I have been critical of the media overhyping everything, for a while. But the more I think about it, and the abundant evidence of a large portion of the US population being trigger happy, and those trigger happy people often getting off with a finding of “self defense”, and the “thought leaders” that advocate violence against migrants, I start thinking the media is not overworking the potential outcomes of the law.
Steve
There is a difference between talking about the “potential outcomes” of the law, and completely mistating what the provisions of the law are.
You can say that the law will lead to more people getting killed, without falsely claiming that the law allows you to kill people for trespassing.
And yet, if more people are killed and the social context is such that the killers are not punished, isn’t the effect of the bill to give permission, whether or not a dispassionate analysis of the actual wording of the bill was that the bill was not giving such permission?
No. The bill doesn’t do what some of the critics say it does. If other people create a social context where the killers are not punished, then it’s the other people that are “giving permission” - not the bill. The bill is a relatively straightforward amendment which doesn’t come anywhere close to letting people “hunt migrants.” Critics running around and claiming that hunting migrants is now going to be legal now in Arizona may very well lead to lots of people actually believing that it’s true, which has all sorts of terrible consequences - but that’s due to the misinformation being spread about the bill, not what the bill actually does.
It would be better for all concerned for critics to exercise a little more responsibility in their coverage of the bill.
I think you are being a bit naive about WHY this bill is being introduced in the first place. An example from Texas. Technically abortion is not illegal. However, it can be monetarily punished by private citizens. The effect was that abortions are no longer performed here, even in the case of extreme danger to the woman. (ask me how I know, go ahead…). People can argue all day “this is not what the law says” but it is absolutely the effect they wanted this law to have and is why they crafted it in this manner.
Same with this Arizona bill. It was written and crafted for a specific purpose.
Not at all. The purpose of the bill is clearly to extend the existing “Stand your Ground” provisions from just the house to a person’s entire property. That way you can get into armed confrontations with people on your property, not just your house, and if they threaten you there’s no duty to retreat back to your house.
But unlike the Texas bill, where the elimination of abortion access was a consequence that flowed from what the bill did, here there is nothing in the bill that now makes it legal to shoot trespassers just for trespassing. The Texas bill was correctly criticized for creating a civil liability that would make it impossible to offer abortions; the Arizona bill is being incorrectly criticized for making it legal to “hunt migrants.”
It does not. This is exactly the sort of clear misinformation that is roundly criticized in other contexts - and like in other contexts, the misinformation is (arguably) far more dangerous than anything being proposed in the legislation. Expanding the geographic scope of Stand your Ground is bad, since it will increase the number of confrontations escalating to violence; but convincing people that it’s now legal to hunt migrants in Arizona is far worse.
You still keep proving how naive you are. I guarantee you they realized the consequence of this bill. This was intentional. They realize that writing a bill “it is legal to hunt migrants” would be illegal, just like Abbott knows “I can’t shoot migrants because that is illegal”. But if you introduce this bill, then, well, we know what people are going to do. Especially if these same people keep telling you migrants are the worst people, they are rapist, they are murderers, they are a danger to you.
You can write a bill that says it’s legal to shoot trespassers. It’s not hard. That’s a bill that would actually do what critics claim this bill does. Or you can write a bill that creates a new section of the criminal code that addresses trespassers and what you can do. But they didn’t do that. Bills like this - that just switch an “and” to an “or” and tweak a few other prepositions - are generally drafted that way to move quietly through the legislature, not shape public behavior.
Because unlike the Texas bill, anyone who actually does what you’re claiming the bill encourages is going to go to jail for murder. We can handwave at the idea that there might be some “social pressure” in the air, but as a general matter juries take their job very seriously and listen closely to jury instructions. They’re going to be told that it’s murder to shoot someone for trespass, and that deadly force cannot be used in defense of property. That only if there’s an actual threat of deadly force to the person shooting would shooting be justified. I’m no expert on Arizona criminal procedure, so there might be something weird about their process, but typically we would expect the judge to make a ruling on whether the shooter can even present a justification defense. So if someone just goes out and “hunts migrants,” they’re most likely going to be prohibited from even arguing that it was legal under this statute.
I don’t understand the defense of the coverage here. It’s completely wrong, and its honestly self-defeating for critics of the law. Even if you postulate that the legislature is trying to create the misimpression that it’s legal to hunt migrants, going around and repeating that false statement as if it were true seems counter-productive. Because unlike the Texas law (which again actually made a change to the legal status of people providing abortions), this legislation doesn’t actually make any change to whether deadly force can be used against people who are merely trespassing.
The last thing we need is trigger-happy vigilantes thinking it’s legal to hunt migrants, I agree.
While I agree that the reporting is not responsible, I don’t think we should ignore the irresponsibility of the politicians proposing this law. I’ll go back to my original question, worded a little bit differently. What’s the intent of the politicians proposing this law?
Here’s some context:
The rancher’s 911 call (from the NYT): In a recording of the 911 call obtained through a public records request, Mr. Kelly says he is hesitant to talk on the phone, and tells the dispatcher he discovered “an animal laying face down.”
“An animal?” the dispatcher asks.
“An animal,” Mr. Kelly replies. “And you know what an animal is — it’s not a vegetable or a mineral. It’s a body, and you know what I’m talking about.”
In the days before the shooting, the rancher sends braggadocious texts about migrants he’s killed on his property. His defense explained that the texts were just “friendly chest-beating between men”.
This is a huge story in the shoot-em-up wannabe migrant hunter community. Money has poured in from across the country to aid the rancher in his defense. No doubt they’ve made there concerns known through polite conversations with Arizona legislators.
Here’s how I see it:
Maybe I’m cynical, maybe I’m making assumptions…maybe the reporting isn’t the only thing we should be concerned about.
I think this is the point of disagreement. Can they be charged with murder? Yes. Will they be charged with murder? Maybe. Maybe not. That will be up to a District Attorney. If the DA doesn’t want to charge the case, it’s not going to get charged. At least not until there is a different DA. It’s not beyond imagination that a DA - particularly one that is elected - might choose not to charge such a case for political reasons.
And once charged, it’s up to the jury to convict. Again, it’s not inconceivable that a jury might fail to convict. It only takes one juror to stop a conviction. With a jury chosen from citizens of the county, there can certainly be a number who will accept the most minor of provocations as sufficient to meet the “stand your ground” requirements.
So there’s a lot of distance to cover between standing your ground and going to jail for murder.
On the other hand, I do see your point in describing the potential effects of the law. It does not make the killing of immigrants legal. But it does make it less likely that someone who kills a person on their property will be convicted of murder. It expands a very ill-defined exception, one that can - and possibly will - be pushed to it’s limits.
–Peter
If a migrant shoots and kills an armed vigilante, it is self-defense–per Texas’s own self-defense law.
Denying a request from the Justice Department, the high court allowed the controversial Texas law, one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature immigration policies, to take effect while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit considers the measure’s legality.
Passed by the Texas legislature last year, SB4 criminalizes unauthorized migration at the state level, making the act of entering the U.S. outside of a port of entry — already a federal offense — into a state crime. It also creates a state felony charge for illegal reentry…
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in an opinion concurring with the majority’s decision, wrote that the high court shouldn’t second-guess the appeals court.
DB2
That might be law, but the reality is that when someone is shot dead, they don’t get to tell their side of the story.
If states can impose their own immigration laws, are “sanctuary cities” equally empowered to have their own, more lax laws?
Steve
More importantly, other states can now prohibit TX (or any other state) from sending migrants to their state without permission from the state AND ongoing payments to house, feed, and care for the migrants sent.