{"id":11597,"date":"2010-11-08T01:09:01","date_gmt":"2010-11-08T08:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=11597"},"modified":"2010-11-08T01:09:01","modified_gmt":"2010-11-08T08:09:01","slug":"oscar-grants-life-is-worth-two-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=11597","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Grant's Life Is Worth Two Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Johannes Mehserle, the white transit cop who accidentally drew his gun rather than his taser (completely different weight and placement on his body), and then accidentally turned off his gun’s safety, and then accidentally shot Oscar Grant, a young black man who was unarmed and lying helpless on the ground, to death, was convicted of accidental manslaughter (the minimum possible charge) and given a sentence of two years minus <\/em>146 days already served (the minimum possible sentence).<\/p>\n

As I interpret the law, it’s in effect<\/em> legal for police to shoot black men to death at any time, for any reason, or for no reason, as long as no one records video of the shooting<\/em>. However, if <\/em>multiple people happen to record the shooting, and if<\/em> the videos become public, then shooting black men becomes illegal and carries a two-year sentence.<\/p>\n

David Schraub<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It’s not that one can’t construct a narrative legitimizing a range of different sentences; it’s that, given that discretion, courts consistently apply the harshest narratives in cases of white victims and black defendants, and the most lax ones in cases of white defendants and black victims. In this case, the could rationalize either a two year or a 14 year sentence — it elected to do the former. In the next ten cases — all with black defendants — the court probably could rationalize either a two year or a 14 year sentence, and will likely pick the latter. The fact that we might be able to justify each sentence individually doesn’t actually resolve the moral problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johannes Mehserle, the white transit cop who accidentally drew his gun rather than his taser (completely different weight and placement on his body), and then accidentally turned off his gun’s safety, and then accidentally shot Oscar Grant, a young black … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,64,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crossposted-on-tada","category-prisons-and-justice","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}