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  1. #101
    Quote Originally Posted by zenkai View Post
    Did you not even read the first paragraph?

    A black man who was found not guilty of armed robbery will still serve up to seven years behind bars after a judge ruled he had breached the rules of his probation sentence for another crime.


    People falling for click bait journalism again.
    Did you read beyond the first paragraph?

  2. #102
    Burden of proof is different for probation hearing vs. trial, hence you can and will get different results for each. Yet this crucial fact is left out in order to race bait. I wonder why people don't fucking trust the media.

  3. #103
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tennisace View Post
    How awful. We need to take a stand against this! Meanwhile we have angry people who think the best use of their time is fighting against political correctness and immigration.
    But dey tuk hour jerbs!

  4. #104
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    Quote Originally Posted by Raelbo View Post
    The judge disagrees with you. But yeah sure, I suppose we should hold your opinion in equal regard
    I'm not asking you to hold my opinion in equal regard to the judge's. I'm pointing to the court documents that the articles are suggesting points to his compliance. I never suggested that I am equal to a judge, that's your own inference.

    True, but I don't see the relevance...
    What I am suggesting here is that the suspect was found not guilty of this crime and as such it should not be used as evidence in whether or not he violated his parole, since they can't pin it on him. This is, I know, a technicality, but it's still relevant as to whether he violated his parole since being involved in crime would be a clear contravention.

    Faulty logic. Just because he cannot be found guilty of committing the crime in question doesn't mean he can't be found guilty of violating his parole conditions. Presumably there is some evidence from this trial which demonstrates he broke some parole condition.
    I didn't claim that this proves that he didn't violate parole, I'm saying that this doesn't provide any evidence to suggest he did.

    According to his grandmother, Janice, he complied with some parole conditions, and according to her, there are "court papers" to back that up. But that doesn't mean that he didn't break some other parole condition. Maybe he was shown to be somewhere he was not supposed to be, or out past a curfew, or handling a firearm. Who knows? Clearly the judge does, but great biased journalism doesn't really bother to try and present those facts. Why? Because the value of the news story lies in creating sympathy for this character, not in presenting all the facts in an unbiased manner.
    If he was shown to have violated parole, that should have made it into the report. I am suggesting that this is positive evidence that would be relevant, yet there is no mention of it. We are asked to simply trust the judge (which others have cast questions over his trustworthiness). I agree that it could be biased journalism, but if that is the case, there should be a source elsewhere that shows the other side of the evidence. Until then, we only have the evidence presented to us. I am not insisting that this may not be a biased presentation of the facts, just that given these particular ones there seems to be a miscarriage of justice.

    1) because balance of probability is not sufficient to convict, a lack of conviction does not disprove balance of probability
    2) cases don't go to trial unless the balance of probability suggests guilt
    I'd agree that not being convicted does not suggest that a suspect is all together innocent. It simply means they could not pin it on the perpetrator. Given the mandate of officers of the law, and the need for evidence, it is often reported that the burden of proof precludes many crimes going into court in the first place. No argument there.

    However that doesn't change the fact that some crimes that actually went to court on said probable evidence turned out to be meted out to innocent individuals. I'm not referring to instances where they simply couldn't prove guilt. There are actually innocent people behind bars because of the subjectivity inherent in court cases. Which is why I'm making a big deal of it. If the judge only had intuition to go on, it is possible that he is punishing someone needlessly. This is, as above, on the balance of the information given.

    There was lots of evidence, but it wasn't sufficiently clear to rule out a reasonable doubt.
    Without any further information, I cannot make the same conclusion. Reasonable doubt being the highest burden of proof, it doesn't surprise me that someone can be released with some doubt despite actually being guilty. Further proof is necessary to detain an individual. I'll concede that this does not mean that he was definitely involved.

    In other words, he was probably involved.
    This does not follow from that line of thought. "We can't prove that he was involved, so he was probably involved". Not having enough to convict a perpetrator is true not only in the case of people that are not convicted due to a technicality, but also in the case of those that are completely innocent.

    To arrest someone for something the police have to have probable cause. In other words, there must be some evidence suggesting that they are guilty. They could, however, actually be totally innocent. The question of guilt is argued in a court of law, which only happens if, after a full investigation, guilt still seems probable. To convict someone, the courts need to be certain of actual guilt.
    As we have discussed above, the police indeed do need at least some amount of proof to take the matter to court in the first place. With the information we are given, that is the testimony of the witness (the store clerk). This is a low amount of support for a court case, but we're not told of any other supporting evidence. The fact that the proceedings made it to court at all suggest that there is more, but unfortunately there is no mention of any additional information. I still hold that more information is needed to rule that the judge acted lawfully or not, but based on given information he did not. Speculation does not help in this situation.

