2 Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court

NYTimes ^ | 8/19/05 | Andrew Pollack

[MarkeyD]

Searching here seems to be very limited.

[Montfort]

Yes. I have to admit that the guy who lost the ranch did a lot wrong.

[untrained skeptic]

"1. At the time of the incident they were not in the country legally. They entered illegally and are now trying to claim asylum status in order to have standing to receive their legal lottery windfall."

I agree that they were in the country illegally at the time of the incident. They don't need to claim asylum to have standing to file a civil suit against the idiot that assaulted them.

They weren't awarded the settlement because they won the lottery, or because of some random act. They won the settlement because of the deliberate, criminal acts of the idiot that assaulted them.

I would have not problem with him using reasonable force to restrain them until authorities arrived because he had good reason to think they we felons.

Instead he assaulted them, and then ended up letting them go without contacting the authorities.

"2. In no way was justice served, when a property owner can have his property extorted out of his hands via a civil suit. For roughing the ILLEGAL aliens up, justice would demand that he go to jail commensurate with the extent of the assault he committed."

He assaulted two people by whacking them in the head with a gun. That's assault regardless of if they are illegal aliens or not.

He might have gotten off with a smaller civil penalty if he'd shown up in court to defend himself or at least had a lawyer do so. However, he didn't show, so the judge awarded the plaintiff what they asked for.

"Under current laws, his possession of a gun was also a crime and he faces the penalty for that crime. But there is no way that a six-figure civil penalty should be justified and forcing the forfeiture of the ranch."

The since of the award did seem a bit large, but when you don't show up in court to defend yourself, the judge doesn't have a lot of choices about how to proceed.

"This was not justice in any fashion."

I disagree. The size of the settlement might be a bit extreme, that depends on the details of what happened. However, the idiot went to jail and lost his property all because of his own actions, which he has to accept responsibility for.