then we should all just go into our garages, close the door and start up the car because we dont deserve this great country

Should someone who points high powered weapons at federal agents be let free while a woman who accidentally hit a cop while being roughed up by said cop, i mean do I have to type this?

making me angry that i even have to explain

as long as the Nevada assholes go also?

appeal?

Defense attorneys can get sanctioned if they mention it in the trial or in closing. I think jurors should know, but the courts disagree. Unless the jury is part of the sentencing, as when a jury may be required for a death sentence, they are never informed of the potential sentence.

I was called for jury selection for a case of assault with a firearm (that's not the legal name). During the voir dire we were told that the possible sentence was probation up to 20 years.

These jurors should get together and publicly protest. I've seem sentences reduced that way.

I hate that the judges write to tell those who aren't selected how the trial went. I still get sick to my stomach thinking about that kid.

Seven years for this is absolutely ridiculous.

It's just more Draconian sentencing under the Law for the Poor. If her daddy was sitting on a few hundred million, she'd have walked.

What state have you sat in?

states. I don't know if it's required by law or not; just remember that the available sentence range was given when the charges were being discussed.

went over the sentencing guidelines at some length, explaining how the sentence range would be much higher for this offense. It made me wonder how much of a problem they have with jury nullification.

.... as I have sat through a couple voir dire and they absolutely spell out the possible punishment precisely.

Which is steeped in progressive tradition of non-violent protesting. The jury fucked this one up.

Juries, as far as I know, are never informed of the potential sentence except in DP cases.

I don't agree with it, but this is the norm. Jurors later becoming upset about the sentence is a product of harsher and less discretionary sentences.

"The court discussed punishment with the venire on two separate occasions during voir dire, including the range of punishment and considering the entire range of punishment. "

From the transcript at: http://texascriminalslipopinions.bennettandbennett.com/?p=27116

If the punishment is manifestly unjust, they should vote to acquit even if the defendant is clearly guilty of the crime. The government does not have the authority to impose unjust sentences.

"We can lock you up if we want to."

Right there.

a crazed loon who does not recognize the US government, pointing an AR-15 at federal agents in defense of a rich man's right to feed his cows for free on taxpayer owned land, why, well you know some would call her a patriot. Some would call here a hero.
No charges filed! No penalty paid!

Ya know somethings can really tick you off.

n/t

either (I) a determinate sentence of length less than one year or (II) an indeterminate sentence (with a minimum-time somewhere between a year and two years and four months, and a maximum time not exceeding seven years)

So even if the judge takes a strong dislike to her and hands down the stiffest penalty he can, if she behaves herself she'll be out in two years and four months.

It is likely the judge has discretion, but I am not sure his discretion wouldn't allow the 7 year sentence.

S 55.10 Designation of offenses
http://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article55.htm

S 70.00 Sentence of imprisonment for felony
... 1. Indeterminate sentence. Except as provided in subdivisions four, five and six of this section or section 70.80 of this article, a sentence of imprisonment for a felony, other than a felony defined in article two hundred twenty or two hundred twenty-one of this chapter, shall be an indeterminate sentence. When such a sentence is imposed, the court shall impose a maximum term in accordance with the provisions of subdivision two of this section and the minimum period of imprisonment shall be as provided in subdivision three of this section ...
2. Maximum term of sentence. The maximum term of an indeterminate sentence shall be at least three years and the term shall be fixed as follows ... (d) For a class D felony, the term shall be fixed by the court, and shall not exceed seven years ...
3. Minimum period of imprisonment. The minimum period of imprisonment under an indeterminate sentence shall be at least one year and shall be fixed as follows ... (b) For any other felony, the minimum period shall be fixed by the court and specified in the sentence and shall be not less than one year nor more than one-third of the maximum term imposed.
4. Alternative definite sentence for class D and E felonies. When a person, other than a second or persistent felony offender, is sentenced for a class D or class E felony, and the court, having regard to the nature and circumstances of the crime and to the history and character of the defendant, is of the opinion that a sentence of imprisonment is necessary but that it would be unduly harsh to impose an indeterminate or determinate sentence, the court may impose a definite sentence of imprisonment and fix a term of one year or less ...
http://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article70.htm#p70.00

The judge could use an indeterminate sentence with the minimum anywhere from 1 year to 2.3 years with a maximum anywhere from 3 to 7. So, under the indeterminate scheme, a harsh judge could sentence her to 2.3-7 years. At 2.3 years she would be parole eligible. I'm not familiar with NY parole rates and procedures, so I don't know if simply doing good time would be enough to earn her release. Even upon release, she will be under parole supervision until the end of the maximum term.

