Under an uninterrupted line of Supreme Court cases going back to Bivens in 1965 (a case my professor argued before the Supremes!), it is clear that actions by officers acting ostensibly “under color of law” squarely present federal questions, and allow the civil rights statutes, including the Anti-Klan Acts, and the Fourteenth Amendment — to be asserted as lawful objects of criminal inquiry, by the government in prosecutions.
But Scott either never learned any of this in law school, or more likely is intentionally ignoring it when he writes:
…Chauvin’s federal prosecution had little justification beyond politics. The government has identified no separate federal interest in the civil rights case against Chauvin. It didn’t even try. It was simply silent on this point….
I get it. Scott, John and Paul and Steve all believe that killings of people of color… don’t matter — especially when white cops do it.
The law — both in Minnesota, and at the federal level — is, and has been clear, since before these morons went to law school… that it does matter.
Welcome to the real world boys. Every day, the federal law machinery piles on charges — in the prosecutions of what could otherwise be state level, non-violent drug offenders, and judges in the South, especially… “stack” sentences on each (running one after the other, not concurrently), so that life without parole is the outcome. These old white coots look the other way when that happens, predominantly to accuseds of color — but cry like stuck pigs — when murdering white cops face the same process.
These cops will be convicted on federal hate crimes as well, now. And the sentences ought to be stacked — even though they won’t be. [We saw this effect, last week, here in Chicago, as Ex-Chicago-Police Officer Jason Van Dyke, who shot LaQuann McDonald 16 times, killing him… is already in a halfway house, having served over half of his jail sentence, for voluntary manslaughter.]
Thank goddesses these old white racists are dying off, one by one.
Powerline Lies... 