rogers park bryan wrote:
Juice's Lecture Notes wrote:
rogers park bryan wrote:
Boilermaker Rick wrote:
So does the donation to a charity in the name of a woman who killed a cop change anything about this?
To this day she denies it and I believe her account is supported by medical evidence?
Ill admit to just doing a little research on this, so maybe someone who is more familiar with the details can explain it.
Her account that she didn't pull a trigger during the event is backed up by physical evidence, and her gunshot wounds from the trooper's pistol don't support the narrative that she was crouched by the vehicle facing the officer, per the surviving officer's testimony.
However, she wasn't convicted as the trigger-man, anyway, she was convicted under New Jersey's felony murder rule, wherein any party to an ongoing felony is convicted of the deaths that result from the felony (she was holding ammunition for the two armed individuals that did the shooting, and had been evading authorities after skipping bail for an armed robbery arrest in 1971, while also being named a suspect in the attempted murder of two cops in New York).
The jury instructions reflected this fact, as did the fact that the jury (who deliberated for three days, which should cool accusations that it was a blue ribbon panel of whites set to convict her of anything) asked the instructions be given to them again midway through their deliberations. In New Jersey, when you are convicted of murdering a law enforcement officer while performing his or her duties, you are immediately sentenced to life without parole.
Absent a smoking gun other than the subtle implication that white people cannot rightly convict a black person accused of a crime, she was rightly convicted.
So she was more "an accessory to" than an actual cop killer.
I read about how they convicted her based on that law you cited, but they still convicted her of murder? So they dont differentiate at all between accessory and the one who pulled the trigger?
No, no differentiation, and that is good law. The example I always heard was set in the 50's in the rural south concerning lynch mobs: Imagine a group of white guys congregating at a bar, and they up and decide they're gonna go out and find themselves a black guy to kill. So they split up into two groups and take two cars. Car A heads out and doesn't find a black guy, so they drive home, disperse, and go to sleep. Car B, though, finds an unfortunate soul, and the inhabitants of Car B commit murder. Every single passenger of Car A is also guilty of murder, the same murder as the passengers of Car B, as they should be. You don't get to be part of a roving band of people with felonious intent, and then just happen to luck into not consummating a criminal act because your group couldn't find a target. You were in for a penny at the bar when you decided to go out to kill someone, you're in for the pound when the act is performed, regardless of whether you were there.
Imagine it like a strict liability of criminal intent: If you intend to commit (or attempt to commit) certain dangerous, violent acts, or be part of a group that will commit or is likely to commit (or attempt to commit) same, you are on the hook for the downstream consequences, however unforeseen.
Applied to Shakur's case, she was holding the ammunition for people who fired upon an officer in the discharge of his duties for the purpose of escaping his lawful detention (Criminal Escape Count 1), and was at the time seeking to evade authorities after being arrested and charged with a different violent crime, and named as a suspect in two others (Criminal Escape Count 2). She's just as guilty of the death of that police officer as the guy who pulled the trigger, and the law treats killings committed while in the commission (or attempted commission), or fleeing of, certain felonies (like criminal escape in New Jersey) as first degree murder. Ergo, she is a convicted murderer.
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