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Posted on 02/04/2021 5:44:58 PM PST by Libloather
Early on July 13, 2020, another protest against police brutality in Portland, Oregon, turned into a clash with armed police in riot gear. Multnomah County law enforcement officials claim that during the melee a Seattle man named Jesse Herman Bates fired a small metal ball from a slingshot on his wrist, hitting a nearby firefighter in the chest. (Police say the firefighter was bruised but otherwise OK.)
Local police arrested Bates that night, but the county prosecutor ultimately decided not to pursue charges. District Attorney Mike Schmidt declined most of the thousand-plus cases referred to his office from local protests, saying he was reserving resources for the most serious crimes.
Normally, that would be the end of any legal entanglement for someone like Bates. He wasn’t on federal property and the firefighter wasn’t a federal employee, so usually local authorities would have the final word. But Bates is now facing up to five years in federal prison, under a rarely-used “civil disorder” law that his defense attorneys argue is unconstitutional.
**SNIP**
Others charged with civil disorder in Portland were accused of acts like throwing a helmet at a local cop while they arrested someone, shining a laser in police’s eyes, smashing windows and stoking fires.
Bates’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss his charges in late January, saying the obscure statute “is hopelessly overbroad and invalid... [Its] legislative history shows that it was enacted to suppress messages in support of civil rights and racial justice for Black Americans.” Multiple nearly identical motions have been filed in other civil disorder cases across the country, including in Alabama, where 21-year-old Tia Deyon Pugh was charged for allegedly breaking the window of a Mobile Police Department car.
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
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Does this fall into that.....F*ck Around and Find Out ....category?
Someone did something - libtard reply
The Trump administration charged them, the Obiden administration will drop the charges.
Sounds like an insurrection.
Don't you just love it when those who trample the Constitution at every possible chance and ignore whatever laws they dislike hide use the very same Constitution as their defense?
People are going to do what they are going to do.
When the rule of law breaks down it is time to get out the chalk and draw some lines around “somethings”.
This was a very intentional step by the DA for political reasons. If he is not held accountable to his oath to uphold the laws then he needs to be treated as the criminal he is.
The DA should be charged with “dereliction of duty” and especially “malfeasance of office” for letting an armed attacker of a policeman/fireman go uncharged.
His stance, though, will give some of the peaceful Jan. 6th demonstrators at the Capitol a “discharge” defense position re being charged with anything.
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