Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Frazzled wrote:I guess the important issue, if the mother pulled out a pistol and emptied two clips into the Westboro "church" and you were on the jury, would you convict her, and what for?

If the defense used the fighting words doctrine as part of their strategy, probably wouldn't convict her.

While the words themselves aren't neccessarily fighting words, the context of how they are being used certainly is.

i.e. yelling filth about a dead man to his parents at his funeral.

Frazzled wrote:I guess the important issue, if the mother pulled out a pistol and emptied two clips into the Westboro "church" and you were on the jury, would you convict her, and what for?

..hmm..

..if you kill your mother it's Matricide.

Deicide for a God IIRC...

...so... is Countryside an offence in the USA ?

Frazzled wrote:I guess the important issue, if the mother pulled out a pistol and emptied two clips into the Westboro "church" and you were on the jury, would you convict her, and what for?

Hmmm. Interesting. The old "How to murder your wife" defence.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058212/

It could work.

reds8n wrote:

Frazzled wrote:I guess the important issue, if the mother pulled out a pistol and emptied two clips into the Westboro "church" and you were on the jury, would you convict her, and what for?

..hmm..

..if you kill your mother it's Matricide.

Deicide for a God IIRC...

...so... is Countryside an offence in the USA ?

No, if the dead solder's mother saw the protest on her way to or from the funeral, pulled out a pistol and capped the protesters for being the scum they are, what would you convict her of if you were on the jury?

Defamation claims cannot be brought on behalf of a deceased person. Defamation is harm to a person reputation, which no longer matters after death.

The Fighting Words Exception as I was taught is by now little more than threats of violence. You have to be pretty specific and threatening.

The court did rule in the Bong Hits for Jesus case that a school can expel a student for speech outside of school hours and property, so the number of fiddly exceptions is increasing to balance out the ones that no longer apply (stuff like profanity is now protected speech, and obscenity is an increasingly shrinking area).

The problem with many of the other tactics normally used against obnoxious protestors (littering, loitering, disturbing the peace, etc) is that many of the Westboro folks are lawyers (often disbarred), but they can fight everything, and even if arrested and pulled off the street, they sue for reckless prosecution. They pick their targets well, and generally protest in jurisdictions where the government doesn't have the resources to fund all of that. It's just easier to let them go, especially when by the letter of the law they have the right to do what they do.

What's shocking is that there hasn't been more violence against them. It's hard to imagine a jury that wouldn't nullify any charge brought against somebody that just beat one them down.

..hmm.. bit too dry there maybe it seems. I forgot how clean living so many of you are.

Personally, I would accept the plea of temporary insanity without hesitation and petition the judge for a dismissal of the case.

Polonius wrote:

What's shocking is that there hasn't been more violence against them. It's hard to imagine a jury that wouldn't nullify any charge brought against somebody that just beat one them down.

Exactly, its both reassuring and saddening.

Frazzled wrote:

No, if the dead solder's mother saw the protest on her way to or from the funeral, pulled out a pistol and capped the protesters for being the scum they are, what would you convict her of if you were on the jury?

Polonius wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

No, if the dead solder's mother saw the protest on her way to or from the funeral, pulled out a pistol and capped the protesters for being the scum they are, what would you convict her of if you were on the jury?

In practice? I think if a grieving mother shot and killed a few of them, she'd probably get to plead out to Involuntary Manslaughter, with 3-5 concurrently and out in about two years. You can't take that to a jury. They'd nullify it.

Polonius wrote:Defamation claims cannot be brought on behalf of a deceased person. Defamation is harm to a person reputation, which no longer matters after death.

The Fighting Words Exception as I was taught is by now little more than threats of violence. You have to be pretty specific and threatening.

The court did rule in the Bong Hits for Jesus case that a school can expel a student for speech outside of school hours and property, so the number of fiddly exceptions is increasing to balance out the ones that no longer apply (stuff like profanity is now protected speech, and obscenity is an increasingly shrinking area).

The problem with many of the other tactics normally used against obnoxious protestors (littering, loitering, disturbing the peace, etc) is that many of the Westboro folks are lawyers (often disbarred), but they can fight everything, and even if arrested and pulled off the street, they sue for reckless prosecution. They pick their targets well, and generally protest in jurisdictions where the government doesn't have the resources to fund all of that. It's just easier to let them go, especially when by the letter of the law they have the right to do what they do.

What's shocking is that there hasn't been more violence against them. It's hard to imagine a jury that wouldn't nullify any charge brought against somebody that just beat one them down.

I think you could get away with it as a crime of passion. Perhaps the initial attack might bring retaliation by the Phelps's, followed by a general piling in of more spectators. Everyone would end up in the dock.

A concerted campaign would not work, though.

Crime of passion probably wouldn't cover that. All COP does is move murder to manslaughter. It's assumed that most beatings are crimes of passion...

Frazzled wrote:

reds8n wrote:

Frazzled wrote:I guess the important issue, if the mother pulled out a pistol and emptied two clips into the Westboro "church" and you were on the jury, would you convict her, and what for?

..hmm..

..if you kill your mother it's Matricide.

Deicide for a God IIRC...

...so... is Countryside an offence in the USA ?

No, if the dead solder's mother saw the protest on her way to or from the funeral, pulled out a pistol and capped the protesters for being the scum they are, what would you convict her of if you were on the jury?

