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Amy Swearer Profile picture
@AmySwearer
Nov 19, 2021 • 22 tweets • 13 min read • Read on X
This idea that only white people are allowed to avail themselves of the claim of self-defense, or that they can largely just do whatever and get away with it by claiming self-defense, is absurd: a thread.
Jaleel Stallings was acquitted of multiple attempted murder charges related to him shooting at several St. Paul police officers last summer. He [reasonably] claimed self-defense and that he had no idea these guys were cops.

kstp.com/news/saint-pau…
It took the jury only four hours instead of four days to acquit Stephen Spencer of murder in a white man's death during a race-related dispute. Spencer claimed self-defense.

apnews.com/article/north-…
Timothy Simpkins, an 18-year-old who shot three people with an illegally possessed gun at a Texas high school, is literally out on bond right now and claiming he shot in self-defense. Honestly, he has a viable claim wrt to the intended target.

nypost.com/2021/10/07/sus…
Dolores White stabbed her daughter's boyfriend to death. Acquitted on the theory of self-defense.

goerie.com/story/news/cri…
Trey Adams stabbed a high school classmate to death. Acquitted for? You guessed it - acting in self-defense.

journalinquirer.com/crime_and_cour…
Jesus Lima. Prosecutors argued he was the aggressor who shot a man he'd previously threatened. The jury sided with Lima, who said he was attacked by the man and four others and tried to retreat.

mercurynews.com/2021/01/28/in-…
Tony Bristol, a nightclub security guard, was acquitted after claiming self-defense in the shooting deaths of two unarmed patrons.

clarksvillenow.com/local/verdict-…
Letoya Ramseure. Claimed self-defense in the fatal shooting of her boyfriend. Acquitted on all charges.

inquirer.com/news/philadelp…
I could go on and on.

Andre Roy. abc13.com/neiman-marcus-…

Kenneth Ray Smith. nondoc.com/2021/10/25/ken…

Nehemiah Martin. 10tv.com/article/news/l…

Literally Simone Biles' brother. nytimes.com/2021/06/16/us/…

Rapper Dababy. thefader.com/2019/03/30/cha…
And there are plenty of white people who have been convicted of super questionable offenses where I thought self-defense was a viable claim. Case in point, Michael Strickland: oregonlive.com/portland/2017/…

And Michael Drejka: washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08…
tl;dr - your race-baiting narratives about self-defense claims in the American legal system are hot trash, all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Literally today, at almost the same time as the Rittenhouse verdict:

wpbf.com/article/andrew…
But wait, there's more:

Naeem Davis. dnainfo.com/new-york/20170…

Alex Hughes. chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/11/17/wal…

Mychael Jenkins. daytondailynews.com/news/local/def…

James Nero. fox8live.com/2019/12/18/zur…

Darreonta Reynolds. roanoke.com/news/crime/rey…
I'm still on single digit pages of a basic Google search.

Ansumana Jadama. archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id…

Kyla Nundley. freep.com/story/news/loc…

Keith Luncheon. nydailynews.com/new-york/brook…

Tearri Richard. mercurynews.com/2017/01/27/rar…

Naquann Ware. cantonrep.com/story/news/202…
Marcus Weldon. detroitnews.com/story/news/loc…

Tabias Davis. southbendtribune.com/story/news/cri…

Rodney West. firststateupdate.com/2019/11/towne-…

Tyshawn Plowden, dailygazette.com/2018/11/02/man…

Gabriel Chavez. elpasotimes.com/story/news/cri…
Did we think I was done because I'm really not.

Sangsouriyanh Maniphonh. syracuse.com/crime/2017/06/…

Enrique Quiniones. kget.com/news/crime-wat…

Saeve Evans. washingtonpost.com/local/public-s…

Odell Allen. al.com/news/birmingha…

Wayne Isaacs. abc7ny.com/east-new-york-…
How about some where charges were dropped before trial based on self-defense?

