Al Sharpton Stand Up For the Gun Owner

[gene]

Seems to me he and his bud, Jessie Jackson are constantly spouting off against guns and now they are standing up for self defense with a gun against unarmed teens, (Outside the home).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080106...oting_march;_ylt=AsrbDlfSZKLC_SPUdcbYOPas0NUE

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. - The Rev. Al Sharpton led a rally Saturday to protest the conviction of a black man in the fatal shooting of a white teenager on Long Island, saying the prosecution of the case was unjust.

The civil rights activist was joined by John White, who was found guilty of manslaughter last month but is free on bail pending sentencing. Several hundred people gathered outside the courthouse where the case was tried. He is free on bail until sentencing and has said he will appeal.

"There is a road ahead," he said Saturday. "I don't know what it may bring, yet I know that God will walk with me through the fire."

The teenager, Daniel Cicciaro Jr., had shown up at White's home on Aug. 9, 2006, with a group of angry friends. Sharpton has described Cicciaro and his friends as a "mob" that had threatened White.

"We will raise this to a level of national attention until those young men are brought to justice," Sharpton told several hundred people gathered outside the courthouse where the case was tried.

White has said he was trying to protect his home and family when he grabbed a gun and went to face the teens outside the house in the predominantly white community of Miller Place.

The conflict began with a bogus MySpace posting claiming White's 19-year-old son, Aaron, wanted to rape a female friend of one of the white teens.

John White claimed the gun fired accidentally when Cicciaro lunged for it, killing the 17-year-old. Prosecutors argued that White was rash to confront the teens, rather than locking the door and calling police.

The teens, who were unarmed, were not prosecuted.

White, 54, faces a potential prison term of five to 15 years. He has said he will appeal.

 

[Lugnut]

Al Sharpton is a buffoon. He's not protecting civil rights he's just pro black for everything. It's ashame really as it kills any credibility he could ever have. He's a disgrace for black people IMO.

 

[bostonasphalt2]

Al Sharpton is a buffoon. He's not protecting civil rights he's just pro black for everything. It's ashame really as it kills any credibility he could ever have. He's a disgrace for black people IMO.

absolutely 100% PERCENT agree. He does a disservice to civil rights by applying a racial charge to it, and maing it about "his people".


If you want an interesting song//spoken word piece, look up "An Open Letter" by the band Stuck Mojo. Its a letter to Jesse JAckson they made about why they think he is doing nothing but hurting what he claims to fight for....

 

[BigRich06]

Sharpton = Media HACK!

 

[dwarven1]

White has said he was trying to protect his home and family when he grabbed a gun and went to face the teens outside the house in the predominantly white community of Miller Place.

There it is - he could have stayed IN the house and called the cops. Instead he escalated the situation. If it was a white guy and a crowd of black teenagers, it would - and should - be the same verdict.

 

[EddieCoyle]

If it was a white guy and a crowd of black teenagers, it would - and should - be the same verdict.

And Sharpton would be leading a "protest" calling for the guy's head.

 

[Scrivener]

This event is much like the one involving the DC journalist Carl Rowan, also black. Some white kids were skinny-dipping in his pool. In response to this Great and Imminent Peril, Rowan grabbed the pistol he illegally possessed - the one his kid, the FBI agent gave him - and opened fire, wounding one [white] teen.

Let's see, illegal possession of a firearm, assault w/a deadly weapon, assault & battery and, perhaps an illegal transfer of the firearm.

Anyone care to speculate as to what criminal penalties said black journalist received?

 

[strangenh]

It would be nice to see the case elevated from a black/white issue to a question of no duty to retreat when within one's home or curtilage. I don't know what NY law says about it, but if the case took that angle, even if fueled by an underlying race issue, it might start cracking open the right to self-defense discussion in NY. I do realize one has a duty to not exacerbate a confrontation, but if it had already risen to the level of assault before the firearm was produced and before he went outside (for example a credible threat of arson was made), I think it would be an excellent case for that purpose. After all, a lot of gun control - and weapon/self-defense control generally - has had a race-driven foundation. Why not the prybar of race to show up its inherent flaws and tear it down?

ETA: I do assume his conviction on manslaughter included some stab at a necessity or self-defense defense, so in all likelihood this one isn't a good case for the above.

 

[dwarven1]

And Sharpton would be leading a "protest" calling for the guy's head.

Of course.

