... so, just to check, it's being argued here by the progressive media that Austin Simon, as a person of colour, bears no responsibility for his enraged attack on a shop worker over a bag of crisps, and that Jose Alba, being able to see Simon's skin colour, should have deduced either low IQ or poor impulse control and let the guy's tantrum play itself out rather than defend himself, even as he's being thrown into shop fixtures.
You know, when progressive media collapses, these guys could probably get a gig writing for Stormfront...
Don't forget the DA and NYPD. They charged him with murder for defending himself. That fucking shithole really needs a few more Category 5 hurricanes to spruce it up.
I would be interested to see what angle they're taking here, given that Alba was being physically assaulted by Simon at the time...
The only one I can think of is some shitheel DA asserting that because Alba had a knife within reach it was premeditated or something.
I mean, I'm sure it was premeditated. No doubt at all in my mind that Alba deliberately and consciously intended to open some boxes or something along those lines. Kind of thing you use a knife for, you know?
I would be interested to see what angle they're taking here, given that Alba was being physically assaulted by Simon at the time...
It's in NYC. New York state has the idiocy called "duty to retreat" in it which basically means if you have any possible chance to run away from the person attacking you then you are obligated to take that rather than trying to defend yourself. I'm willing to be that argument in court is going to be that since Alba was able to push past Simon to get the knife (as seen in the video) then he should have kept moving in that direction and run away instead.
since Alba was able to push past Simon to get the knife (as seen in the video)
Doesn't look like he had to push past him at all to me. Looks like Simon picks him up by the scruff of his collar and starts marching him out, and Alba grabs the knife as he's being pushed past it.
It's quite possible you are correct. I'm certain a NYC prosecutor would try to argue that it showed Alba wasn't trapped in the corner though because self defense = bad in NYC.
Oh yeah, I don't expect anything charitable from the prosecutors. I just didn't want anyone accidentally conflating what a prosecutor might argue with an accurate representation of the situation.
Honestly, this is a really sketching killing. I never saw one act of lethal force used by Simon. Now, maybe Simon was yelling something about how he'd kill him or something, but if Alba was not being threatened with being killed, and this was (effectively) a strong arm robbery for a bag of chips, there's a real liklihood that this really does warrant a murder charge.
If a guy shoves you, and gets in your face, and calls you a bitch, you actually can't just plunge a knife in his throat, and you are likely to get hit with a charge of murder. Generally, if someone is engaging in simple battery, you can't just start blasting.
Especially, if Alba told the police: "Yeah, as soon as he shoved me, I was gonna get the knife", that would do it for the premeditation.
I'm not honestly sure on that point. As described, Simon is shoving Alba into bits of shop furniture. I imagine he's not being too careful about it, either, so I can easily picture somebody genuinely being worried about being smashed back into something hard enough to knock them out, at which point you're entirely dependent upon your assailant's charity.
Unfortunately, yes, he was. But that's what can be used against him. His assailant wasn't trying to murder him. In fact, he stopped hitting him. He just stood there and intimidated him. If you're gonna argue that you had the right to kill him, he needs to be doing something more than mean-mugging you.
If he's got any chance of avoiding a conviction for murder, there's gotta be saying something about Simon threatening to kill him, and then not letting him leave. At that point, it's an argument that a jury can parse through. Without that, he's genuinely guilty of murder, and his articulation of imminent grievous bodily harm is going to have to be some stretch-armstrong levels of rationalization.
New York law states that self defense using deadly physical force is not permitted unless a person reasonably believes that deadly physical force is being used or is about to be used on himself, herself or a third person. Even in such a situation however, the law imposes on a person a duty to retreat before he or she can resort to using deadly physical force if they can retreat with complete safety.
If the guy genuinely believed his life was in danger then according to the law, he could use lethal force because he literally had no place to retreat. He could probably argue the the violence was escalating leaving him no choice but it might be a tough sell to a jury. If he's been robbed or assaulted before that may help speak to his state of mind, but again, it might be difficult to convince a jury.
At the point Alba grabbed the knife Simon had picked him up by the scruff of his collar and was marching him past the knife to God knows where to do god knows what.
Given the obvious size and fitness differences, the now-or-never choice being presented by being forced out from behind his counter, and the fact he was still being physically restrained and taken against his will, that should cover the bases for inability to retreat and reasonable belief that his life was in danger.
When the choice is take the last possible opportunity to use his only known and reasonably likely means of successfully defending himself, or let himself be abducted by someone with unknown intentions who had already demonstrated a desire to do him bodily harm, he was justified in taking immediate action at the last moment it was presented to him, even if it necessitated lethal incapacitation of his attacker. The argument that a dazed old man who'd just been thrown into a wall can definitely escape that weak collar grip imay not be untenable but certainly isn't beyond reasonable doubt, and should not be basis for a murder conviction.
At the point Alba grabbed the knife Simon had picked him up by the scruff of his collar and was marching him past the knife to God knows where to do god knows what.
You've got that completely backwards. Alba was walking away. Simon grabbed him, and that's literally the only thing that Alba has in his defense for why he had to use lethal force: Simon stopped him from leaving. Simon didn't take him, and wasn't going to take him, anywhere.
In the US, self-defense is an affirmative defense. Basically, you're admitting to a pre-meditated homicide that you are saying you had to commit.
I don't like it, but that's why Binger kept pushing Kyle Rittenhouse to say he shot Rosenbaum to defend the Car Lot. That's an admission of pre-meditated homicide over property. Which is considered murder in every state but Texas under ultra-specific circumstances. If you or someone else wasn't in danger of grevious bodily harm or death, and you used lethal force over property, you're looking at very hard time.
Frankly, most Americans believe in lethal force over both property and trespassing as a moral justification, but American law hasn't for about a century.