    According to his grandmother. I am sure she is a totally reliable source....
    Obviously, you'd expect people close to a suspect to be biased in their favour. The articles however suggest that court documents support her assertion that he complied with his parole stipulations. The article from the Independent phrased it as such: "Court documents nonetheless showed he did everything asked of him during his probation, including checking in, paying restitution and finishing his community service. He was also holding down a job." It is presented as an objective matter rather than stating that this information comes from his grandmother. Later on in the same article, there is mention of his grandmother: "Mr Chatman’s grandmother told 11 Alive he had worked hard to meet the terms of his court order, including paying his mandated fines on time." So, again, this would lead us to perceive said information as suggesting two sources (one of them being probably biased). Again, there may be another side to the story, but there is a suspicion of shoddy journalism.

    It's not my job to know the law. That's the job of the judge.
    I don't have the facts of the case, other than what the media have given us (which seem to be very biased and sensational). But the judge does.
    Yep, it's the responsibility of the judge to carry out justice. We thus have to assume he has some other objective information. Without said information we cannot make any useful conclusions. If there are other facts to the case, there is likely to be at least someone out there willing to publish it, without which this is pure speculation.

    Therefore, the judge really is in the best position of anyone to assess whether the defendant is in violation of his parole. I would be interested to know what makes you believe you're a higher authority than the judge on this? (PS: Yes, this is an argument of authority. But it's not a fallacy since a judge is, in fact, the correct authority)
    Like at the very top of this post, I didn't suggest that I have the same authority as the judge. There are however 12 jury members that did not agree with the judge on that and they were also given all the information available with the case. Whether they are qualified to judge on his parole, is doubtful, since they are just members of society, just like you and I. There are papers publishing the story too though. And it appears as if they feel that the judge may not have been completely objective. You quoted an expert on the field earlier, and they seem to believe that the judge operated well within his stipulations. Obviously, not everyone will agree, and that's fine. In my own opinion, this looks a little dodgy and I feel it deserves another look... based on presented information.


    The main thing I feel about this is that we are given certain information, upon which the judgement looks a little strange. We really want more information, the lack of which we have no choice to proceed with what we have. Speculating on more evidence is pointless as there may be none at all.

  5. #105
    Quote Originally Posted by callipygoustp View Post
    Disgusting, utterly disgusting.

    Edit:
    Kind of feeling a little guilty that I bought stock in a couple private prison companies back in Feb.
    That might be the closet way to be a legal slavehandler in a western country.

  6. #106
    So it went like this?
    Judge- How does the jury find the defendant?
    jury- on the first count we find him not guilty. on the second count we find him guilty.
    judge- six years

    MMO champion forumers "oh noes! injustice...cause the jury said hes 1nnocentI"

  7. #107
    Quote Originally Posted by Scathbais View Post
    That is simply because blacks in the US commit crimes at a much higher rate. Completely irrelevant to the discussion of why the judge might or might not have screwed this young man over.
    No it's not simply just that. Especially when you control for outside factors like poverty. And that even though blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates wanna guess who's incarcerated at a much higher rate for it? And crack sentencing is massively harsher than cocaine for zero logical reasons and you wanna know who uses which more often?


    And even if you want to know the statistical reality of controlling for other factors in who commits more crime let's look at sentencing. Black children are regularly sentenced as adults more often than their white counterparts which means harsher sentences. Studies found black children are on average estimated to be 2-3 years older than they actually are and that that plays a factor. Black men are more likely to be sentenced to death even when controlling for all other factors. Since I can already predict your rebuttal and I'm sure you don't understand what that means it means that they try and take people and make them as similar as possible to remove any outside influenced to see if race is the significant influence. Meaning age, crime committed, criminal history, age, height, weight, all can be attempted to be as similar as possible. And what we find is if you take a white man and a black man who both commit the same crime at the same age with the same criminal record the latter is more likely to be sentenced to death.

    It's only completely irrelevant to you because the thought that it might actually be a factor is inconvenient for you to consider under any circumstances.
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  8. #108
    Quote Originally Posted by Pendulous View Post
    Pretty sure the judge does not have the power to overrule a jury's verdict? I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that makes logical sense to me.
    Judges can do that and sometimes do, it's not very often... but it does happen. They overrule juries to either jail or not jail.