Joshua Walker. fox8.com/news/murder-ch…

Justin Golson. tennessean.com/story/news/201…

Ajay Alvarez. tampabay.com/news/st-peters…

Sheyland Barnett. reviewjournal.com/crime/courts/c…

Michael Jones. greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/201…
I'm bored tonight and Google is endless. More dropped charges:

Terrell Cole. richmond.com/news/local/cri…

Mamadou Diallo. cbsnews.com/news/mamadou-d…

Stacey Gordon. abc3340.com/news/local/mur…

Shaneisha Heath. cincinnati.com/story/news/cri…

Kimario Rowland-Taylor. lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/loc…
Hear me out. Cases of self-defense where a person of color *wasn't even charged because it was so obvious*

[This guy has a go-fund-me FYI] fox6now.com/news/milwaukee…

From Omaha. wowt.com/2021/06/09/oma…

From Virginia [technically charged for like a day]. nbc12.com/2020/06/12/cha…
Oh man, the amount of goalpost moving happening in response to this tweet is FUN. Like I'm very glad *you, specifically* have more nuanced arguments than "this never happens for black defendants" but let me tell you a lot of well-followed Twitter blue checks absolutely don't.
"But Amy, these 50ish cases are just anecdotes that don't address very obvious racial disparities in the system" like NO YOU DUNDERHEADS I know I literally have multiple threads on this thanks for refuting an argument I'm not making by supporting a premise I'm not debating.

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More from @AmySwearer

Amy Swearer Profile picture
Jan 22
The first lawsuit filed to stop the Birthright Citizenship EO is just bad. You can read it here, but please allow me to dismantle some of the more egregious arguments.

📜

oag.ca.gov/system/files/a…
No, actually, that's not what Wong Kim Ark held. It considered the question of whether a child born in the U.S. to lawfully present and permanently domiciled parents was a U.S. citizen, and held that the U.S.-born children of this narrow and specific subset of noncitizen parents is, indeed, a citizen. Importantly, at the time, the Chinese Exclusion Acts meant both that Chinese subjects couldn't immigrate to the U.S. and those who (like Wong Kim Ark's parents) had long been lawfully present in the U.S. couldn't become naturalized citizens. Ever. The Court in essence is dealing with a situation where federal law created a permanent race-based barrier to citizenship and a class of lawful permanent residents relegated to perpetual alienage throughout subsequent generations. This is almost an identical scenario to the situation of the U.S.-born descendants of African slaves post-Dred Scott, which Congress was specifically trying to rectify with the CRA and 14th Amendment. But Wong Kim Ark does not stand for the premise that all U.S.-born children of all immigrants under all circumstances are automatically citizens. Nor does it mean that the Court held that the 14th Amendment adopted the full scope of pre-Dred Scott common law jus soli. In fact, it *can't* mean that, given the court's repeated emphasis on the lawful and permanent domicile of Wong Kim Ark's parents, which is utterly irrelevant under the common law. A true common law opinion would have said, "he was born on U.S. soil, his parents aren't diplomats or part of some invading army, so duh guys he's a citizen."

This is also why constitutional scholars for decades after Wong Kim Ark continued saying the same thing as Trump's EO says today - it still doesn't apply universally to every other class of immigrant. See, e.g., a comment in the Yale Law Journal immediately after Wong Kim Ark that acknowledges "in this country, the alien must be permanently domiciled," even though under English common law, mere temporary sojourn was sufficient.Image
This is only true if history starts in the early 20th century. But it doesn't. In the decades following the ratification of the 14th Amendment, the federal government repeatedly articulated a view similar to that espoused in Trump's EO, and acted accordingly.

As just a few examples, in 1885 Secretary of State Thomas Bayard instructed federal officials not to consider a U.S.-born man to be a U.S. citizen because his German parents were never permanent U.S. residents and returned with the child to Germany when he was two years old. He was therefore, at the time of his birth, “subject to a foreign power” and not “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Earlier that year, then-Secretary Frederick Frelinghuysen similarly instructed officials to deny a man a U.S. passport despite his birth on U.S. soil, because his German father brought him back to Germany as an infant and raised him there. While the man’s father eventually returned to the United States and became a naturalized citizen, the man himself continued to reside in Germany. Why? Because “the fact of birth [in the United States], under circumstances implying alien subjection, establishes of itself no right of citizenship.”

In 1890, the Secretary of the Treasury issued an opinion denying citizenship for the child of a would-be immigrant who'd not yet "landed" but was being held on a ship in New York Harbor while awaiting immigration approval. The mother had been allowed to give birth and receive treatment at a New York hospital. Nonetheless, they were both deported as non-citizens, and the case was distinguished from that of an immigrant mother who'd "resided in this country a considerable time before her child was born."Image
Read 6 tweets
Amy Swearer Profile picture
Dec 16, 2024
The op-ed I tweeted below looked at 2023 data, but for the sake of argument, let's look at the data for 2024.

It's the same story.