It would be nice to see the case elevated from a black/white issue to a question of no duty to retreat when within one's home or curtilage. I don't know what NY law says about it, but if the case took that angle, even if fueled by an underlying race issue, it might start cracking open the right to self-defense discussion in NY. I do realize one has a duty to not exacerbate a confrontation, but if it had already risen to the level of assault before the firearm was produced and before he went outside (for example a credible threat of arson was made), I think it would be an excellent case for that purpose. After all, a lot of gun control - and weapon/self-defense control generally - has had a race-driven foundation. Why not the prybar of race to show up its inherent flaws and tear it down?

ETA: I do assume his conviction on manslaughter included some stab at a necessity or self-defense defense, so in all likelihood this one isn't a good case for the above.

Unfortunately, once Sharpton and Jackson get hold of it, they reduce it to "Whitey is oppressing the Negro", so in such a case you can't ever get clear of the racial factor. Indeed, in this case, it looks like race was indeed a factor - fake posting claims a black teenager wants to rape a white woman, so white teenagers form a mob outside black man's home. I don't know if the myspace posting specifically mentioned race, but I'm guessing that it did.

Unfortunately for the black guy, White (love the juxtaposition between name and race!), he got stupid. Instead of calling the cops and staying in his nice safe house, he had to go and confront them... armed. I don't like this sort of mob scene scenario, but unfortunately, in this case, the verdict is correct, IF THE ARTICLE IS PRESENTING THE CIRCUMSTANCES CORRECTLY (need to put that in there because some tin-foil-hat-wearing poster will, I'm sure, claim that they're not, etc).

I don't think that, even without the race question, this case would make for good law. At no time was this man in imminent danger of harm or death until HE exacerbated the situation be going outside to confront the teens.

 

[Transporter]

This event is much like the one involving the DC journalist Carl Rowan, also black. Some white kids were skinny-dipping in his pool. In response to this Great and Imminent Peril, Rowan grabbed the pistol he illegally possessed - the one his kid, the FBI agent gave him - and opened fire, wounding one [white] teen.

Let's see, illegal possession of a firearm, assault w/a deadly weapon, assault & battery and, perhaps an illegal transfer of the firearm.

Anyone care to speculate as to what criminal penalties said black journalist received?

Key to the city?

Googled, and the link from Wiki:

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

Rowan gained public notoriety on June 14, 1988, when he shot a teenage tresspasser, Neil Smith, who was taking a dip in Rowan's swimming pool in Washington, D.C.. Rowan used an unregistered .22 LR pistol. Critics charged hypocrisy, since Rowan was a strict gun control advocate. In a 1981 column, he advocated " a law that says anyone found in possession of a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail -- period." In 1985, he called for "A complete and universal federal ban on the sale, manufacture, importation and possession of handguns (except for authorized police and military personnel)."

Immediately after the shooting, Rowan offered several conflicting accounts about where he got the handgun. He first said that he had purchased the gun himself in response to threats on his life (which he later claimed had been made by the Ku Klux Klan). He also initially claimed that the gun had been properly registered. However, when District of Columbia police disclosed that the gun had not been registered, Rowan changed his story, claiming that the gun belonged to his son, who "was an FBI agent and did not have to register it [because it was] properly registered federally." Police officials pointed out that under D.C. law, all guns must be registered locally; failure to do so was punishable by up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Rowan was tried but the jury was deadlocked, the judge declared a mistrial and he was never retried. In his autobiography, Rowan said he still favors gun control, but admits being vulnerable to a charge of hypocrisy.

 

[USMC109]

It would be nice to see the case elevated from a black/white issue to a question of no duty to retreat when within one's home or curtilage. I don't know what NY law says about it, but if the case took that angle, even if fueled by an underlying race issue, it might start cracking open the right to self-defense discussion in NY. I do realize one has a duty to not exacerbate a confrontation, but if it had already risen to the level of assault before the firearm was produced and before he went outside (for example a credible threat of arson was made), I think it would be an excellent case for that purpose. After all, a lot of gun control - and weapon/self-defense control generally - has had a race-driven foundation. Why not the prybar of race to show up its inherent flaws and tear it down?

ETA: I do assume his conviction on manslaughter included some stab at a necessity or self-defense defense, so in all likelihood this one isn't a good case for the above.

The key word is while IN one's home,not on the front lawn.I don't believe that NY has a Castle Doctrine.

