this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
569 points (99.1% liked)

News

23361 readers
3289 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Kevin Monahan, 65, shot 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis after a car she was riding in with friends made a wrong turn on his property

A man was convicted of second-degree murder Tuesday for fatally shooting a young woman when the SUV she was riding in mistakenly drove up his rural driveway in upstate New York.

A jury found Kevin Monahan, 66, guilty of second-degree murder for shooting 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis on a Saturday night last April after she and her friends pulled into his long, curving driveway near the Vermont border while they were trying to find another house.

The group’s caravan of two cars and a motorcycle began leaving once they realized their mistake. Authorities said Monahan came out to his porch and fired twice from his shotgun, with the second shot hitting Gillis in the neck as she sat in the front passenger seat of an SUV driven by her boyfriend.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I had quoted this in my post:

“In the anti-gun Spokane newspaper, internet comments indicated that many people had the clueless idea that Gerlach had shot the man – in the back – to stop the thief from stealing his car. One idiot wrote in defense of doing such, “That ‘inert property’ as you call it represents a significant part of a man’s life. Stealing it is the same as stealing a part of his life. Part of my life is far more important than all of a thief’s life.”

Analyze that statement. The world revolves around this speaker so much that a bit of his life spent earning an expensive object is worth “all of (another man’s) life.” Never forget that, in this country, human life is seen by the courts as having a higher value than what those courts call “mere property,” even if you’re shooting the most incorrigible lifelong thief to keep him from stealing the Hope Diamond. A principle of our law is also that the evil man has the same rights as a good man. Here we have yet another case of a person dangerously confusing “how he thinks things ought to be” with “how things actually are.”

As a rule of thumb, American law does not justify the use of deadly force to protect what the courts have called “mere property.” In the rare jurisdiction that does appear to allow this, ask yourself how the following words would resonate with a jury when uttered by plaintiff’s counsel in closing argument: “Ladies and gentlemen, the defendant has admitted that he killed the deceased over property. How much difference is there in your hearts between the man who kills another to steal that man’s property, and one who kills another to maintain possession of his own? Either way, he ended a human life for mere property!”

― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense"

[–] Mirshe@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Yeah, that about sums it up. Think about the optics in front of a jury, your family, and probably your local community newspaper when you have to take the stand and tell the prosecutor and the rest of the court, "yes, I shot that man 7 times in the back, but he was running off with my laptop."