Let's look at some of the 54 deaths that Everytown says have occurred so far this year during gunfire on school campuses...
They include a fatal road rage shooting that happened to occur in a school parking lot because that's where the drivers pulled into before the confrontation. School was done for the year and no students were present on campus.

ktsm.com/news/gadsden-h…
In another "school shooting" death, a bunch of adults met in a private school's parking lot for a pre-arranged fight. It was 1 a.m., and neither involved nor threatened the safety of any student or staff member.

eastidahonews.com/2024/02/compas…
Read 11 tweets
Amy Swearer Profile picture
Oct 3, 2024
A defenseless Detroit woman was kidnapped and raped by her abusive/stalker ex-boyfriend just one day before she was set to take her state-mandated course for a concealed carry permit.

fox2detroit.com/news/detroit-p…
We only know about this because her failure to show up for the class tipped off that something was wrong, and ended up being key to getting police involved in finding and rescuing her. So the article mentions it in passing. God knows how often it happens but isn't mentioned.
GUYS. Last month this absolute trash fire of a human picked this woman's car lock, hid in her trunk for hours, and CRAWLED OUT OF HER TRUNK while she was driving. And that's after he snuck into her building and lured her to open her door so he could try to force his way inside.
Read 4 tweets
Amy Swearer Profile picture
Sep 17, 2024
Since the NYT wouldn't dare allow a response op-ed to this, I'll settle for response tweet thread. Buckle up.

nytimes.com/2024/09/16/opi…
The interesting part about the last sentence is that it's so particularly true in the case of the Tucson shooting that it undermines the argument it's just "about the guns." Loughner was both an abuser of illegal substances, as well as clearly mentally ill and dangerous, and everyone knew it. His parents were incredibly worried about it. At the insistence of police, they took away his shotgun. On their own initiative, they kept disabling his car at night so that he couldn't easily leave. But the state never took action to ensure he couldn't just buy a new gun, which he did. His parents never really pushed the issue about a mental health evaluation (though I'm not unsympathetic to the difficulties of forcing your adult son to do anything). It's not that he fell into some grey area where there wasn't anything anyone could do under existing mental health frameworks - he should have been a clear candidate for involuntary inpatient commitment. Of all mass shooters, Loughner's stands out with the Parkland shooter as one of the most clear cut cases of "holy cow why did no one ever officially follow up or intervene." And that's not actually a story about guns. It's a story about our mental health system, where people who are clearly schizophrenic and dangerous are allowed to spiral sans appropriate intervention until they reach a point of acute crisis.Image
No, respectfully, the through lines are 100% the heated political rhetoric and the Secret Service's abject failures. Without those factors, the guns are utterly irrelevant to the equation. Guns in vacuum are just an object. The political rhetoric and security failures create the context in which a person desires to and is capable of using that tool for horrific purposes.

Unrelated - it's both weird and very telling that she reduces her characterization of the guns down to just "semiautomatic weapons." Not "weapons of war" or "assault-style weapons." No, the baddie here is basically every modern firearm. Normally they aren't so brazen in saying the quiet part out loud, but we're definitely seeing it more often.Image
Read 10 tweets
Amy Swearer Profile picture
Jan 18, 2024
I'm reading through the DOJ's scathing report on the disastrous Uvalde response so that you don't have to.

Here's what sticks out: 🧵

static.texastribune.org/media/files/17…
The investigation "identified several critical failures and other breakdowns" during the response and refers to "cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training that contributed to those failures and breakdowns."
The most significant failure? First responders treated a clear active shooter scenario--where generally accepted practice is to "immediately engage the subject...if necessary, bypassing injured victims and placing themselves in harm's way"--as a barricaded subject scenario.
Read 16 tweets
Amy Swearer Profile picture
Aug 14, 2023
Can we take a minute to appreciate how many women have protected themselves and others with firearms in the last two or so weeks? It's basically a highlight real of just how important the right to keep and bear arms is for us, too. Tip of the DGU iceberg, but important:

📜📜📜
Aug. 11, Tucson (AZ) - A woman living by herself fatally shot a would-be intruder who kept trying to break into her home despite knowing she was armed.

kold.com/2023/08/12/pcs…
Aug. 11, Pottstown (PA) - A woman shot and wounded the father of her child after he assaulted her, leaving various injuries. He not only had an active restraining order against him, but also had active warrants for violating that restraining order.

archive.ph/mP2Rh
Read 15 tweets

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