{"id":26874,"date":"2012-03-16T05:30:09","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T10:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=26874"},"modified":"2012-03-16T07:47:39","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T12:47:39","slug":"male-black-and-guilty-until-proven-innocent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=26874","title":{"rendered":"Male, Black And Guilty Until Proven Innocent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s be clear on two things:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Domestic abuse is bad. \u00a0Don’t abuse your significant other. \u00a0Physically, verbally, emotionally. \u00a0Just don’t.<\/li>\n
  2. If you are male in Minnesota (or, pretty much, anywhere), you need to get over the idea that you have any right to self-defense. \u00a0If a kerfuffle turns into a rhubarb and thence into scuffle, even if the woman clearly starts the fight<\/em>, if the police are called and she has so much as a bruise on her wrists (from pummeling the male), and the male doesn’t have a meat cleaver stuck in his forehead, it’ll be he that goes to jail, and run into a domestic abuse charge in which he may not legally\u00a0<\/em>be “guilty until proven innocent”, but in which guilt is designed to be incredibly easy to prove, unless you are wealthy enough to afford quite the lawyer. \u00a0(Some of our more depraved leftybloggers, and at least one idiot state legislator, will no doubt copy this paragraph and tweet “Berg Supports Domestic Abuse!”. \u00a0Far from it. \u00a0Seriously, you’ve been warned).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    With that in mind, Minnesota Viking Chris Cook\u00a0was acquitted yesterday on all domestic abuse charges<\/a>\u00a0after his girlfriend admitted to starting the fight and concocting the “strangulation” charge:<\/div>\n

    Cook was jailed and charged with domestic assault by strangulation, which can carry a prison sentence of up to three years.<\/p>\n

    But in a phone call to a police detective 20 days after the incident, Baker recanted her claim about the choking. She said she started the fight and had beaned Cook from behind with one of her shoes, cutting him behind the left ear.<\/p>\n

    The slap that knocked her into the wall was a reflex to that, she claimed.<\/p>\n

    She also acknowledged punching him and pulling out three of the shoulder-length dreadlocks he wore at the time. (She later testified she kept one of the dreadlocks.)<\/p>\n

    She also told the detective that Cook’s slap had ruptured her left eardrum. With that information, prosecutors amended the criminal complaint to add a count of third-degree assault, which accused him of causing “substantial bodily harm” by breaking her eardrum.<\/p>\n

    The injury healed by itself.<\/p>\n

    Before the case went to trial, prosecutors offered Cook a chance to plead guilty to one of the felonies in return for a three-year probated sentence. He rejected the deal.<\/p>\n

    Baker maintained her recantation when prosecutors called her as a witness. She took the blame for the fight turning physical, saying she’d been drinking that evening, didn’t handle booze well and had made up the choking allegation because she was mad at Cook and wanted to see him jailed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    So that goes to show you – the domestic abuse system works! \u00a0Provided that you’re a millionaire who can afford a top-flight lawyer and the plaintiff actually admits to having lied about the whole thing. \u00a0Oh, and here’s hoping he can recover from ten games’ suspension to make the roster and keep your exceptionally-hard-to-achieve career.<\/p>\n

    All you guys living in trailer parks in Elko or duplexes in Minneapolis or ramblers in Hugo who might run afoul a similar situation? \u00a0Without the whole “top flight lawyer” bit? \u00a0No, no – it doesn’t work that way for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Let’s be clear on two things: Domestic abuse is bad. \u00a0Don’t abuse your significant other. \u00a0Physically, verbally, emotionally. \u00a0Just don’t. If you are male in Minnesota (or, pretty much, anywhere), you need to get over the idea that you have any right to self-defense. \u00a0If a kerfuffle turns into a rhubarb and thence into scuffle, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-men-and-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26874"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26878,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26874\/revisions\/26878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}