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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28780 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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Isn't the "intent to intimidate" the big part? It seems hard to prove (and should be), and could be applied to a candlelight vigil as well, which would usually be a bad thing, IMO.

I didn't pay that much attention, but in the images I saw, the torches seemed an incidental thing. If they were waving them in people's faces, sure, fire is serious business. But if they were just walking holding them, no I don't think the law should be stretched that way. It's like if there were a law about wearing military clothes to intimidate, so anyone with a camou-colored backpack, or rangers baseball hat got charged with an extra serious crime.

It does appear that these particular defendants were not just walking holding them, but rather: "A second man has pleaded guilty for encircling counterprotesters with torches on the evening before the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. . . . Then, Tufts alleged, the defendant allegedly swung his extinguished torch in the direction of some counterprotesters."

Whether that is sufficient for a conviction under the statute, or whether those actions should be protected speech, or whether some counterprotestors should have been charged as well are of course different questions. I am merely trying to clarify what is alleged to have happened.

If the torch was extinguished at the time he swung it, it's certainly irrelevant to a charge where an element is a burning object.

No, if the torch was extingujshed, it is irrelevant to a charge of assault with a burning object. But it is relevant to the issue of whether they acted with the intent to intimidate; if I surround you with a burning torch and make threatening statements, the fact that I immediately thereafter assaulted you - with fists, or an object -- is relevant to show that I had the intent to intimidate when I surrounded you. Note that I said only that it is relevant to show intent, not that it is **proof **of intent:

Under Virginia Rule of Evidence 2:401, "`[r]elevant evidence' means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact in issue more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence." The scope of relevant evidence in Virginia is quite broad, as "[e]very fact, however remote or insignificant, that tends to establish the probability or improbability of a fact in issue is relevant." Virginia Elec. & Power Co. v. Dungee, 258 Va. 235, 260, 520 S.E.2d 164, 179 (1999)

Commonwealth v. Proffitt, 792 SE 2d 3, 6-7 (Va Supreme Court 2016).

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