Student arrested after video mocking Charlie Kirk mourners goes viral

[Moostache]

37. No, its not... but it IS the district attorney's job to elect not to prosecute and dismiss the matter outright.

I will go into the way back here and relate an ancient story from my past to describe how this is optically bad and how its par for the course for local law enforcement actions as well... police arrest and the DA choose the prosecution of the case or the dismisal of the charges if they cannot get a conviction. Nothing burns a DA's ass more than bringing a case they can't win or are likely to lose.

In the fall of 1992, I was a student at Indiana University in Bloomington. My roomates and I were hosting a college party (i.e. - loud, lots of people, some underage drinking and likely drugs being consumed in the area). At some point, the police were called to the duplex we lived in and took the IDs of myself and a roomate and told us to break it up and keep it down. They left without arrests. That was at about 11PM or so. We sort of complied and the majority of the party goers were gone by 1:30AM, with only a few roomates and neighbors left in the shared parking lot being VERY loud and obnoxious - as drunk college students are wont to be... it was this outdoor revelry that angered someone and prompted a second call to the police.

This led to a return visit from the police. I was in the building, in a downstairs bedroom and not part of the 'disturbance' outside at all. My other ID'd roomate had left the premises to spend the evening at his girlfriend's place, when the police arrived again. This time, one of my underage (20) roomates got scared of an under-age consumption charge and he tried to flee....making it all of 20 yards before he was tackled (actually tripped on a tree root outside his lower floor window) and was arrested. At that point, another friend of mine, who was seriously inebriated, but inside the house, began yelling at the police to STFU and keep it down (thinking he was funny and antagonizing them because he assumed they would not do anything)...Wrong. They arrested him for obstruction and he ended up getting a fine and plea deal to avoid any further action.

Those secondary disturbances - now INSIDE the house as well as outside earlier - led the police to decide they were going to arrest ME for the actions of others because of that earlier visit and presentation of my identification as a resident.

So, instead of finishing my evening in my bed, I was left in a compromised position (no pants, no ID, no wallet) and handcuffed and taken into custody, booked for "disturbing the peace" and released at 8:45 AM Saturday AM in a pair of jail-issued sweat pants and paper 'slippers' (which were actually more like shoe covers). One of the things Bloomington PD loved to do then (and may very well still do today for all I know) was rouse off-campus parties and get arrests that would be expunged if the 'violators' pled guilty and did 20 hours of 'community service' - which meant cleaning up the stadium after football games or basketball games later in the year.

My underage roomate immediately pled out to accept "pre-trial diversion" and avoid a charge or anything permanent on his record. His case was dismissed after he paid court costs and a nominal fine ($100) - although some of our more raccous friends nearly got him hit with contempt charges when they were admonmished by the judge, from the bench during the sentencing hearing, for being out of order (loudly laughing when the charges of 'fleeing from an officer' and attempted evasion of law enforcement were read against him).

I decided that I was NOT going to take a pre-trial diversion plea, nor pay any fines, unless they could convict me (which I was reasonably sure they could not with the evidence available, but by no means certain). I decided I would go to trial instead; I was already released on my own recognizance, and got a court date and left. That case was held over my head by the DA from September of 1992 until June of 1993 - with 3 continuances to the prosecution (i.e. delays that they kept trying to get me to accept a larger $500 fine and plead guilty to public intoxication and pre-trial diversion instead to make the whole thing go away, which was offered by assistant DAs on two occassions). I was also threatened with additional charges of serving underage persons and illegal assembly at one point. It was a legal shake down. They wanted me to just take the rap, pay the fines and costs and then go away.

Well, I had already decided "fuck them". I was the one hauled OUT of bed and arrested with a pair of boxer shorts alone to wear, and taken to jail AFTER the party inside was dismissed and then only because of the actions of others outside the premises and unrelated directly to me or the previous law enforcement interaction brought them back.

In the end, after attempting to strong arm me into a guilty plea for a charge they had no chance of making stick and failing to get me to cave to their other "offers", I got a call from the DA's office on the morning before the court date to say that the charges had been dropped and would not be refiled and the case against me was dismissed. They tried to use my age and situation and the 'crimes' (misdemenaors at best) of others to force me to pay a fine and give in to the systemic abuse of student's rights. I won, but I also understand that th system of justice in America is HEAVILY tilted to those with $$$$ and influence and against those lacking either. Its a lesson I never forgot and one that I sadly see all to often in news coverage and stories today.

Our system of justice has always been two-tiered at best (far, far worse if you fall into tier 3 or lower - which is non-wealthy, non-white men). I was broke as hell, but I was also a white male, so I qualified for lesser coercion from the DA than I might have otherwise faced. The more things change, the more they stay the same in America. The differene now is the seeping into national and federal levels the kind of sleazy corruption and influence peddling that has ALWAYS been around, just more covert in the past.

The bigger concern to me now are judges that create a prosecution friendly environment not based on the public good, safety or the law, but rather on the political whims of the dominant party at the moment. This is the REAL danger for us all, because unlike my largely harmless and inconvenient interaction with the law 32 years ago, today we are seeing people arrested and brought to trial in situations where liberty and freedom are not protected by the courts the way they once were under the law. And once THAT principle is lost, it cannot be restored without a fundamental reset of the entire system. It is foundational and fundamental and it is really in peril right now...