not with masks.

▲

qeternity 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> In every state of the US (and most countries), people disobeying law enforcement will die. If you want to live, you comply, and you fight in court.

This is one of the worst takes I have ever seen, to the point that you must just be trolling.

Disobeying law enforcement is not a death sentence. It is often not even illegal. Just because LEO shouts "I am giving you a lawful order" does not in fact make it a lawful order. And this certainly is not happening in most other countries.

The desire to be part of the Trump Tribe has made people forget what actually made America great.

▲

sejje 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If it's not a lawful order, you fight that in court. It's almost a free pass to get out of whatever you did.

But what she was given was a lawful order. That's the one I'm talking about.

I'm not a trump voter.

▲

mekdoonggi 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How did you determine "what she was given was a lawful order" without a trial?

	▲	sejje 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Because I have at least a bare minimum understanding of what a lawful command is. Law enforcement can order you out of your vehicle, and you must comply.

▲

UncleMeat 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Can you show me how specifically you fight it in court when the person abusing you is a federal officer? Bivens is basically dead.

▲

sejje 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, you can see the alternative. Get shot in the street and get a lot of twitter posts.

	▲	UncleMeat 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If the claim is that you can fight it in court then I want to know how you'd do that. Because from where I sit there are mountains of procedural barriers to actually doing this. A lot of people assume that you can just get some remedy in court, but this is often not true. When an ICE agent shot and killed a kid their Bivens claim was still denied. "Just go to court to solve it is not serious.

▲

crawfordcomeaux 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Enslavement, genocide, domination, and extraction made it great. For those who forgot.

What we're watching is the collapse of such an unsustainable approach.