Alternatively, a sympathetic judge could sentence her to any determinate time up to one year.

Hopefully, the sentencing judge will choose the latter and sentence her to time served, or a day.

I get it.

was merely drinking with friends to celebrate St Patrick's day

I need to go and read more about this trial

Has no heart.
Fuck with it, and it's servants will beat you down in it's service.
That is the message, loud and clear.
What message should we send back?

With her her elbow?

There's something surreal and ironic about that. She didn't shoot the officer in the back, or in the face, She didn't sit on the officer till the officer died, she didn't strangle the officer just for the hell of it, she didn't call other friends to beat the officer to death, or beat the officer till she/he was comatose or brain damaged, she didn't taser the officer causing death by heart attack, she didn't run into the officers house by accident and shoot and kill an innocent teenager and break the legs of a child, she didn't beat up an autistic officer strip the officer and tear out the officer's colostomy bag.

She assaulted and officer with her elbow. What a strangely illogical and twisted country we live in.

Sentencing a defendant who is found guilty is the duty of the judge.

Has she been sentenced yet? She's very unlikely to get the maximum of seven years.

The injury she caused would normally be a third-degree assault, except that it becomes a second-degree assault when the injury is to an official.

No matter who the fuck you are. This case just set a legal precedent for groping by police.

If someone grabbed some other part of my anatomy I'd sure as shit do whatever I could to stop the MF.

There's something here that is so uncivilized. How can the US/NYC court system even contemplate charges against her? We rail against supposed 3rd world states and ask everyone to look at how wonderful American Democracy is; and then we have example after example stupidity - from the Supremes down to the state legislatures.

It's the reason she was grabbed, she was trying to run away after running up and cold clocking the cop.

prompting her reaction. Do you have any opinion about all the assaults by cops on OWS that haven't been prosecuted?

That seems outrageous to me and would have triggered a huge red flag. What's worse, like good little sheep they all followed the instruction.

or atleast it does to me since it only makes sense that the jury should render a verdict based on the evidence presented rather than render a verdict based upon what potential sentence the person on trial could fact if convicted.

I think juries work best when they have all information related to the trial. They should be able to determine if the crime fits with the minimum sentence.

The punishment needs to fit the crime and if the courts are trying to impose an unjust sentence the jury should absolutely be able to decide not to convict on the basis of an unfair punishment.

it doesnt make sense to allow it.

The courts should not be able to impose sentences that do not fit the crime and if they are pushing to impose such a sentence the jury should be able to decide it is an unjust prosecution and refuse to convict.

when it comes to sentences as well there is an appeal process assuming of course she decides to use it as the judge might (and hopefully will) give her parole or if the judge is not allowed to do that under the guidelines then atleast the minimum time that is permissible.

Sentences tend to be tougher for repeat offenders. If you have a system where the sentence has been decided before the judgement, you create an environment where jurors can deduce whether a defendant has a criminal background or not. This would severely disrupt their intended role as determining whether the government has proven its case.

Don't blame the jury, blame the judge and possibly the legislators (they often take away the judge's ability to be flexible on sentencing)

It's especially ridiculous considering how many Wall Street fraudsters and war profiteers never even received a slap on the wrist. See what has happened to this country? And we are just supposed to be fine with it.

We are just going to have to wait and see what sentence the judge decides to impose, hopefully though it wont be to different from the plea deal she was offered.

if there ever was one, and in America, ha, countless.

Start with locking up all those involve with this stupidity for life and see how they like it.

needs reform. It takes things like this case, Trayvon, etc to wake people up. But the serious injustices are everywhere.

No need to get overly-panicked about the police state ... yet.

-Laelth

The cops would have made sure she wasn't inconvenienced and retreated.

The jury should know the excessive nature of punishments in the legal system. We as a people need to remember these instances of heavy sentences when we are on a jury ourselves. Jury nullification.

I never get picked for jury duty, I'm unfit for the establishment.

assuming a custodial sentence to in fact be imposed.

Section 89(1) of the Police Act 1996 provides:

Any person who assaults a constable in the execution of his duty, or a person assisting a constable in the execution of his duty, shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or to both.[1]

It is a summary offence. The "starting sentence" is a short custodial sentence, and it is considered a more serious offence than common assault.

The constable must be acting "in the execution of his duty" for this offence to be made out. If he exceeds the remit of his duty (e.g. acts unlawfully in assaulting the Defendant), the offence will not be made out.

