OT: Rittenhouse shot "three black men" - apparently! (2023 Update)

About as disconcerting as "losing" to a pinball machine.

I think they should try.

I'd say he isn't too. But, the defendants will pose he is because he talked to the press after the incident. I hope the slanderers are not successful, but it is theoretically a possibility.

I don't know why the law is as it is, I just know it is. In effect, it is much easier to get away with slandering a public figure than a private one in the US.

Yes, because only a moron would want it the reverse.

Simon S Aysdie wrote: =================

** Read what I asked.

** Did he ?? In any case that doe not make him a celeb of any kind. ** Politicians expect to be disliked by some or many and have to cop it. But that has nothing to do with *defaming* them with deliberate lies.

...... Phil

<snip>

As in Donald Trump's defamation of Joe Biden, in claiming that Biden suffers from senile dementia?

Phil maybe silly enough not to realise that it was a deliberate lie, but Phil's ignorance is part of the problem, and his denial of it is another.

** FFS the whole world knows that claim is 100% TRUE !!!!

ONLY the craziest, lefty loonies think he is OK.

Like IEEE Bill

...... Phil

With nearly 50,000 juveniles incarcerated in the USA, more than half of them white, quite a lot it seems.

totly

oh right

nightjar wrote: ============ >

** Know how many juveniles live in the USA ? It's nearly 50 million. So only one in a thousand. Half of them committed no serious crime. Most of them have terrible family backgrounds or suffered a tragedy.

...... Phil

Young white males are clearly being disproportionately targeted by the police, then. Glad we got that settled. --

"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion,and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all historical experience."

- The Communist Manifesto, Marx & Engels.

Nevertheless, that is a core principle in jurisprudence and a decision faced by judges and juries across the world every single day in both civil and criminal lawsuits. This is most familiar to us all in press reports of murder cases where the jury is tasked with determining if a defendant had *intended* at the time of the killing to cause death or serious injury to the victim. Here's a bit of background just in case anyone GaS:

That's not how it works! When a case comes to trial, it is the job of the jury to apply the 'reasonable man test' to the mind of the defendant; that is all that is required. Naturally if you're going to rely on asking him/her then they're going to claim they never intended the outcome. So they're never asked. The jury has to get inside the mind of the individual and decide based on the available a priori evidence. --

"Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists."

- The Communist Manifesto, Marx & Engels

Or you turn into a vegatable. Whichever comes first. :-) --

"Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists."

- The Communist Manifesto, Marx & Engels

me too

One of my links was miskeyed. If you're getting a DNS fail on both then these direct IP addresses might work.

Maybe your DNS is filtering sites and another provider may resolve the domain names correctly.

Even Elon Musk won in a US court after he _purportedly_ called someone a pedophile which seems like a far more defamatory statement and defamation per se to me, he just said "pedo guy" is a generalized term of abuse where he comes from and the jury bought that, lol!

What a "white supremacist" is is difficult to say exactly, there's not a lot of ambiguity about what a "pedophile" is. But "That guy is a criminal pedophile who enjoys sex with children" isn't what Elon Musk said so he got off.

"This verdict sends a signal, and one signal only - that you can make any accusation you want to, as vile as it may be and as untrue as it may be, and somebody can get away with it,"

Ya, welcome to America. Having a billion dollars sure helps a lot here.

Ya OK whatever. The statement from way back at the beginning of the thread by Fox News is correct tho, libel/defamation cases in the US are difficult even in principle because defamation is narrowly defined here, because the First Amendment is broad, and the legal precedent is that the First Amendment is always given much more weight than anyone's right to punish someone for badmouthing them.

"Moreover, courts are highly protective of 'opinion' statements. People are allowed to reach a different conclusion from the jury in calling Rittenhouse a murderer or to characterize his actions as racist given the subject of the underlying protests. That does not mean that they are right or fair. There is no evidence that Rittenhouse is a White supremacist. However, courts give a wide berth to free speech in such public controversies."

which is how it is. There's no evidence that he is one, but there's also no evidence that he isn't, the state of being a "white supremacist" is a mental state and civil law has difficulty making decisions about what anyone's mental state is or isn't.

In practice the biggest obstacle to successful defamation suits in the US like most litigation is cost, there's only a real point to doing it against someone you might stand to get some money from and that's going to cost you. But there's no guarantee even if you win the court/jury will decide whatever sum you're asking for in damages is appropriate, sometimes it decides an apology/retraction of the statement is sufficient.

It's not a easy path to easy money and it's silly to think that it's straightforward to milk some billion-dollar media outlets for millions for publishing "murderer" instead of "alleged murderer" if they only did it a few times about someone who's not a public figure, it may be decided that "The Times regrets the error" is sufficient. Who do you think the legal system works for, you? that's dumb.

The biggest awards to regular people tend to be for campaigns of defamation lasting years or decades when the unfortunate victim by some miracle manages to get the case to trial and prove it to the necessary standard to a (dumb) jury.