The danger with a self-defense claim in the US is that you are doing 90% of the prosecutors work for them:
Yes, you did it
Yes, you used lethal force
Yes, you intended to use lethal force
But you had to.
So, everything relies on that last part. The prosecutor gets to ask why, and if your excuse is anything besides: "I had to save my life or the lives of others in that exact moment", it's murder.
Unfortunately, that means that proportionality is a major part of that. Could he have done anything else besides stab Simon in the throat to save his own life? If the answer is yes, then there's big problems for his defense. From what I'm seeing, I'm not even sure that he needed to. This is why I'm harping on what (literally) Simon says. The whole situation changes if a jury will believe Alba when he says "Simon said he was going to kill me". That functions as evidence that a reasonable man could argue is in fear of their life. The argument he'll need is:
"This man and his angry girlfriend attacked me over a bag of chips. Their actions were disproportionate, violent, and unpredictable. Simon was attempting a strong-armed robbery which is a felony. However, he said he would kill me which is an assault on it's own, and he held me captive which is another violent felony. When I tried to escape, he grabbed me and I assumed I was going to die because he told me so, so I grabbed a knife to defend myself. My actions were proportionate to the threat I faced."
He'll need most of that argument, but without "he said he would kill me", a jury could look at this as Simon being a tough guy in front of his girlfriend, and not expecting to get stabbed to death over it. It's obviously a case of social violence, but social violence doesn't necessarily give you justification for lethal force.
If you watch the video he has his hand on the back of the dudes neck as he gets up to grab the knife. I think at that point old dude can start making a better argument for himself
If a guy shoves you, and gets in your face, and calls you a bitch, you actually can't just plunge a knife in his throat, and you are likely to get hit with a charge of murder. Generally, if someone is engaging in simple battery, you can't just start blasting.
It might be different if Alba can say, "I'm 75 years old and have brittle-bone disease". That way he can say that simple battery gives him the right to use lethal force. Florida actually has a law which explicitly allows senior citizens to assume deadly intent at a certain age when being attacked (which is why the man who shot a guy in the theater over a cellphone argument) got off. But this dude is looking at serious time, and I'm not sure he's gonna get off.
For the most part, all it does is give the defender a better argument: "I'm old and frail, therefore ordinary force done to me by an stronger, younger, man will inflict great bodily harm on me, thus necessitating lethal force to defend myself from the ordinary force which is effectively lethal force in my case."
Was that the case here? Barely, if at all. A shove and a grab? I wouldn't take that risk.
And you end up found out in jail while the person you tried to defend yourself against not only goes free, but has institutional support in keeping you from ever getting out.
The law requires you to actually be confronted with an imminent deadly threat before using lethal force. Just because the attacker is a race you don't like, doesn't mean that this isn't going to come across as potentially murder in every single US state.
IF Simon was threatening to kill him, then there's a case. If not, it really is murder.
He got assaulted by an aggressive shithead, and did a public service by removing an aggressive shithead from existence.
This right here, that's considered murder. Someone just being aggressive and bullying you isn't enough to kill them over. Ordinary force can't be met with lethal force, without some additional circumstances or evidence that indicates lethal intent.
If some random dude punches you in the face in the street, and you pull a gun, and he yells, 'shoot me bitch', and you shoot him, you still get charged with murder. You'll also be justly convicted.
AFAIK, the law in most jurisdictions requires you to have a reasonable belief that your life is in danger to justify the use of deadly force in self defense. The assailant doesn't need to inform you that he intends to kill you.
Given NYC's skyrocketing violent crime due to the communist DA's practice of repeatedly releasing violent criminals without charge, in the name of "restorative justice," until they go on to commit capital offenses, I think it is reasonable in that climate to think that your life may be in danger when some piece of shit, who fears no punishment, comes behind the counter to assault you over a bag of chips.
Waiting to defend yourself until a goon with no impulse control beats you into semi-consciousness seems like a recipe for getting dead.
Of course, defending yourself under those circumstances means you'll have to deal with that same DA, who will prosecute you mercilessly to enforce the state of anarcho-tyranny. But it's still better than having your head stomped in by a troglodyte.
That's my semi-informed legal take.
My moral take is, there is no place in a moderately civilized society for the type of person who will assault a convenience store clerk over a bag of chips, and someone like that should absolutely be in fear of their life if they are thinking about doing violence to someone for such a petty reason.
If some random dude punches you in the face in the street, and you pull a gun, and he yells, 'shoot me bitch', and you shoot him, you still get charged with murder.
Something like that happened last year in Phoenix, AZ. A crazy guy attacked a legally armed man outside his home, told him to drop the gun and fight like a man, kept moving in on him, and got fatally shot. The shooter was (correctly IMO) not charged.
Waiting to defend yourself until a goon with no impulse control beats you into semi-consciousness seems like a recipe for getting dead.
Yeah, honestly, he should have maced both of them, and pulled the knife sooner and used it in a defensive display. He could have actually gotten them to back off.
Had he used ordinary force to counter ordinary force he would have been fine.
Something like that happened last year in Phoenix, AZ
I know which one you're talking about, and there's a major difference.
That guy kept pursuing after the defensive display of a firearm. That's the reasonable belief that someone's going to kill you. You showed that you had a weapon, that you are prepared to use lethal force, and they won't stop attacking.
I'm saying, if you pull the gun, and he stops and says shoot me, and you shoot him, that's still gonna be murder.
And in a similar way, the only thing that can save Alba right now is that Simon grabbed him to keep him from leaving. If he hadn't done that, this would be an open-and-shut case.
It's like a gun. You don't pull it until the situation dictates you use lethal force. Otherwise it's just brandishing
Plenty of states allow for defensive displays of firearms.
Easy. He should walk.
I reversed my position on this once I heard more information. I couldn't be sure originally that he would have had a reason to argue that he feared for his life. BUT, then I found out that the girlfriend had already stabbed an employee.