The Defendant does not actually have to be aware that the person he is assaulting is a constable.[2]

The fact that the victim is a police officer is not, in itself, an aggravating factor which would justify more serious charge. The criteria for a charge under section 47 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 do not distinguish between members of the public and police officers as the victim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assaulting_a_constable_in_the_execution_of_his_duty

Termed "constable" because we're quaint.

She'll spend the rest of her life as a second class citizen all because she reacted to groping like a woman should. Those jurors need to be publicly named and shunned.

" Those jurors need to be publicly named and shunned. " might just be the most horrifying thing I've ever seen said by someone talking about a jury.

Do you not see the impending annihilation of the justice system if 'name and shun' becomes the watchword of the day? No matter which side you vote, you'll offend -someone- and be 'named and shunned'. You're calling to bring the legal system to a complete screeching halt.

This, although I too think it is a travesty, is what happens with 'Rule of Law'. Everyone has been talking since Bundy about how great Rule of Law is. Perhaps this is a good occasion to remember that 'Rule of Law' is only good when it is against the people you want to see punished. A message was sent, Godfather-style, from the 99%, and let us not forget what it is: WE ARE THE RULE OF LAW.

If you choose to serve our Corporate masters over the people, you accept the consequences.

You need to step away from politics for a little while imo. While I agree that corporate power is completely out of control, the hyperbole is getting a little -too-...hyperbolic.

The Reign of Terror didn't only hit the guilty, you know.

But just doing the will of those in power and always convicting people of bullshit crimes is inexcusable. Seven years on a Felony charge of elbowing someone. A FELONY!

I've been called for the Voir dire before, and I was surprised after them to learn that there are people who actually believe that someone is guilty because they were charged. How can one not have contempt for such a person? And yet they exist and are the preferred people for juries. Not to mention that we keep creating BS laws that are used to imprison more of us than the population of several states!

[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]

It's biased people like what you describe that don't belong on a jury for anything and have made up their mind before the trial even starts.

I didn't see anything in that video of her being groped though I did see her elbow swing back. Take note that it was the prosecution that brought in that video as evidence and the defense that argued against it as being too unclear to see what happened. That should tell anyone right there that what the video shows is not favorable to the defendant. Personally, I just couldn't tell. If the jurors all saw that video and saw her strike the officer with her elbow but couldn't see anything that he did that would cause her to do that and that whatever it was was justifiable then all that's left is just believing her, and they didn't. Frankly, I don't know if I believe her either, but I don't know what all the evidence was or the testimony and they did.

A video won't show how hard a hand squeezed a breast. You can't see that from that angle. But the bruise is solid evidence that it was hard enough to cause a hematoma.

This is just another example of the police being free to harm people and yet anyways assumed to be telling the truth in court.

It was on her chest above her breast. From what I understand when he tackled her and she hit the ground one of her arms was trapped between her body and the ground making it entirely plausible that it was her own hand that caused that bruise. I noticed that in her video with Democracy Now that when she bent her arm to pull down her top to show the bruise it just so happened that bending her arm in that position with that arm trapped under her body could have been what caused the bruise.

Given the still photo of the YT video of the Democracy Now interview she was already running away while the officer was behind her stretching his arm out toward her with his hand in a grabbing position but with his palm parallel to the ground which makes sense if he grabbed her shoulder as he said. I find it fairly impossible to chase after someone that is running from you and being able to first grab them by wrapping an arm around them so that the hand is in that area without the legs of both running people getting tangled since the cop would have to have been practically right up against her back.

You bring up that a bruise that bad she would have to have been grabbed very hard, and the most plausible impact to cause that bad of a bruise is her own body falling on top of her own arm trapped between her body and the ground which is apparently how she fell.

All I CAN tell from that video is that she did swing her elbow back at the cop's face, but what I CAN'T see is anything that HE did to cause her to do that that would have been justifiable. I've watched it over and over and over, zoomed in, slow motion, etc. and the video is just too much of a mess for me to tell. As I said. If the jury saw a cleaned up version of the video or frame by frame analysis maybe they could see something I couldn't. Clearly what they DID see was nothing to indicate that what she said happened actually happened other than her throwing her elbow back at the cop.

And since the prosecution used that video against her bringing it in as evidence themselves and the defense argued against it because of it being too unclear to see what she claimed happened, then yeah, I have to agree with the defense leaving only her own claim as too what happened with the video counteracting her claim to what happened. Personally, I think I'd have to just not take in the video as the best evidence, but that's me and this particular video which I have no idea was exactly what video the jury saw as they may have seen another one or a cleaned up version or a frame by frame analysis that made whatever happened a lot clearer to them.

