Chicago / Cook County prosecutors are declining to charge gang members for homicides – partly because witnesses are terrified to speak out…
….and partly because they, to quote a line that hardly ever works for rapists, “consented” (I’ve added emphasis):
While she wouldn’t specify what other evidence prosecutors needed to file charges, the police report acknowledged that victims of the shootout weren’t cooperating with investigators.
But the report also framed the state’s attorney’s office’s decision to decline charges in a different light: “Mutual combatants was cited as the reason for the rejection.” Mutual combat is a legal term used to define a fight or struggle that two parties willingly engage in.
This should revolutionize self-defense cases: “Your honor, the decedent voluntarily entered my client’s house. My client voluntarily shot him”.
Well, that’d be too simple, wouldn’t it?
Not too far off topic I hope to add a plug for David Horowitz’s new book “I Can’t Breathe “ which deals with BLM, the racial reckoning that followed George Floyd’s death, and sundry topics .
Obviously, the way to solve this issue is to disband the NRA and keep AR 15’s out of the hands of middle aged white guys.
Colorado hospital declined to do a transplant operation because the patient wasn’t fully vaccinated.
Perhaps Chicago hospitals should implement the same policy for shot-up gang-bangers brought to the ER? “No paper, no doctor; go bleed out in the street.” It certainly would cut down on repeat offenders.
ICYMI. Yet another moving car-to-car gun fight. Talk about your “mutual combatants”.
Wonder if the dead lady, an innocent bystander, will be counted in among the almost daily growing homicide stats.
jdm:
Depends on whether or not she’s white.
On another note, Justice and Drew had Minneapolis Mayoral Candidate Laverne Turner on their show yesterday. He’s a Republican from North Minneapolis and is well known for his work with youth groups. He’s very focused on the crime in the area and he says he’s got people from both sides of the political spectrum supporting him. Anyone that’s voting in Minneapolis may want to check him out and maybe throw a couple of bucks his way.
That’s not how Andrew Branca explains the term “Mutual Combatants”.
Moved from Chicongo over 40 years ago. Never looked back..
Mutual combat is fixing to be nationalized.
It could be because victims are too afraid to speak out, but the article states clearly that they found a bunch of shell casings and a number of weapons that presumably have fingerprints and perhaps DNA on them. You also had a number of officers there who had, presumably, body cameras to catch the action, including the make, color, and license plate numbers of the cars used for the escape.
Now call me weird here, but this is a BUNCH of evidence that any COMPETENT police department and any COMPETENT prosecutor would jump on like a Rottie on a T-bone. So this isn’t about reluctant witnesses–that’s only a tangential issue. Main issue is that Kim Foxx, as in the Smollett case, isn’t willing to prosecute pretty obvious cases. That probably explains a lot of the reluctance to testify.
Side note; the article links to a gang-related killing in Schaumburg, which at least when I was growing up, was NOT among the bad areas in Chicagoland. So the area is going downhill in a HURRY.