Yeah, honestly, he should have maced both of them, and pulled the knife sooner and used it in a defensive display. He could have actually gotten them to back off.
In a reasonable world, with reasonable people, this would make sense. But rational people don't physically assault someone because of the price of a bag of chips. There is no reason to assume the assaulter would come to his senses.
Also, given the confined space, the clerk would have just as likely been macing himself, leaving himself disadvantaged, with an already unreasonably violent attacker, now even angrier.
Had he used ordinary force to counter ordinary force he would have been fine.
Maybe from the legal perspective in a fundamentally broken jurisdiction, but in reality, when it comes down to violent conflict, you do not want to meet force with equal force. You want overwhelming force to stop an attacker and end the conflict. Anything less risks prolonging the fight and injuring innocent parties.
We are supposed to be living in a free country here in the US. To me this means all law-abiding citizens should have the freedom to go about their daily business without being assaulted by some utter shit-skull who wants to hurt people just because he can get away with it.
Even when the State is prosecuting properly It would be no comfort to wake in a hospital bed with your jaw wired shut and a traumatic brain injury to be "legally in the right."
When the State is compromised, as it is now in many states, it would be flat out humiliating to find your attacker was given a year of probation for kicking you in the head because he just kinda felt like it. It sends the message to criminals that they won't face consequences. It sends the message to the law-abiding citizens that their suffering is worth less than the freedom of a violent psychopath.
This is the line in a civilized society, and individual citizens have the moral right to hold that line. There is no valid reason to physically assault someone who hasn't done anything to you. There is no valid reason to let someone attack you and hope the cops come to rescue you before you suffer grievous injuries.
A thug who is considering violently attacking someone should absolutely have the fear that they will suffer immediate consequences for their actions.
FWIW, I upvoted your post. I never downvote for disagreement if it is thoughtful and interesting.
There is no reason to assume the assaulter would come to his senses.
It's actually NOT about making the dude come to his senses. First, it generally does work to stop mentally ill, and even dedicated attackers. Second, it blinds and incapacitates your attacker to a degree allowing you to escape, or even further attack them, equalizing the playing field on a stronger opponent. Third, again: it blinds and partially incapacitates them, meaning that their attacks on YOU are going to be weakend. Fourth, it actually helps in your justification to switching to lethal force because "He was so fucking crazy that after I maced him he still attacked me! I reasonably feared for my life since he was so aggressive."
Also, given the confined space, the clerk would have just as likely been macing himself
Depends on the mace. You want mace that goes out in a stream, not a fogger. You're gonna feel some spice, but it won't be nearly as bad as what they are getting.
Maybe from the legal perspective in a fundamentally broken jurisdiction, but in reality, when it comes down to violent conflict, you do not want to meet force with equal force. You want overwhelming force to stop an attacker and end the conflict. Anything less risks prolonging the fight and injuring innocent parties.
If you're a cop that makes sense, because we task the police with being a giant blunt-force object that everyone is required to obey, at least initially.
You don't want to use overwhelming force most of the time. It makes you look like the bad guy to other people who might intervene, and disproportional violence is not an appropriate solution in any just society. If you keep poking me, it is wrong for me to wheel around and hit you in the skull with a shovel, causing you permanent brain-damage and destroying your life... because you were annoying.
That's not a good society to live in, that's a horrible and terrible society where no one can be trusted not to fly off the handle. Most ghettos work like that because it's a kind of Honor Culture that is enforced through social violence. All minor slights have overwhelming and nearly lethal consequences, and the world is worse for it.
Proportional force doesn't mean equal. It just means within reason.
This is the line in a civilized society, and individual citizens have the moral right to hold that line.
Look, I think we live in a society that has made all social violence unacceptable, when it should be acceptable.
I would much rather prefer a cop taze me for 3 seconds for doing 15 mph over the speed limit, taze me for 10 for going 40 over, and macing me for other general infractions. A lot of people need to get their ass beat. Hell, I'd go so far that women need to get their ass beat for being so entitled they decide to maul a fucking restaurant because extra sauce was too expensive.
And yes, there should be the underlying concern that "I don't know this person, and if i act badly, or take things too far, I could get shot". That's a good thing.
Hell, I think it's downright unacceptable that we can't buy stingball grenades. That's how you stop these stupid flash mobs.
But proportionality still plays a part in all of that. We need a society that is:
A) prepared to use force to stop innocent people's lives and property from being harmed
B) prepared to be stoic in the face of some provocation. Because some shit isn't worth getting violent over.
Old man shoved into a corner in his store by attack dawg (literally only there to attack). Was not going to be let out (actually grabbed as he looks to have gotten the knife), another customer couldn't convince dawg to leave it be.
I get it. A gun or knife needs to be presented in the letter of the law. But what, realistically, could he do to stop further violence/harassment against him, even if it could be understood that he wasn't in danger for his life?
But what, realistically, could he do to stop further violence/harassment against him, even if it could be understood that he wasn't in danger for his life
Honestly, he should have had mace. Frankly, he should have used it as soon as both of them came back in the store. He would have been fine had he seen them walk in with an attitude and just maced them.
The problem is that he got himself stuck:
He didn't have a less lethal option on him
He didn't have a defensive structure to keep someone from crossing the counter
He didn't have a lethal weapon on him to display as a threat.
But because he didn't have anything really prepared except for a knife, the only real option, especially with state law, that he had was to do nothing.
The lesson here is to not put yourself in such a situation, especially when mace is pretty cheap and available.
He was battered in his own store by some jackass he'd never seen before, in a city that spent the last 2 years releasing CONVICTED violent offenders because covid, and was smaller and older than his assailant. Get your head checked.