Convict?

I'd shake her hand.

Frazzled wrote:I guess the important issue, if the mother pulled out a pistol and emptied two clips into the Westboro "church" and you were on the jury, would you convict her, and what for?

I wouldn't.

Polonius wrote:Crime of passion probably wouldn't cover that. All COP does is move murder to manslaughter. It's assumed that most beatings are crimes of passion...

I was talking about a beating rather than people ending up dead.

Right, and thus there is no real defense. It's presumed by the law that people beating each other are probably really, really mad. You don't see a lot of well reasoned people beating up each other.

Crime of Passion was almost exclusively applied when a man killed his wife and/or lover immediately after catching them in the act.

You can't shoot people for being mean spirited self righteous nutcases and not expect a consequence. I think if you won't just annoy them utterly by ignoring them, a better course of vengeance would be public ridicule aimed at them and candlelight vigils outside their homes and flyers for gay rights parades stuffed in their mailboxes and little neighborhood kids egging their houses and TPing their trees. Drive by the church every morning blasting Dancing Queen. Spit in their food right in front of them just so long as the restaurant you work at doesn't have security camera. Leave homesick abortions on their lawns. The stance they take is so willfully naive and cruel it is like watching a toddler with a temper tantrum. We put toddlers in play pens where they can do no harm, and speak down to hem in a belittling manner, or ignore them entirely until they calm down and run out of steam. Short of that, a hit man sure sounds nice. Moses forgot one of the Thou Shalts. That part about Thou shalt not be an insensitive ass in my name.

I wouldn't congratulate her, but I would judge her as evil either. It's stress enough to lose any loved one, a child especially. TO have a group of people then approach you and scream in your face about how your child is burning and writhing in eternal agony in Hell, and how he deserves every last nanosecond of it? Well, even as a non parent, I think I'd snap at that.

I wouldn't applaud her actions....but I wouldn't consider her evil for losing control of an undeniably already fragile emotional state.

What rules are there governing a Breach Of The Peace in the USA?

Kilkrazy wrote:In UK law a dead person cannot be slandered.

Is this the case under US law?

Under the UK this would be stopped under Hate Speech laws, well a church would at any rate. However there is no 'Westboro style' church we know of outside of factional churches in Northern Ireland, and they by agreement are mutually ignored/tolerated. We got plenty of 'Westboro style' mosques though.

I understand that they're hiding behind the 1st Amendment, and I wholeheartedly support free speech, but just as the protesters have a right to speak their minds, don't the mourners have a right to listen. If a reasonable expectation of privacy applies to search and seizure, how and why does it not apply here?

These people should be scoured from the earth and all evidence of their existence forever purged.

Why the hell can't a serial killer pick 'opening obnoxious pseudo-religious hater bastards brain pans with a fire axe' as his raison d'etre?

IAmTheWalrus wrote:I understand that they're hiding behind the 1st Amendment, and I wholeheartedly support free speech, but just as the protesters have a right to speak their minds, don't the mourners have a right to listen. If a reasonable expectation of privacy applies to search and seizure, how and why does it not apply here?

Constitutional rights aren't really positive rights. They're limits on governmental action. So, people have a "right" to reasonable privacy because the government can't search things. People have a right to free speech only because the government can't pass laws restricting it.

The freedom of speech doesn't include hate speech. But if the hate is religious hate, its tolerated. That needs to change.

chickenbgood wrote:The freedom of speech doesn't include hate speech. But if the hate is religious hate, its tolerated. That needs to change.

Not even close. The 1st amendment protects hate speech, but private universities and the like can limit it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States

Hrm, read the thread and the links that Abaddon posted. I put this right up there with the klu klux klan... which I guess is protected for general protests. But I feel when you're directing things toward a single person, it starts to cross the line...

Anyway, terrible, terrible stuff, did the court rule on it yet?

Frazzled wrote:They have freedom of speech, but there should be reasonable location limits. if portestors can be forced to stay away from Presidential speeches, then there can be location limits on protests near funerals. Problem solved without destroying the First Amendment.

^^This. They might be totally fething Loony tunes, but ^^This.

Frazzled wrote:Violating noise laws? Littering? (unless she picks up the
shell casings of course-be green! recycle!)

...there are people who don't pick up shell casings? I guess I can see .22s but something you'd actually use to kill someone? Shell casings are money!

Interestingly, religious speech is protected in the UK so long as it happens in a dedicated building, such as a church.

This was mentioned in the thread about the street preacher who got arrested for making allegedly homophobic pronouncements.

I am not clear how this gels with the arrest and prosecution of Islamic hate preachers. Perhaps it is to do with criminal law on violent threats, or something like that.

Man, I'd like to think that if someone just drove through one of those Westboro demonstrations, they'd just get a fine for littering, with leaving those piles of dog crap laying around.

AbaddonFidelis wrote:

Frazzled wrote:I guess the important issue, if the mother pulled out a pistol and emptied two clips into the Westboro "church" and you were on the jury, would you convict her, and what for?

I wouldn't.

me neither. A person under the stress of losing their child like that, dealing with the funeral, calling family, having to cry over and over and over again until the funeral just to show up and have THOSE donkey-caves there saying its his/her childs fault for the worlds problems? No way could they be held accountable for such a situation.