  9. #109
    Quote Originally Posted by Dukenukemx View Post
    Uh, look at the first sentence.



    He's going to jail for another crime.
    Because, despite the jury's ruling of not guilty, the judge STILL thought he was guilty, so he said it was a parole violation and put him in the clink. I am usually a defender of the justice systems. But this seems pretty fucked.
    READ and be less Ignorant.

  10. #110
    Quote Originally Posted by Barnabas View Post
    The story doesn't make sense. If he "knew was innocent" then why do any type of alford plea at the beginning? Why the willingness to take an assault charge? Seems like something is missing in this story.


    You've never been thru the US criminal justice system....

    Right, wrong, innocent, guilty, don't really mean anything in a courtroom. It's about what you can prove....So hear you have a young guy...black....but more damning than that, a prior conviction. That's what really did him in. Thing about the justice system, once a criminal always a criminal.

    On top of that you have over-worked and under qualified public defenders, all they really do is try to pressure you into taking plea deals...even if you didn't do it...why? Laziness for one, these people want to close this case and get to the next one. PD's are not looking for a fight they are looking for the easy out. So what happens a lot of the time is they get inside a persons head and convince them they are fucked and the best course of action is to take a plea.

    Just like it said in the article, lawyer told him it would be the best course of action....

    Not to go off on a tangent here, but the parole/probation system is messed up too. And that's seems to be what happened here. Judge hit him with a technicality. Generally speaking if your on parole/probation and the handcuffs go on for any reason, your going back.....exactly what happened here. Couldn't wait to send him back to jail.

    Then again I wasn't there....so who knows.....

  11. #111
    Quote Originally Posted by Ivanstone View Post
    Its an injustice. The punishment should be proportional to the crime. The accused met the terms of his original sentence until something else randomly decided to fuck with his life. On top of that, this is a complete waste of the taxpayer's money. It was originally a non-violent petty crime that the perpetrator showed remorse for.

    Furthermore, not guilty does actually mean innocent. If you don't like it, why don't you investigate the case yourself.
    Man has repeated run-ins with the law, yet "something else randomly decided to fuck with his life". Nice.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by shimerra View Post
    No it's not simply just that. Especially when you control for outside factors like poverty.
    Oh, I forgot the whole "It's a crime, unless the perpetrator is living in poverty" thing...

  12. #112
    The Insane Revi's Avatar
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    Chatman was re-sentenced for the original crime of stealing a TV and ordered to serve 10-years behind bars, back dated to the day of the crime.
    Isn't double jeopardy illegal in pretty much every civilized country? How does that not apply here?

  13. #113
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revi View Post
    Isn't double jeopardy illegal in pretty much every civilized country? How does that not apply here?
    Considering he never really did the time for the original offense, it can't really be viewed in that way. He was sentenced to conditional probation, which the judge ruled he violated. Exactly what evidence led the judge to that conclusion is what baffles me.

  14. #114
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nixx View Post
    Double jeopardy would only apply if they retried him. Sentences can be altered after the fact, though I think generally it's only supposed to be to reduce them in some way. It seems the issue here is that there's a lower burden of proof when dealing with probation, so the judge decided he did it and revoked his probation accordingly, but even after being found not guilty, the judge still believes he did it and (I guess?) isn't obligated to use the findings of the trial to reverse the original decision. He wasn't really resentenced, just found to be in violation of his parole based on a lower standard of proof than is required in a criminal trial, which naturally gave him the full harshness of the original punishment. It all sounds really stupid no matter which version you're looking at and I hope the judge gets skewered for it.
    Huh, okey. Sounds like some very fishy use of his power to alter the sentence then.

  15. #115
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nixx View Post
    The article I linked earlier says he found the eyewitness testimony compelling. She claims she remembered the tattoo under his eye (an ultra simplistic cross, not exactly a unique tattoo), but didn't remember any of his other tattoos and was apparently very inconsistent in her testimony, which is why the jury didn't buy it.
    And that is why it baffles me... the witness appears to be somewhat unreliable. The suspect goes to trial and the jury do not find enough evidence to charge him. The result of this is that he's found not guilty for the crime. Because of this, according to law he didn't commit the crime, and it should not have a bearing on his life as present. Still, this dubious evidence is used to suggest that he violated his parole stipulations, despite the fact that the court has evidence suggesting that he has been in compliance.

