UPDATE: Ahmaud Arbery's 3 murderers all found guilty. Sentenced to LIFE in prison.

Doesn’t bother me in the slightest. If you broke state and federal law, each sovereign has a right to vindicate its laws for the crimes you committed against that government’s peace and security. It shouldn’t be a race to the courthouse where one precludes the other.

 

Why am I not surprised?

It still smacks of double-jeopardy. If there would be a race to the courthouse it's only because we lacked the imagination to create a better procedure to prevent that from happening while still protecting an individual's 5a right.

 

Maybe more competition leads to better justice, like the free market, did you ever think of that?

 

Smacks of or feels like double jeopardy is not double jeopardy. A sovereign has a right to vindicate its laws through a criminal prosecution. Just because the two sovereigns have laws that overlap does not make them double jeopardy.

I assure you, I could go on about this forever, going back to the meaning of the word “offence” in the Fifth Amendment, but I need not write a treatise here.

 

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's not a cat. I'd suggest that offence in 5a isn't quite so narrow and rigid a construct to mean only that which is defined by whatever govts get to define it. Rather it's that govt should not be able to get multiple cracks at prosecuting an individual for the same underlying act/s, regardless of how govt divides itself in different ways.

 

Justice cometh for them and rightly so.

 

And the prohibition isn’t about the act. The conduct is not at issue (with one small, and I’d suggest wrongly decided exception not pertinent here). It is about the offense. And separate legislatures cannot create the same offense. By necessity, the offenses are different, despite whether they arise from the same act.

 

Ahmaud Arbery's killers are set to be sentenced today on federal hate crime convictions - CNN

 

I was talking in the OU thread about some people deserving second chances around race, these dudes aren’t on that list. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

 

Now for the DA that tried to sweep this under the rug, Jackie Johnson.

 

The shooter should've gotten the death penalty.
Life w/o parole for the other two pieces of trash.

 

Only thing I disagree with on the sentence is that this deserved the death penalty.

 

The shooter got a 2nd life sentence, other two will hear their additional sentences later today.

 

Maybe one of our resident legal experts can explain to me the purpose behind a multiple life sentence. I've never understood how someone can be sentenced to more than one life. Seems more than a little dumb to me.

 

If anything, it lessens the chance of him ever being released if one of the convictions is successfully appealed or thrown out. I suppose being convicted of both state and federal charges means he’d have to pardoned by both the Governor and the president to be released?

 

So why not simply sentence as "life without possibility of parole"?

 

I wholeheartedly concur with life sentences for the father and son. Does anyone think that the third guy should’ve gotten some consideration for releasing the video? I’m a little torn on that. He took part in corralling Ahmaud, and so has responsibility for that. But, IIRC, he also freely chose to release the video and without this video there would not have been prosecution. Without the video they all would be walking around free today.

Curious other peoples reactions.

 

That sort of sentence can still be overturned on appeal or pardoned/commuted.

 

His lawyer released the video because he thought it would vindicate them and "he was tired of all the "bullsh*t opinions" about the case."

Attorney for men who killed Ahmaud Arbery says he released video | firstcoastnews.com