Federal Charges for BLM Protesters Even More Appalling in Light of Breonna Taylor Indictment

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

In light of the charges filed against former Louisville Metro police officer Brett Hankison in Kentucky last week, civil liberties advocates and news outlets have taken a harder look at how police and prosecutors’ offices have been charging Black Lives Matter protesters arrested during nationwide demonstrations this year. Among them is the news website Insider, which analyzed some of the more than 13,000 arrests that have taken place during the protests. According to civil liberties experts, the severity of the charges protesters are facing is “deeply disturbing” and “atypical” compared to their crimes.

The article focuses on one case in particular: Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman, two nonwhite protesters (Mattis is Black) who could be punished with life in prison for throwing a molotov cocktail at an empty police van in Brooklyn. N.Y., in May.

Rather than being charged with a low-level offense, Mattis and Rahman were charged with arson in interstate commerce; the “interstate commerce” aspect, as Insider notes, means the pair are now accused of a federal crime, bringing with it a heftier sentence.

This is unusual, according to legal experts. Interstate-commerce violations typically involve trafficking weapons across state lines or kidnapping. So why did those charges apply to Mattis and Rahman?

Here’s how one legal expert summarized it to The Appeal:

“I think this is a really crazy prosecution,” said Rachel Barkow, a New York University law professor who sat on the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 2013 to 2018. Barkow noted that in their May 30 indictment, prosecutors argued that damaging a local police car is federal crime because NYPD is “an institution and organization receiving federal financial assistance” and that “the NYPD and New York City government conduct business in interstate commerce,” including “purchasing vehicles and other equipment and supplies” from other states. “Why is this federal?” Barkow asked rhetorically. “The theory that the car is an ‘instrument in interstate commerce’ seems like an enormous overreach.”

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/federal-charges-black-lives-matter-223000795.html

[4139]

1. Zero sympathy, 1. Arson is evil, 2. if tRump wins it will likely the violence that helped him win.

[denbot]

3. Life in prison for burning a vehicle

Are you sure your at the appropriate website?

[chowder66]

2. Seems like a dangerous precedent to set. Life in prison for damaging a car, no lives lost.

What if you were in a car accident with a cop car and it was a bad cop driving it and they used this?

[MagickMuffin]

4. President Biden and HIS DOJ will fix this

Remember: VOTE THEM OUT

The main reason to make it federal is another VOTER SUPPRESSION tactic. Very obvious to those paying attention.