  16. #116
    Or maybe, just maybe, because the world is actually very simple and often is exactly what it looks like - the judge simply does not like blacks and thus put him in jail?
    Just an idea.

  17. #117
    Quote Originally Posted by Direpenguin View Post
    Man has repeated run-ins with the law, yet "something else randomly decided to fuck with his life". Nice.
    He had two run-ins with the law.

    The first was for attempted theft for which he was tried and sentenced to five years probation.

    The second was being arrested for a crime he did not commit. When he found he was wanted by the police, he turned himself in and was ultimately acquitted of the crime he was accused of. That's pretty much the definition of "randomly fucking with your life".

  18. #118
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    Wonder if they had a quota to meet. Often counties can't afford the fines written into the contracts with the private prisons if they don't send them a given number of "customers" a year.
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  19. #119
    Quote Originally Posted by shimerra View Post
    No it's not simply just that. Especially when you control for outside factors like poverty. And that even though blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates wanna guess who's incarcerated at a much higher rate for it? And crack sentencing is massively harsher than cocaine for zero logical reasons and you wanna know who uses which more often?


    And even if you want to know the statistical reality of controlling for other factors in who commits more crime let's look at sentencing. Black children are regularly sentenced as adults more often than their white counterparts which means harsher sentences. Studies found black children are on average estimated to be 2-3 years older than they actually are and that that plays a factor. Black men are more likely to be sentenced to death even when controlling for all other factors. Since I can already predict your rebuttal and I'm sure you don't understand what that means it means that they try and take people and make them as similar as possible to remove any outside influenced to see if race is the significant influence. Meaning age, crime committed, criminal history, age, height, weight, all can be attempted to be as similar as possible. And what we find is if you take a white man and a black man who both commit the same crime at the same age with the same criminal record the latter is more likely to be sentenced to death.

    It's only completely irrelevant to you because the thought that it might actually be a factor is inconvenient for you to consider under any circumstances.

    its a difference of behaviour ( i would even state intelligence) in races. White people smoke marihuana alone at home and dont run into troubles with police. Black people smoke marihuana in a group of 7 tattoed hood gangsters in front of the main train station and get arrested. Intelligence does matter sometimes.


    [Infracted]
    Last edited by Endus; 2017-05-25 at 06:33 PM.

  20. #120
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    Quote Originally Posted by shimerra View Post
    No it's not simply just that. Especially when you control for outside factors like poverty. And that even though blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates wanna guess who's incarcerated at a much higher rate for it? And crack sentencing is massively harsher than cocaine for zero logical reasons and you wanna know who uses which more often?

    And even if you want to know the statistical reality of controlling for other factors in who commits more crime let's look at sentencing. Black children are regularly sentenced as adults more often than their white counterparts which means harsher sentences. Studies found black children are on average estimated to be 2-3 years older than they actually are and that that plays a factor. Black men are more likely to be sentenced to death even when controlling for all other factors. Since I can already predict your rebuttal and I'm sure you don't understand what that means it means that they try and take people and make them as similar as possible to remove any outside influenced to see if race is the significant influence. Meaning age, crime committed, criminal history, age, height, weight, all can be attempted to be as similar as possible. And what we find is if you take a white man and a black man who both commit the same crime at the same age with the same criminal record the latter is more likely to be sentenced to death.

    It's only completely irrelevant to you because the thought that it might actually be a factor is inconvenient for you to consider under any circumstances.
    Causation is an entirely different matter. The fact is that blacks commit more crimes than whites as percentages of their relative population. Period.
    Stop quoting nonsense from the NAACP website. The poverty/racism argument is simply untrue and not supported by any data except the hard data that shows a strong relationship between increases in black crime and the destruction of the 2-parent black family.

    Blacks commit more violent crime as a percentage of their population and you should expect more incarcerations as a percentage of population as well.
    Blacks are 10 times more likely than white to commit murder for example.

    Here is why poverty and racism don't play a part: In the 1940's and 50's for example, black poverty was higher and racism was both widespread and legal. And yet black crime rates were lower than they are today. You cannot argue that blacks are committing crimes because of rising/widespread poverty and racism because conditions for blacks are better today than at any time in American history.

    Before liberal policies made fathers obsolete in black families, the majority of black children (75% in 1965) were raised by 2 parent families. By 2013, over 72% of black children were born to single parents. There is a strong, well researched connection between poverty and single parent families. You should familiarize yourself with this paper written by Liberal Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. His research concluded that:

    The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.[7]
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