I’ve developed a game plan for when this hits my city
I will not comply with any check points
I will force them to arrest me
I will demand a jury trial
I will be co-council with my attorney, he runs the case
I will make my own closing remarks
Which will be
"I refused to comply with a military-armed checkpoint. That is true.
But my question to you is this — why was that checkpoint there in the first place? Are we at war? No. Has there been a terrorist attack that warrants such a measure? No.
So the question before you isn’t simply why I refused to comply… it’s why the military was conducting random checkpoints in the streets of our community at all.
I thought this was the United States of America — not Iraq, not Afghanistan. Our streets are not battlefields, and our neighbors are not enemy combatants.
You, the jury, have a choice. You can accept this new reality — one where the military can set up checkpoints in our neighborhoods — and find me guilty.
Or you can take a stand and say this is not the America we are meant to be, and find me not guilty.
Those are the lines I wish to be judged by, because that was my intention from the very start."
There is the possibility that you could be whisked away and then all your options are moot. What a weird piece of history we are all involved in right now.
I’ve developed a game plan for when this hits my city
Which will be
"I refused to comply with a military-armed checkpoint. That is true.
But my question to you is this — why was that checkpoint there in the first place? Are we at war? No. Has there been a terrorist attack that warrants such a measure? No.
So the question before you isn’t simply why I refused to comply… it’s why the military was conducting random checkpoints in the streets of our community at all.
I thought this was the United States of America — not Iraq, not Afghanistan. Our streets are not battlefields, and our neighbors are not enemy combatants.
You, the jury, have a choice. You can accept this new reality — one where the military can set up checkpoints in our neighborhoods — and find me guilty.
Or you can take a stand and say this is not the America we are meant to be, and find me not guilty.
Those are the lines I wish to be judged by, because that was my intention from the very start."
There is the possibility that you could be whisked away and then all your options are moot. What a weird piece of history we are all involved in right now.
Yeah Jury trials aren’t common in dictatorships
it’ll be 12 angry magas
“we find the defendant guilty. of every crime ever committed”
We still got a legal system
For now.