• breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Isn’t that how the justice system works though? He claims it was self defense but the jury / courts didn’t believe it was, thus he was convicted for murder?

    “Chasing someone down, telling them you are about to kill them and then doing it is not self-defense,” Lockett said.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Sure. That is how the justice system works. How the justice system should not work is him or anyone else being sentenced to be executed by the state for their crimes.

      • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Meh, IMO it’s totally fine when it is blatantly clear. Yes, I know it’s still subjective and I still wouldn’t trust the government with, “blatantly clear”, but my point is this guy is not a gray area.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          To me, it doesn’t matter to me how clear it is. The state should not have powers that include life and death over its citizenry, no matter how heinous the crime. That’s a step toward fascism and the U.S. is taking way too many of those steps.

        • Pregnenolone@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          They always think it’s blatantly clear until they kill a person they later find out was innocent

        • jjagaimo@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Except that leaves it up to the court which has a record of wrongfully convicting people based on false or circumstantial evidence and then putting them on death row

  • TragicNotCute@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The most interesting part to me was at the very end.

    Hancock also was convicted of first-degree manslaughter in a separate shooting in 1982 in which he also claimed self-defense. He served less than three years of a four-year sentence in that case.

    How many “self defense” shootouts does a personally generally get into in their lifetime?