Courts Are Broken

The"self defense" claim seems a stretch:

• It’s not every day that a guy walks up to Chicago cops at a shooting scene and openly admits he did it. But Chicago cops say that’s exactly what happened in Rogers Park last week. Prosecutors refused to charge the man with murder, though, and a judge declined the state’s request to keep him in jail to await trial.

  The shooting occurred just before 2 p.m. Thursday in the 1600 block of West Howard, steps from the Howard CTA station. Chicago police said Kenneth Sandy, 30, got into an argument with another man, and the confrontation turned physical. The other man pulled out a gun and shot Sandy dead. A nearby surveillance camera recorded the shooting, officials said.

Note that nowhere in the article does anyone mention a weapon being used against the shooter - it just says the confrontation turned physical.

• An officer noted in the report that prosecutors “rejected” murder charges “due to self defense.” Robinson is only charged with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon.

  Prosecutors asked Judge Kelly McCarthy to keep Robinson in jail during a detention hearing over the weekend. They noted that Robinson was convicted of aggravated battery and a hate crime in 2016, so he’s not allowed to possess a gun.

And he was released on Electronic Monitoring per the judge.

So now, under Crimesha, shooting someone when a confrontation gets pyhsical - even absent a weapon - self defense is a legit claim. We would certainly like to see that standard applied to the next police shooting, let alone any one else wanting to defend themselves. We have an idea it might not fly though, based on something something something.