Being smaller and older doesn't justify lethal force on the face of it. You need something to articulate. Check your own head so you stop seeing what you want to see, and look at what's in front of you.
If some random dude punches you in the face in the street, and you pull a gun, and he yells, 'shoot me bitch', and you shoot him, you still get charged with murder. You'll also be justly convicted.
Kyle Rittenhouse didn't pull a gun. Rosenbaum literally charged at him like a screaming psychopath, pursued him as Kyle fled, continued charging when Kyle pointed the gun at him, still pursued him, and tried to take his gun.
Kyle Rittenhouse didn't do anything wrong. This guy absolutely did.
HEY! In this case, it was a good man with a knife that saved everyone! The 2nd utensil protects our right to cut steaks...and throats if our lives our threatened.
"Bodega". There's another frou-frou word that seems to have shown up out of nowhere. It's a grocery store, or market. The big ones, the Safeways and Superstores, are supermarkets. Super-markets.
It's as irritating as "barista". You're a coffee waiter. First time I heard that word, I assumed it was something foreign for "female bartender".
I always assumed a bodega was a grocery store without the hygiene or safety standards, run by an immigrant of some type, because that's what they've all been.
Nobody calls the markets with clean floors, clean walls, decent lighting, and no flies a bodega.
It's been used by city-dwellers for quite a long time.
"And she said, "Honey take me dancing"
But they ended up by sleeping in a doorway
By the bodegas and the lights on
Upper Broadway
Wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes"
Paul Simon, "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," 1986
And yeah it pretty much means shitty, dirty corner-mart. I mean, any port in a storm, and many stock fresh foods and are cared for as well as a little family can, but they don't come anywhere near the cleanliness, safety, and stability of an actual grocery store.
I have a hard time bagging on bodegas, because they're pretty much all that's left of the Mom&Pop. Supermarkets are a marvel--so much cleaner and better laid-out than when I was a kid. But I don't buy shit like General Mills, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, RJ Nabisco, Nestle, etc. and I don't like that buying food has become so centralized and homogenized.
Wal-Mart has the best bakery within 50 miles of where I live, and it is very good. The bakery is run by a lady who just happened to bounce all over the Country her whole life, spending her time baking, and her goods are fresh and great. But I find it sad that running a small business has become so onerous and punishing that she doesn't really have any options other than baking out of a Wal-Mart.
I was part of a grad school b-school marketing project whose goal was to find out about these "food deserts," you hear about from liberal types. We put together 50 or so pages of prior academic justification and data, then constructed our own survey who aim was to find out if people wanted, and knew how to get reasonably healthy food. Of course, the running theory at the time was that poor neighborhoods were being "historically deprived" or "systemically under-served" or whatever.
So we hand off this work to the prof, who teaches both grad and undergrad. She tells us she'll handle the next stage. We get some early survey data back, which indicates largely that yeah, of course people know where to get fruit and greens (this is a lot like the "black people don't know how to get ID thing" of today), and that of course people know that shit food is bad for them, and of course they're going to keep eating it anyway if they feel like it.
The other interesting thing that happens, is there's some hullabaloo that's being kept on the hush-hush, but of course leaks: One of the survey teams is a bunch of undergraduate girls, who head off into the ghetto to ask survey questions and are almost immediately molested. Like, the whole team, half a dozen of them, working in pairs, all going to different neighborhoods. The prof's amazing plan was to hand clipboards to under-20 girls and send them off to the demilitarized zone to ask if people knew where to buy carrots. Thinking somehow that by doing this in the middle of the day served as protection. They run into packs of dudes hanging around sidewalks, who paw at them and slobber over them, until they manage to cry their way back to their Jettas and high-tail it home.
Anyway. Bodegas. Yeah, they're the informal logistical infrastructure that provides (fairly) fresh foods to poor people. And this "food desert" thing is so much bullshit. It exists because academic liberals can't find them without going all Heart of Darkness.
See, I'm old enough to remember what corner variety stores were before 7-11 came into the country and pretty much changed ... Americanized? .. everything. Gas stations used to be just that - gas stations. Maybe they sold smokes and had a pop machine, otherwise, they just sold gas, and maybe also had a garage for servicing (and you didn't have to mess with pumping your own damn gas.)
Now-People would probably call the little variety store on the corner a "bodega", as it was run by an Italian immigrant couple, but we just called it "the corner store"/variety store. (And yeah, he also had a little butcher shop in the back and sold a few veggies that he probably bought off the local old "babushka ladies" of the neighbourhood.) And since there were a few small mom and pop variety stores around, we just called it by the name of the owner if we wanted to be specific ... I think we only made trips to a supermarket maybe once a month back then.
I can't really remember, honestly, and there wasn't that kind of thing then and there yet. I just remember the trips to the Dominion supermarket were pretty infrequent, and it was always so damn crowded on a Saturday because of no Sunday shopping (and that last part was true right up until the 1990s.) I just mostly got sent to that corner store with a small list and some money, and that was our grocery shopping. A pound of ground beef, a can of something, maybe some milk, and a pack of cigarettes (well, he knew I wasn't smoking them at 7 years old.)
Or calling dust storms in Arizona Haboobs or naming winter storms. It is white people looking for diversity points for 'cred'. Bodega is a latin american word that New York exclusively has adopted.
Why are they calling Simon a customer? He wasn't a customer, he was a customer's attack dog. The police should have arrested the woman instead, to find out what she told him.
Also, this one's for the Imp : a woman expected to be given a bag of crisps for less than the declared price. When denied, asked her man to enact violence and theft on her behalf. The man died doing her biding.
... so, just to check, it's being argued here by the progressive media that Austin Simon, as a person of colour, bears no responsibility for his enraged attack on a shop worker over a bag of crisps, and that Jose Alba, being able to see Simon's skin colour, should have deduced either low IQ or poor impulse control and let the guy's tantrum play itself out rather than defend himself, even as he's being thrown into shop fixtures.
