As stated in previous conversations, you and others are defending the rights of the accused. My concern is for the personal responsibility which contributed to so much suffering. Not necessarily legal guilt (although in civil court, contributory negligence plays a part).
You would have (ok just trying to remember previous conversations) 100 guilty go free rather than one innocent be wrongly convicted. I do not argue with that position on Constitutional grounds. It is a noble aspect of our Constitutional tradition.
On practical grounds, however.
The injustice to the victims of the proverbial 100 guilty going free, is abhorrent. Not legally but in the sense of personal suffering.
It invites LE involvement. For if society is not civil, it cries out for LE involvement. Warranted or not. Only a civil society does not need policing.
Personal responsibility, a civil society, is what protects us from unnecessary LE involvement.
OK the politics of repression are waiting to lunge from the shadows. That is a legitimate concern. Why invite that response instead of cautioning civil restraint in opposition to unnecessary criminal behavior? Why kill each other, Bandidos and Cossacks?
This is of GREAT concern to me. And innocent citizens and their innocent associations should not be subject to this precedent because it is not about those legitimate associations. This precedent includes personal irresponsibility that FReepers and Church Ladies would not be guilty of.
You are here to advance civil protections of the accused. I am here to remember the broken people and families resulting from irresponsible behavior on the part of at least some of the club members. These are not adversarial positions. I hope you can accept that much.
Yet I fear as civil society degenerates to include what happened 17 May, that not less but more LE involvement will come into play.
Can’t you accept at least that much? That personal irresponsibility invites LE response that is otherwise not needed in a civil society?? That even if Constitutionally 100 guilty should go free rather than one innocent be unjustly convicted, that the victims of the 100 criminals still cry out for justice? Of course they cry out for justice!
This is what the Sharia Police are involved in. No thanks.
LE exists to apprehend law breakers. Please expand on your vision of exactly how LE can impose good and responsible conduct on those among us who are less than your ideal.