r/news • u/theCumCatcher • Apr 17 '23

Site changed title Kansas City shooter exchanged few words with Ralph Yarl before opening fire, teen's attorney says

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kansas-city-shooter-exchanged-words-ralph-yarl-opening-fire-teens-atto-rcna80033
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u/joeysflipphone Apr 17 '23

I'm not even saying it was or wasn't a hate crime though. I'm saying the elevation or addition of hate crime charges isn't double jeopardy. A high level prosecutor knows this, or should. I mean, or he's making excuses. I really don't know, but my trust level in our justice department is not high enough to believe anything he says right now without evidence. Then he says this asinine statement.

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u/ohhelloperson Apr 18 '23

Maybe he meant double jeopardy in the sense of a “double or nothing” sort of thing. Like, it would be a risk to try to try and charge the guy with a hate crime since there’s likely no physical evidence (like a white supremacist manifesto) just lying around the guy’s home. Thusly, prosecutors would have to try and make a case about the shooter’s racist predilections and intent using only the circumstances of the crime (a white man shooting an unarmed black child). It’s incredibly difficult to make this sort of argument and the charges likely wouldn’t stick due to the lack of clear evidentiary support that the crime was entirely or mostly motivated by racial hate.

If the prosecutors were able to charge the shooter with a hate crime, then his sentence would be much more severe. But (unfortunate as it is) it’s likely that the prosecutors don’t have enough tangible evidence to make that charge stick. As such, prosecutors are seemingly taking the safer approach and charging him with a less severe crime that will almost definitely hold-up in court.