You know, when progressive media collapses, these guys could probably get a gig writing for Stormfront...
Don't forget the DA and NYPD. They charged him with murder for defending himself. That fucking shithole really needs a few more Category 5 hurricanes to spruce it up.
I would be interested to see what angle they're taking here, given that Alba was being physically assaulted by Simon at the time...
The only one I can think of is some shitheel DA asserting that because Alba had a knife within reach it was premeditated or something.
I mean, I'm sure it was premeditated. No doubt at all in my mind that Alba deliberately and consciously intended to open some boxes or something along those lines. Kind of thing you use a knife for, you know?
It's in NYC. New York state has the idiocy called "duty to retreat" in it which basically means if you have any possible chance to run away from the person attacking you then you are obligated to take that rather than trying to defend yourself. I'm willing to be that argument in court is going to be that since Alba was able to push past Simon to get the knife (as seen in the video) then he should have kept moving in that direction and run away instead.
Doesn't look like he had to push past him at all to me. Looks like Simon picks him up by the scruff of his collar and starts marching him out, and Alba grabs the knife as he's being pushed past it.
It's quite possible you are correct. I'm certain a NYC prosecutor would try to argue that it showed Alba wasn't trapped in the corner though because self defense = bad in NYC.
Oh yeah, I don't expect anything charitable from the prosecutors. I just didn't want anyone accidentally conflating what a prosecutor might argue with an accurate representation of the situation.
Honestly, this is a really sketching killing. I never saw one act of lethal force used by Simon. Now, maybe Simon was yelling something about how he'd kill him or something, but if Alba was not being threatened with being killed, and this was (effectively) a strong arm robbery for a bag of chips, there's a real liklihood that this really does warrant a murder charge.
If a guy shoves you, and gets in your face, and calls you a bitch, you actually can't just plunge a knife in his throat, and you are likely to get hit with a charge of murder. Generally, if someone is engaging in simple battery, you can't just start blasting.
Especially, if Alba told the police: "Yeah, as soon as he shoved me, I was gonna get the knife", that would do it for the premeditation.
I'm not honestly sure on that point. As described, Simon is shoving Alba into bits of shop furniture. I imagine he's not being too careful about it, either, so I can easily picture somebody genuinely being worried about being smashed back into something hard enough to knock them out, at which point you're entirely dependent upon your assailant's charity.
Unfortunately, yes, he was. But that's what can be used against him. His assailant wasn't trying to murder him. In fact, he stopped hitting him. He just stood there and intimidated him. If you're gonna argue that you had the right to kill him, he needs to be doing something more than mean-mugging you.
If he's got any chance of avoiding a conviction for murder, there's gotta be saying something about Simon threatening to kill him, and then not letting him leave. At that point, it's an argument that a jury can parse through. Without that, he's genuinely guilty of murder, and his articulation of imminent grievous bodily harm is going to have to be some stretch-armstrong levels of rationalization.
New York law states that self defense using deadly physical force is not permitted unless a person reasonably believes that deadly physical force is being used or is about to be used on himself, herself or a third person. Even in such a situation however, the law imposes on a person a duty to retreat before he or she can resort to using deadly physical force if they can retreat with complete safety.
If the guy genuinely believed his life was in danger then according to the law, he could use lethal force because he literally had no place to retreat. He could probably argue the the violence was escalating leaving him no choice but it might be a tough sell to a jury. If he's been robbed or assaulted before that may help speak to his state of mind, but again, it might be difficult to convince a jury.
He should argue that he was attempting to leave the store, but Simon grabbed him and held him captive. That's really his only saving grace.
At the point Alba grabbed the knife Simon had picked him up by the scruff of his collar and was marching him past the knife to God knows where to do god knows what.
Given the obvious size and fitness differences, the now-or-never choice being presented by being forced out from behind his counter, and the fact he was still being physically restrained and taken against his will, that should cover the bases for inability to retreat and reasonable belief that his life was in danger.
When the choice is take the last possible opportunity to use his only known and reasonably likely means of successfully defending himself, or let himself be abducted by someone with unknown intentions who had already demonstrated a desire to do him bodily harm, he was justified in taking immediate action at the last moment it was presented to him, even if it necessitated lethal incapacitation of his attacker. The argument that a dazed old man who'd just been thrown into a wall can definitely escape that weak collar grip imay not be untenable but certainly isn't beyond reasonable doubt, and should not be basis for a murder conviction.
You've got that completely backwards. Alba was walking away. Simon grabbed him, and that's literally the only thing that Alba has in his defense for why he had to use lethal force: Simon stopped him from leaving. Simon didn't take him, and wasn't going to take him, anywhere.
Good to know. Seems self-defence is just about as theoretical a concept in NY as it is in my own UK...
In the US, self-defense is an affirmative defense. Basically, you're admitting to a pre-meditated homicide that you are saying you had to commit.
I don't like it, but that's why Binger kept pushing Kyle Rittenhouse to say he shot Rosenbaum to defend the Car Lot. That's an admission of pre-meditated homicide over property. Which is considered murder in every state but Texas under ultra-specific circumstances. If you or someone else wasn't in danger of grevious bodily harm or death, and you used lethal force over property, you're looking at very hard time.
Frankly, most Americans believe in lethal force over both property and trespassing as a moral justification, but American law hasn't for about a century.
The danger with a self-defense claim in the US is that you are doing 90% of the prosecutors work for them:
So, everything relies on that last part. The prosecutor gets to ask why, and if your excuse is anything besides: "I had to save my life or the lives of others in that exact moment", it's murder.