We weren't at the trial. We didn't see all the evidence or hear all the testimony or were the ones told how to apply the law. The jurors were. I'm hardly going to blame them when they know far more than any one here does, and whatever ever it was that they saw and heard compelled them all to find her guilty in a very short span of time.

Look, there are many many many incidents from Occupy in NY that beyond doubt show police abuse. There's no question of that at all. With THIS particular incident though I can't tell what actually happened going only by that video, and I'm certainly not going to claim that I somehow magically know more than the jury did since they were the ones that heard and saw all the evidence and testimony and I didn't. Neither did you or anyone else here. Therefore, not you nor I nor anyone else here is in any position to know more than those jurors did and why the voted to find her guilty especially when they are the ones tasked with the duty to deliberate that. Whatever they saw and heard during that trial not a single one of them believed she was not guilty.

I would PREFER that she was truthful and that what she claimed happened was what actually happened, but I can't possibly claim that she was given that blurry video though it is compelling that it was the prosecution that introduced it as evidence and the defense that argued against it. See, I'm honest like that. Too bad others are not here.

next.

See, I'm honest like that. Too bad others are not here.

I call them as they are. I just did that a couple of days ago about a judge and some other bad cop story.

Don't like it that I'm never going to jump on the bias bandwagon? Tough.

Funny, I've never said one single thing about Cecily's guilt or innocence is a single post I've made about her. I WAS honest in that I seem to be the only one here who even gives a shit about the actual evidence and SAID that I agree with her attorney that the video is too unclear to show what the hell happened just before the elbow strike. Very strange that not one single person here that believe that the video shows what she claims refuses to point out what or where on the video that is. And it isn't on the video because you can't fucking tell.

No one other than me has even mentioned other evidence or testimony like the female officer she was screaming at and refusing to leave peacefully just before the altercation with the officer that she hit.

Yes, I bloody have been honest unlike you and so many others that don't even give a fart in the wind about the evidence or testimony and for purely biased reasons. And my posts on this particular case shows that I have been honest about it, and I haven't taken one side OR the other. Jeebus, no one screaming about the video supposedly showing that she was innocent even knew that her own attorney said it was too blurry to see what happened other than her elbowing the cop in the face and that it was the prosecution - NOT the defense - that brought the video in as evidence, and none of those people can point out WHERE on the video she is depicted being grabbed by her breast. Why? Because you can't see it.

an authoritative action you can't get behind.

You're inflating the claims even more than she did! First it was that she was assaulted. Then it was that she had some sort of a seizure. Then it was that she has PTSD. Then it was that she wasn't even there to protest in the first place.

Oh, and don't forget: she claims to be a pacifist!

No wonder the jury didn't believe her. She sounds like a kid trying to convince the parents that someone else took the cookies!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

And would be expected from any zealous defense facing 7 years for being on the receiving end of police brutality.

Shame on you for your sexist authoritarian bullshit. Comparing her to a child. Shame on you.

She is a woman who was sexually assaulted by a cop. She defended herself and was charged with a crime carrying a penalty of up to 7 years. It would have been ineffective assistance of counsel not to defend against that trumped up bullshit. And then you compare her to a child at least twice. You should be ashamed. Of course, you aren't. It is hard to have any shame licking boots.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 90% chance of rain means the same as a 10% chance:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]

She was insure if it was a seizure or "an anxiety attack."

Unless someone can show they were railroaded or browbeaten, I'm inclined to believe they rendered the right verdict.

The sentence, of course, is another matter. She should not get 7 years.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 90% chance of rain means the same as a 10% chance:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]

I would think that that would be a key bit of information.

Hopefully she wins on appeal.

do you think went into getting her railroaded?
For that reason I am not optimistic about her chances on appeal.

I would add badge sniffers to that question as well.

of the manner of the assault, the circumstances and the injuries involved.

It may be that she gets nothing but probation and timed served. I WILL be shocked if she gets anything close to seven years.

I'm just not seeing why they'd be shocked at the wide range of possible prison time. What if it was a case where some dude beat an officer for no reason with a bat that gave him severe injuries that were permanent or made him have to stay in the hospital for a long time? Seven years for that kind of assault seems pretty scant to me.

She elbowed him in the face in the middle of a scuffle. They kill us at random even when the cameras are turned on them and they still get away with it.