Thank you, Will, for another in a long run of excellent posts, which I consider generally the most valuable material I am currently reading, since your analysis is both long-term, drawing detailed historical analogies, and also because you don't shrink from the central problem.
On one minor point of fact, Charlie Kirk (RIP) himself singled out Teresa Stokes for blame shortly before his death. At that point, the suppression of the story by the legacy media had just been defeated, so the details were new to Charlie and other commentators. We now have the advantage of a further ten days that were denied Charlie by his assassin.
The NC legal site doesn't allow me to access its material, maybe because I'm outside NC, or outside the US, so what I know about the role of the magistrate judge is based on general US and UK law (there may be some, presumably minor, differences in NC). As a magistrate judge, Stokes can adjudicate misdemeanors and petty offenses, like victimless traffic violations. She can hear criminal cases for the purpose of providing paper work and initial information to a qualified judge in a higher court, but she cannot adjudicate. She is a legal officer of first resort in her role of magistrate judge. In UK law, the position is simply termed "magistrate", and there are no legal exams to be passed in order to become or remain a magistrate. In both the UK and generally in the US, office holders are nominated by more senior law officers.
Now DeCarlos Brown came before Stokes, in January of this year, on a charge of wasting police time. He had phoned 911, and then told the responding officers that he was being controlled by a device within his body. That was all. He did not, for example, assault the officers or threaten them.
From all the information I can glean from outside NC, Stokes was simply in no position to place him in custody, both because of the limitations on her own jurisdiction, and because of the triviality of Brown's misdemeanor on this occasion.
Now even if Stokes is just the kind of law officer who would want to release violent criminals if she should ever pass her law exams to become a qualified judge in higher courts, you can see that this is irrelevant to the present case, which stands upon her very restricted powers, and upon the triviality of the particular charge that brought Brown before her in January.
So unless there is some relevant and substantial difference in the powers of NC magistrate judges, Stokes is surely a red herring in the story of DeCarlos Brown, and his ability to roam the streets.
Some responsibility may fall on previous (non-magistrate) judges, who had adjudicated on Brown's felonies, but these would have to be examined case by case - we cannot simply assume the conclusion that we prefer. Clearly, the US faces a major problem in the anarcho-tyrannical strategy of leftist judges freeing violent criminals, but that does not mean that Brown, specifically, was a "beneficiary" of this strategy (we know, for example, that he served a substantial custodial sentence in the past).
There are, however, two major factors at play that we already know about, without the need for examining further evidence:
1. the policy of de-institutionalizing the mentally ill, principally dating back in the US, I believe, to the 1980s (with "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" effectively acclimatizing the public to this change).
2. the legacy media suppressing stories of black-on-white violent crime, while focusing on, or even inventing stories of white-on-black violent crime, generally seeking to give the impression that the US is a violent racist hell-hole that victimizes its black population; in standard DEI fashion, the unequal outcome of more black prisoners serving time for violent crime is supposedly, in itself, evidence of systemic racism wielded against them.
Unfortunately, the various naive, incompetent and malign actors behind both these contributing factors have not done anything that will bring them before a court in connection with the murder of Iryna Zarutska.
Thank you, Will, for another in a long run of excellent posts, which I consider generally the most valuable material I am currently reading, since your analysis is both long-term, drawing detailed historical analogies, and also because you don't shrink from the central problem.
On one minor point of fact, Charlie Kirk (RIP) himself singled out Teresa Stokes for blame shortly before his death. At that point, the suppression of the story by the legacy media had just been defeated, so the details were new to Charlie and other commentators. We now have the advantage of a further ten days that were denied Charlie by his assassin.
The NC legal site doesn't allow me to access its material, maybe because I'm outside NC, or outside the US, so what I know about the role of the magistrate judge is based on general US and UK law (there may be some, presumably minor, differences in NC). As a magistrate judge, Stokes can adjudicate misdemeanors and petty offenses, like victimless traffic violations. She can hear criminal cases for the purpose of providing paper work and initial information to a qualified judge in a higher court, but she cannot adjudicate. She is a legal officer of first resort in her role of magistrate judge. In UK law, the position is simply termed "magistrate", and there are no legal exams to be passed in order to become or remain a magistrate. In both the UK and generally in the US, office holders are nominated by more senior law officers.
Now DeCarlos Brown came before Stokes, in January of this year, on a charge of wasting police time. He had phoned 911, and then told the responding officers that he was being controlled by a device within his body. That was all. He did not, for example, assault the officers or threaten them.
From all the information I can glean from outside NC, Stokes was simply in no position to place him in custody, both because of the limitations on her own jurisdiction, and because of the triviality of Brown's misdemeanor on this occasion.
Now even if Stokes is just the kind of law officer who would want to release violent criminals if she should ever pass her law exams to become a qualified judge in higher courts, you can see that this is irrelevant to the present case, which stands upon her very restricted powers, and upon the triviality of the particular charge that brought Brown before her in January.
So unless there is some relevant and substantial difference in the powers of NC magistrate judges, Stokes is surely a red herring in the story of DeCarlos Brown, and his ability to roam the streets.
Some responsibility may fall on previous (non-magistrate) judges, who had adjudicated on Brown's felonies, but these would have to be examined case by case - we cannot simply assume the conclusion that we prefer. Clearly, the US faces a major problem in the anarcho-tyrannical strategy of leftist judges freeing violent criminals, but that does not mean that Brown, specifically, was a "beneficiary" of this strategy (we know, for example, that he served a substantial custodial sentence in the past).
There are, however, two major factors at play that we already know about, without the need for examining further evidence:
1. the policy of de-institutionalizing the mentally ill, principally dating back in the US, I believe, to the 1980s (with "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" effectively acclimatizing the public to this change).
2. the legacy media suppressing stories of black-on-white violent crime, while focusing on, or even inventing stories of white-on-black violent crime, generally seeking to give the impression that the US is a violent racist hell-hole that victimizes its black population; in standard DEI fashion, the unequal outcome of more black prisoners serving time for violent crime is supposedly, in itself, evidence of systemic racism wielded against them.
Unfortunately, the various naive, incompetent and malign actors behind both these contributing factors have not done anything that will bring them before a court in connection with the murder of Iryna Zarutska.
Interesting, thanks
https://open.substack.com/pub/emburlingame/p/the-weaponization-of-demographics?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1gm72z