What he should have done was call the police and wait inside with the gun.If one or more of the teens had attempted B and E that would have been a much different case but White escalated things to a whole new level by confronting them outside with a gun.

 

[strangenh]

The key word is while IN one's home,not on the front lawn.I don't believe that NY has a Castle Doctrine.

What he should have done was call the police and wait inside with the gun.If one or more of the teens had attempted B and E that would have been a much different case but White escalated things to a whole new level by confronting them outside with a gun.

Well, not entirely necessarily. First off, do not confuse the common law castle doctrine with modern statutes solidifying or extending the doctrine (which are commonly called castle doctrine laws, but which really extend or reinforce the old common law doctrine). NY certainly does appear to have no duty to retreat within one's home, which is essentially the common law castle doctrine, but it does not seem to have passed a statutory extension to it. In some states, even the current common law is that the immediate curtilage of one's home is part of the zone in which one has no duty to retreat. E.g., one's porch. I also don't see "front lawn" mentioned in the story. Still, even if he was on some sort of front lawn, that could possibly still be curtilage if there was a fence around the property and that part of the lawn was close to the house, all depending on the case law of the state.

A reason for "curtilage" being included in the zone from which retreat is not required is that it's a point from which one's home may itself be attacked causing the occupant bodily harm, and goes back to English common law from the early 1700s. Some states' statutory law on the use of self-defense simply states "home" but in some of those, it has been interpreted to include the curtilage.

For example:
http://www.aoc.state.nc.us/www/public/sc/opinions/2002/304-01-1.htm
"If the jury had been told that whether the porch was inside the home or part of the home was a question of fact for it to determine based upon the evidence, the jury could have determined that defendant met each of the conditions required under N.C.G.S. § 14-51.1 even if defendant struck the first blow and was, thus, not guilty." (From North Carolina, with a statutory castle doctrine that uses the term "home")

That is why I stated that I 1) did not know NY law on the subject; and 2) presumed the manslaughter conviction was based on White's not being under threat at the time he exited his house, and ergo the curtilage not being in question because he unnecessarily contributed to creating the violent encounter.

You are presuming that his being outside the house alone constituted him being under a duty to retreat. However, that may not be the case, because "home" has not been held to be just the "house" in several jurisdictions.

Now, again, I am not a NY attorney - but NY law seems to be currently best elucidated on this subject by Aiken, which turned on the fact that an apartment entryway was not under the defendant's private, exclusive control, but provided access to other apartments. There, the defendant was found guilty and unable to invoke self-defense because the confrontation occurred in a semi-public space that was not his sole property, even though it was immediately adjacent to his front door, and he came to it rather than retreating. It turned on the location being semi-public, not on it being outside the apartment, and so one's front porch may well therefore be another story in NY, as it would be under the owner's private control.

Until a NY attorney steps up and makes clear what the NY law is on what constitutes the "home" in NY where there is no duty to retreat, I will reserve judgment on whether the fellow erred simply by not being inside his front door.

Now, again, I believe the error of the man in the story, IF the reporting is correct, was to engage the crowd and exacerbate the conflict. However, as I said, if he had come onto the porch to respond to a credible threat to himself or his family - a threat executable from the porch - then I should think it would become a question solely of whether a duty to retreat existed on the privately-owned front porch of his home.

 

[peterpressure]

Was the firearm legally or illegally owned? If it was illegal, toss the book at him I say...

 

[FITH]

2 things
1) Topic ( as interesting as the NY law or any law is)

2) Sharpton is just a racist! If the guy used a sword..he would stand behind Sword use!

 

[pipmaster1971]

Gah...the guys a hypocrite and media whore...

 

[gene]

Gah...the guys a hypocrit and media hoare...

+1000 and Scriv brought up another example of a hypocrit the that also broke the law above and got off! Not once but with several offenses. These issues are about as fair as allowing the COP to decide who should and shouldn't be allowed to own or carry a gun.

I'm surprized Jackson wasn't mentioned right with him but we all know that Sharpton has stood up and fought for black criminals whether they were guilty or not. The man is a fool and deserves no respect from the media or the black race.

By the way, I was watching a show about gangs in Chicago the other night and while the name of the particularly violent black gang escapes me, it was interesting to find out that Jessie Jackson was connected to them. They turned out to be drug peddlers and murderers operating under the ruse of a neighborhood self help group. The Black something or others!