Unfortunately, that means that proportionality is a major part of that. Could he have done anything else besides stab Simon in the throat to save his own life? If the answer is yes, then there's big problems for his defense. From what I'm seeing, I'm not even sure that he needed to. This is why I'm harping on what (literally) Simon says. The whole situation changes if a jury will believe Alba when he says "Simon said he was going to kill me". That functions as evidence that a reasonable man could argue is in fear of their life. The argument he'll need is:
"This man and his angry girlfriend attacked me over a bag of chips. Their actions were disproportionate, violent, and unpredictable. Simon was attempting a strong-armed robbery which is a felony. However, he said he would kill me which is an assault on it's own, and he held me captive which is another violent felony. When I tried to escape, he grabbed me and I assumed I was going to die because he told me so, so I grabbed a knife to defend myself. My actions were proportionate to the threat I faced."
He'll need most of that argument, but without "he said he would kill me", a jury could look at this as Simon being a tough guy in front of his girlfriend, and not expecting to get stabbed to death over it. It's obviously a case of social violence, but social violence doesn't necessarily give you justification for lethal force.
he goes to jail for being retarded then, the only words exchanged with police should be "am I free to go?" and if the answer is no, then "lawyer"
If you watch the video he has his hand on the back of the dudes neck as he gets up to grab the knife. I think at that point old dude can start making a better argument for himself
Sure, but not likely a good enough one.
How is this even murder?! You'd think this shit was in the UK, not the US.
How much you wanna bet he'll sit in jail while all these terrorists, thieves, violent crackheads, and nuts go free thanks to their bail law?
If a guy shoves you, and gets in your face, and calls you a bitch, you actually can't just plunge a knife in his throat, and you are likely to get hit with a charge of murder. Generally, if someone is engaging in simple battery, you can't just start blasting.
It might be different if Alba can say, "I'm 75 years old and have brittle-bone disease". That way he can say that simple battery gives him the right to use lethal force. Florida actually has a law which explicitly allows senior citizens to assume deadly intent at a certain age when being attacked (which is why the man who shot a guy in the theater over a cellphone argument) got off. But this dude is looking at serious time, and I'm not sure he's gonna get off.
That depends on the state.
For the most part, all it does is give the defender a better argument: "I'm old and frail, therefore ordinary force done to me by an stronger, younger, man will inflict great bodily harm on me, thus necessitating lethal force to defend myself from the ordinary force which is effectively lethal force in my case."
Was that the case here? Barely, if at all. A shove and a grab? I wouldn't take that risk.
actually, you can.
fuck around and find out is the law of the land.
And you end up found out in jail while the person you tried to defend yourself against not only goes free, but has institutional support in keeping you from ever getting out.
Don't forget criminal possession of a weapon.
What a fucking joke. I carry a knife everywhere, it's so fucking handy, and I've never had to use it as a weapon.
Of course, we will hear about how this old guy should have waited to find out how far the dindu felt like escalating the attack.
'You don't stab a guy to death because he got in your face and shoved you!', they'll cry.
Fuck off. Unless you're a fucking psychic, you don't know what's coming next. The next thing could be the punch that cracks your skull and kills you.
He got assaulted by an aggressive shithead, and did a public service by removing an aggressive shithead from existence.
Also, that nigger was 37 years old. This is the kind of shit behavior I expect from 16-24 year old thugs. This guy still has it in his system at 37?
I'm gonna guess he has a lengthy criminal record already.
The law requires you to actually be confronted with an imminent deadly threat before using lethal force. Just because the attacker is a race you don't like, doesn't mean that this isn't going to come across as potentially murder in every single US state.
IF Simon was threatening to kill him, then there's a case. If not, it really is murder.
This right here, that's considered murder. Someone just being aggressive and bullying you isn't enough to kill them over. Ordinary force can't be met with lethal force, without some additional circumstances or evidence that indicates lethal intent.
If some random dude punches you in the face in the street, and you pull a gun, and he yells, 'shoot me bitch', and you shoot him, you still get charged with murder. You'll also be justly convicted.
AFAIK, the law in most jurisdictions requires you to have a reasonable belief that your life is in danger to justify the use of deadly force in self defense. The assailant doesn't need to inform you that he intends to kill you.
Given NYC's skyrocketing violent crime due to the communist DA's practice of repeatedly releasing violent criminals without charge, in the name of "restorative justice," until they go on to commit capital offenses, I think it is reasonable in that climate to think that your life may be in danger when some piece of shit, who fears no punishment, comes behind the counter to assault you over a bag of chips.
Waiting to defend yourself until a goon with no impulse control beats you into semi-consciousness seems like a recipe for getting dead.
Of course, defending yourself under those circumstances means you'll have to deal with that same DA, who will prosecute you mercilessly to enforce the state of anarcho-tyranny. But it's still better than having your head stomped in by a troglodyte.
That's my semi-informed legal take.
My moral take is, there is no place in a moderately civilized society for the type of person who will assault a convenience store clerk over a bag of chips, and someone like that should absolutely be in fear of their life if they are thinking about doing violence to someone for such a petty reason.
Something like that happened last year in Phoenix, AZ. A crazy guy attacked a legally armed man outside his home, told him to drop the gun and fight like a man, kept moving in on him, and got fatally shot. The shooter was (correctly IMO) not charged.
Yeah, honestly, he should have maced both of them, and pulled the knife sooner and used it in a defensive display. He could have actually gotten them to back off.
Had he used ordinary force to counter ordinary force he would have been fine.
I know which one you're talking about, and there's a major difference.
That guy kept pursuing after the defensive display of a firearm. That's the reasonable belief that someone's going to kill you. You showed that you had a weapon, that you are prepared to use lethal force, and they won't stop attacking.
I'm saying, if you pull the gun, and he stops and says shoot me, and you shoot him, that's still gonna be murder.
And in a similar way, the only thing that can save Alba right now is that Simon grabbed him to keep him from leaving. If he hadn't done that, this would be an open-and-shut case.
