imported post
yelohamr wrote:
CA_Libertarian wrote:
yelohamr wrote:
You can be a felon without being convicted, you only have to commit one. After being convicted, you are then a convicted felon. Felony warrants are issued before a trial.
I thought there was something in our US Constitution about due process and being innocent until PROVEN guilty. One is not a felon just because the cop suspects the person has committed a felony.
Besides... there are WAY too many "crimes" that are considered felonies that should not even be crimes in the first place. Many felons never commit a violent act, and don't present a danger to anybody when fleeing. Is it truly just to take the life of a non-violent criminal? I think not. And I don't trust any person (LEO or not) to be judge, jury, and executioner.
Don't think so much.
Check your dictionary for the definition of felony.
I apologise for taking the troll bait that hijacked this thread.
Nobody's disputing the definition. I don't know where you got that from.
What you seem to fail (or refuse) to understand is that, legally, one may not be treated as a felon until one is convicted of a felony. Otherwise, we wouldn't, you know, have trials before we executed people.
The act of arresting someone for an offense is not tantamount to, and does not justify, treating them as a felon before they have even been tried.
This is why, even when arresting someone, the police must use *minimal* force, on the assumption that the arrestee is in fact innocent, even though he is to be *tried* for a crime. Shooting a suspect in the back for running, simply because the crime with which he is accused (but has yet to be convicted of) happens to be a felony, creates a status-based result where the accused is effectively tried and executed on the spot, "for being a felon".
Of course, none of this applies to situations where the felony is an act of endangerment of the lives of others, and the shooting is reasonably believed to be necessary to prevent such clear and present danger.
Anyway, I'm not trolling, although it's of course convenient to bandy about that term on this internet. I got the distinct impression that you were trying to intimate that you'd prefer it if McNamara never got his way, and for it to still be permissible to shoot fleeing suspects. This intimation, unless I imagined it, made the post as off-topic as the reference to carrying bananas at first made it on-topic, and, since I took umbrage to your intimation, I felt inclined to respond. This does not make me a troll.
