Saturday, May 30, 2009

How About An 'Empathic' SC Judge For This Guy?

How about a little thought experiment now? To paraphrase Obama's nomination to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, who infamously once declared that a Latina woman would make a better judge than a white man would, claiming that a judge must have "empathy"...

How about I say the following, just as a thought experiment, of course:

I believe that a white, disabled male war veteran would tend to make a better judge than would a latina woman who's never been in the military in a case like this.

Right? Gotta have been in the defendant's shoes in order to be capable of making a valid judgement, right?

At least according to Left-Wing dogma about what a judge is supposed to do.

Oklahoma City - Confronted by two holdup men, pharmacist Jerome Ersland pulled a gun, shot one of them in the head and chased the other away. Then, in a scene recorded by the drugstore's security camera, he went behind the counter, got another gun, and pumped five more bullets into the wounded teenager as he lay on the floor.

Now Ersland has been charged with first-degree murder in a case that has stirred a furious debate over vigilante justice and self-defense and turned the pharmacist into something of a folk hero.

Ersland, 57, is free on $100,000 bail, courtesy of an anonymous donor. He has won praise from the pharmacy's owner, received an outpouring of cards, letters and checks from supporters, and become the darling of conservative talk radio.

"His adrenaline was going. You're just thinking of survival," said John Paul Hernandez, 60, a retired Defense Department employee who grew up in the neighborhood. "All it was is defending your employee, business and livelihood. If I was in that position and that was me, I probably would have done the same thing."
District Attorney David Prater said Ersland was justified in shooting 16-year-old Antwun Parker once in the head, but not in firing the additional shots into his belly. The prosecutor said the teenager was unconscious, unarmed, lying on his back and posing no threat when Ersland fired what the medical examiner said were the fatal shots.

Now, who would you think would tend to empathize with Mr. Ersland, Sonia Sotomayor? Or a white disabled war veteran? Duh.

But does race matter when it comes to being a judge? Or sex? Or whether one's got a "disability"? Or whether one has been in combat?

Hmm...

Or is a judge just supposed to do their job as the Constitution dictates?

Does the Left think that the guy should fry for what he did? Or do they think empathy should come into play?

Does it matter what race the bad guys were? Should it? Shouldn't it only matter what people do that's illegal or not?

What to do... what to do? How are we going to be fair and unbiased here?

First degree murder? How the HELL can one premeditate when it's already happening, totally unplanned?

The D.A. obviously must be a racist, then. Clearly the charge is wrong. Premeditation is impossible under such circumstances!

It's self-defence, pure and simple. Who are the prosecutors to decide? Have they ever been in the guy's position? How do they know how they'd have reacted? They cannot, for once your life is immediately threatened, things change BIG TIME.

Besides, the bad guys chose to put themselves in that kind of danger, risking their lives for personal gain by robbing the man and threatening his life. Anyone who makes a big deal about skin color is just a racist. It wouldn't make any difference to me if the bad guys were white and the defendant was black. None whatsoever.

So how about some "empathy" here? Now, the Left can't say no, because their leader, Obama, has deemed that there must be.

I could suggest that Judge Sotomayor be removed as a nominee and that a guy very much like the defendant be appointed as a judge to the Supreme Court.

Oh, wait... then who will have empathy for Latina women, then? Oh, my... now we'll have to expand the size of the Supreme Court to whatever number necessary to have empathy available for each and every walk of life, all kinds of potential defendants, etc...

See the ridiculousness of the Left's contention that we need a "diverse" judiciary capable of "empathy" for each and every possible defendant of whatever "group membership(s)"?


And, yes, there's a little bit of sarcasm here.