Plenty of states allow for defensive displays of firearms.
I reversed my position on this once I heard more information. I couldn't be sure originally that he would have had a reason to argue that he feared for his life. BUT, then I found out that the girlfriend had already stabbed an employee.
100% justified.
In a reasonable world, with reasonable people, this would make sense. But rational people don't physically assault someone because of the price of a bag of chips. There is no reason to assume the assaulter would come to his senses.
Also, given the confined space, the clerk would have just as likely been macing himself, leaving himself disadvantaged, with an already unreasonably violent attacker, now even angrier.
Maybe from the legal perspective in a fundamentally broken jurisdiction, but in reality, when it comes down to violent conflict, you do not want to meet force with equal force. You want overwhelming force to stop an attacker and end the conflict. Anything less risks prolonging the fight and injuring innocent parties.
We are supposed to be living in a free country here in the US. To me this means all law-abiding citizens should have the freedom to go about their daily business without being assaulted by some utter shit-skull who wants to hurt people just because he can get away with it.
Even when the State is prosecuting properly It would be no comfort to wake in a hospital bed with your jaw wired shut and a traumatic brain injury to be "legally in the right."
When the State is compromised, as it is now in many states, it would be flat out humiliating to find your attacker was given a year of probation for kicking you in the head because he just kinda felt like it. It sends the message to criminals that they won't face consequences. It sends the message to the law-abiding citizens that their suffering is worth less than the freedom of a violent psychopath.
This is the line in a civilized society, and individual citizens have the moral right to hold that line. There is no valid reason to physically assault someone who hasn't done anything to you. There is no valid reason to let someone attack you and hope the cops come to rescue you before you suffer grievous injuries.
A thug who is considering violently attacking someone should absolutely have the fear that they will suffer immediate consequences for their actions.
FWIW, I upvoted your post. I never downvote for disagreement if it is thoughtful and interesting.
I've 100% reversed my position on this because I got new information, so I have to preface my response with that.
It's actually NOT about making the dude come to his senses. First, it generally does work to stop mentally ill, and even dedicated attackers. Second, it blinds and incapacitates your attacker to a degree allowing you to escape, or even further attack them, equalizing the playing field on a stronger opponent. Third, again: it blinds and partially incapacitates them, meaning that their attacks on YOU are going to be weakend. Fourth, it actually helps in your justification to switching to lethal force because "He was so fucking crazy that after I maced him he still attacked me! I reasonably feared for my life since he was so aggressive."
Depends on the mace. You want mace that goes out in a stream, not a fogger. You're gonna feel some spice, but it won't be nearly as bad as what they are getting.
If you're a cop that makes sense, because we task the police with being a giant blunt-force object that everyone is required to obey, at least initially.
You don't want to use overwhelming force most of the time. It makes you look like the bad guy to other people who might intervene, and disproportional violence is not an appropriate solution in any just society. If you keep poking me, it is wrong for me to wheel around and hit you in the skull with a shovel, causing you permanent brain-damage and destroying your life... because you were annoying.
That's not a good society to live in, that's a horrible and terrible society where no one can be trusted not to fly off the handle. Most ghettos work like that because it's a kind of Honor Culture that is enforced through social violence. All minor slights have overwhelming and nearly lethal consequences, and the world is worse for it.
Proportional force doesn't mean equal. It just means within reason.
Look, I think we live in a society that has made all social violence unacceptable, when it should be acceptable.
I would much rather prefer a cop taze me for 3 seconds for doing 15 mph over the speed limit, taze me for 10 for going 40 over, and macing me for other general infractions. A lot of people need to get their ass beat. Hell, I'd go so far that women need to get their ass beat for being so entitled they decide to maul a fucking restaurant because extra sauce was too expensive.
And yes, there should be the underlying concern that "I don't know this person, and if i act badly, or take things too far, I could get shot". That's a good thing.
Hell, I think it's downright unacceptable that we can't buy stingball grenades. That's how you stop these stupid flash mobs.
But proportionality still plays a part in all of that. We need a society that is:
Old man shoved into a corner in his store by attack dawg (literally only there to attack). Was not going to be let out (actually grabbed as he looks to have gotten the knife), another customer couldn't convince dawg to leave it be.
I get it. A gun or knife needs to be presented in the letter of the law. But what, realistically, could he do to stop further violence/harassment against him, even if it could be understood that he wasn't in danger for his life?
Honestly, he should have had mace. Frankly, he should have used it as soon as both of them came back in the store. He would have been fine had he seen them walk in with an attitude and just maced them.
The problem is that he got himself stuck:
But because he didn't have anything really prepared except for a knife, the only real option, especially with state law, that he had was to do nothing.
The lesson here is to not put yourself in such a situation, especially when mace is pretty cheap and available.
He was battered in his own store by some jackass he'd never seen before, in a city that spent the last 2 years releasing CONVICTED violent offenders because covid, and was smaller and older than his assailant. Get your head checked.
Being smaller and older doesn't justify lethal force on the face of it. You need something to articulate. Check your own head so you stop seeing what you want to see, and look at what's in front of you.
in a democrat run area probably, in a human run area no prosecutor would go anywhere near this case after seeing the tape
Entirely wrong. Most prosecutors would go after this because of the tape, because it's damning.
Most prosecutors are happy to convict innocent people as it is. Alba happens to look genuinely guilty of murder here.
*Laughs in Kyle Rittenhouse*
Kyle Rittenhouse didn't pull a gun. Rosenbaum literally charged at him like a screaming psychopath, pursued him as Kyle fled, continued charging when Kyle pointed the gun at him, still pursued him, and tried to take his gun.
Kyle Rittenhouse didn't do anything wrong. This guy absolutely did.
I know there were differences, I was mainly joking, since Rosenbaum did yell "shoot me, nigga!"
