Some good news:
Jurors found humanitarian aid volunteer Scott Warren not guilty Wednesday of intentionally harboring and concealing two undocumented migrants from the Border Patrol in the remote Arizona desert.
Warren, a longtime volunteer with humanitarian aid group No More Deaths, faced up to 20 years in prison. It was his second trial stemming from his January 2018 arrest in Ajo, about 100 miles southwest of Phoenix.
The 12-person jury in Tucson took just more than two hours to reach a not guilty verdict, striking a blow to federal prosecutors who opted to retry Warren after the first trial ended in a hung jury in June.
“The government failed in its attempt to criminalize basic human kindness,” Warren told supporters outside the federal courthouse.
The bad news? We live in a country to racist and afraid that we charge citizens with felonies for feeding desperate people. And try them twice, just because we fucking can.
Baud
You have a brand new blog and you still don’t read it.
Donald Gisselbeck
There was this homeless Guy a couple of millennia back who said he would send you to hell if you didn’t give water to the thirsty and take in aliens.
Kent
@Baud: Why should he? He has people for that.
chris
@Baud: At least he’s consistent.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
You don’t get to own an almost 10,000 blog by working harder not smarter ; )
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Working?
JaySinWA
Hey, they tried him twice, we can review his acquittal a second time
ETA or is that view it twice? or view and review? At any case our tax dollars at work, trying to make the world less safe.
Ken
@Baud: But is it a brand new blog? There’s something of a Ship of Theseus situation here.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I was trying to be polite! ; p
Has Cole ever mentioned what he does for a living outside of Balloon Juice?
ETA:
I do wonder if/when the GOP and Federalist types will call this jury decision “jury nullification”
lowtechcyclist
@Donald Gisselbeck: Clearly demonstrates the anti-Christian bias of the Deep Trump Administration.
JaySinWA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Is that a rhetorical question?
Kdaug
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): he teaches well. Pay attention
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@JaySinWA:
Pretty much
LAO
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): it probably was jury nullification, do you perceive that to be a negative because I don’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@LAO: Most people don’t know what it means, but it sure sounds bad, don’t it?
LAO
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah, got it. I do love me some jury nullification, though. It’s a giant fuck you to the feds.
Omnes Omnibus
@LAO: Ha!
Kent
Is this an open thread? After today’s performance, the online right wing mob is going ape shit about Sondland and creating a online mob to thrash his hotels on Yelp and tripadvisor with 1-star reviews. Ooops.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2019/11/20/yelp-reviewers-are-trashing-gordon-sondlands-hotels-with-one-star-reviews/
LAO
@Kent: I find it pretty amusing since there was a line of Republican questioning today that sought to imply that Sondland was bullied into changing his testimony by leftist protesters. Hahaha
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@LAO:
Absolutely not. This is a good thing
Mary G
@Omnes Omnibus:
Don’t we know it.
LAO
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It’s late on the East Coast and I’m probably going to regret asking this, but I’m genuinely curious. If you believe jury nullification is a good thing, then why phrase the comment as so:
I do wonder if/when the GOP and Federalist types will call this jury decision “jury nullification”
(I can’t figure out how to get the block quote to work)
Mary G
This is my surprised face:
Jay
This one’s for Tony Jay and all his hard work,…..
Jay
@Mary G:
what did they serve?
young blood?
all the data?
hamberders?
Procopius
@Donald Gisselbeck: I don’t think he actually said he would send anybody to hell for any reason. He did say that people who refused charity and kindness couldn’t enter the Kingdom, but that’s not the same thing. Lots of people since then have tried to make the Rabbi like the Old Testament God, but even that god
orderedcommanded us to be open-handed to the poor and needy (Deuteronomy 15:11) . Anger comes from fear. There is just so much fear in America.Donald Gisselbeck
@Procopius: Matthew 25:41 sounds pretty unambiguous. (No, I am not a Biblical literalist.)
debbie
@Kent:
Huh. During the hearing, some Rethug accused the Radical Left of doing the same thing.
Jay
debbie
@LAO:
Paste in the quote, highlight it, then click on the quote icon. At least, that’s how I’ve done it.
Mandalay
@Jay: Also, via your interesting link, ….
Jarvis Cocker – Cunts are still running the world
A catchy little ditty. Just don’t sing it at work.
Jay
Ron Pearlman is having a week,…
and it’s only Wednesday,……
danielx
@Kent:
They want people to walk the plank for Trump. Unfortunately for their viewpoint, people willing to go to the bitter end for Donald Trump are mighty thin upon the ground and getting thinner all the time. It doesn’t take a particularly clear intellect to note the eventual fate of everyone who’s come into Trump’s orbit. Which seems to be humiliation, ruined reputations, financial ruin and/or jail, take your pick.
Jay
@danielx:
you left off assorted venerial diseases and impotence.
Martin
I wonder how Schiff is going to handle this.
Parnas testifying would be quite a sight.
ed smart
@LAO: Sure it was jury nullification and good for them. One of my biggest regrets as a citizen is that I didn’t try to inspire jury nullification in a case I sat on. Homeless guy sleeping in a van. Guilty of some form of misdemeanor if the van had moved during a certain period, and there was good evidence that it had. We did the lawful thing and found him guilty, to my lasting shame. Given that he took the thing to trial her probably did some time for it, unless the judge was smarter in sentencing, than we had been.
TupeloPhoney
@LAO: Jury nullification is a great tool to effect justice. The problem is when the community’s idea of “justice” involves acquitting the perpetrators of lynchings, as was common in the Jim Crow South. I think that’s what causes some ambivalence about it for some people.
artem1s
In other news a GOP appointed judge sentenced a homeless man to die by crucifixion for the crime of feeding and healing the poor, associating with sinners and brown people, and walking on a waterway in a federal park.
/s
Jeebus save us …from your believers