We need stricter knife laws, no one needs a fully auto-manual knife, this are weapons of war people.
HEY! In this case, it was a good man with a knife that saved everyone! The 2nd utensil protects our right to cut steaks...and throats if our lives our threatened.
I doubt leftists think so, the guy assaulting was considerably darker then the based beard man.
"Bodega". There's another frou-frou word that seems to have shown up out of nowhere. It's a grocery store, or market. The big ones, the Safeways and Superstores, are supermarkets. Super-markets.
It's as irritating as "barista". You're a coffee waiter. First time I heard that word, I assumed it was something foreign for "female bartender".
I always assumed a bodega was a grocery store without the hygiene or safety standards, run by an immigrant of some type, because that's what they've all been.
Nobody calls the markets with clean floors, clean walls, decent lighting, and no flies a bodega.
Oh, so it's a stealth insult. Good to know. :)
It's been used by city-dwellers for quite a long time.
"And she said, "Honey take me dancing"
But they ended up by sleeping in a doorway
By the bodegas and the lights on
Upper Broadway
Wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes"
And yeah it pretty much means shitty, dirty corner-mart. I mean, any port in a storm, and many stock fresh foods and are cared for as well as a little family can, but they don't come anywhere near the cleanliness, safety, and stability of an actual grocery store.
Ehh, they're not exactly a Circle-K, or a 7-11.
I have a hard time bagging on bodegas, because they're pretty much all that's left of the Mom&Pop. Supermarkets are a marvel--so much cleaner and better laid-out than when I was a kid. But I don't buy shit like General Mills, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, RJ Nabisco, Nestle, etc. and I don't like that buying food has become so centralized and homogenized.
Wal-Mart has the best bakery within 50 miles of where I live, and it is very good. The bakery is run by a lady who just happened to bounce all over the Country her whole life, spending her time baking, and her goods are fresh and great. But I find it sad that running a small business has become so onerous and punishing that she doesn't really have any options other than baking out of a Wal-Mart.
I was part of a grad school b-school marketing project whose goal was to find out about these "food deserts," you hear about from liberal types. We put together 50 or so pages of prior academic justification and data, then constructed our own survey who aim was to find out if people wanted, and knew how to get reasonably healthy food. Of course, the running theory at the time was that poor neighborhoods were being "historically deprived" or "systemically under-served" or whatever.
So we hand off this work to the prof, who teaches both grad and undergrad. She tells us she'll handle the next stage. We get some early survey data back, which indicates largely that yeah, of course people know where to get fruit and greens (this is a lot like the "black people don't know how to get ID thing" of today), and that of course people know that shit food is bad for them, and of course they're going to keep eating it anyway if they feel like it.
The other interesting thing that happens, is there's some hullabaloo that's being kept on the hush-hush, but of course leaks: One of the survey teams is a bunch of undergraduate girls, who head off into the ghetto to ask survey questions and are almost immediately molested. Like, the whole team, half a dozen of them, working in pairs, all going to different neighborhoods. The prof's amazing plan was to hand clipboards to under-20 girls and send them off to the demilitarized zone to ask if people knew where to buy carrots. Thinking somehow that by doing this in the middle of the day served as protection. They run into packs of dudes hanging around sidewalks, who paw at them and slobber over them, until they manage to cry their way back to their Jettas and high-tail it home.
Anyway. Bodegas. Yeah, they're the informal logistical infrastructure that provides (fairly) fresh foods to poor people. And this "food desert" thing is so much bullshit. It exists because academic liberals can't find them without going all Heart of Darkness.
I would like to give you KIA2 Gold++ for this post. ty
See, I'm old enough to remember what corner variety stores were before 7-11 came into the country and pretty much changed ... Americanized? .. everything. Gas stations used to be just that - gas stations. Maybe they sold smokes and had a pop machine, otherwise, they just sold gas, and maybe also had a garage for servicing (and you didn't have to mess with pumping your own damn gas.)
Now-People would probably call the little variety store on the corner a "bodega", as it was run by an Italian immigrant couple, but we just called it "the corner store"/variety store. (And yeah, he also had a little butcher shop in the back and sold a few veggies that he probably bought off the local old "babushka ladies" of the neighbourhood.) And since there were a few small mom and pop variety stores around, we just called it by the name of the owner if we wanted to be specific ... I think we only made trips to a supermarket maybe once a month back then.
I can't really remember, honestly, and there wasn't that kind of thing then and there yet. I just remember the trips to the Dominion supermarket were pretty infrequent, and it was always so damn crowded on a Saturday because of no Sunday shopping (and that last part was true right up until the 1990s.) I just mostly got sent to that corner store with a small list and some money, and that was our grocery shopping. A pound of ground beef, a can of something, maybe some milk, and a pack of cigarettes (well, he knew I wasn't smoking them at 7 years old.)
https://youtu.be/MNghp9tPXjo
Oh, hell yeah, that's me, except with much paler skin. :) As I mentioned before, I didn't get an allowance. But I did get to keep coin.
Or calling dust storms in Arizona Haboobs or naming winter storms. It is white people looking for diversity points for 'cred'. Bodega is a latin american word that New York exclusively has adopted.
"haboobs" lol
Why are they calling Simon a customer? He wasn't a customer, he was a customer's attack dog. The police should have arrested the woman instead, to find out what she told him.
https://nypost.com/2022/07/05/video-shows-nyc-bodega-worker-allegedly-stabbing-man-to-death/
Video because some people like to watch the world burn.
Ah, fake-out to the groin and right to the neck. Good form.
Ah, diversity.
Also, this one's for the Imp : a woman expected to be given a bag of crisps for less than the declared price. When denied, asked her man to enact violence and theft on her behalf. The man died doing her biding.
foo dint protec hiz nek