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dead-girl-prolific · 9 months ago

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Ticci Toby + Personality Disorders and Mood Disorders

this is based off of @necroromantics post, i felt very inspired to share my thoughts on it, although it took me about 3-4 days to get done i had a lot of fun!

this is mainly about BPD and ASPD(one mention because i don't know a lot about ASPD as a whole) as far as personality disorders go, i know the most about those when it comes to personality disorders. out of mood disorders, to stay relevant to the original post it'll just be the two types of Bipolar disorder.

I chose these three disorders as my topic because they are the most common headcanon for his character(and my headcanons).

PSA:

SOME OF THIS INFORMATION COULD BE OUTDATED, i haven't researched Bipolar in 2-3 years so if anything is wrong i'd like to address the fact that i am NOT a professional! also some/most of this is personal experiences and researches i've done!

now that that's out of the way. let's start rambling!

What is bipolar disorder?

From someone whos lived with both parents struggling with BD (Bipolar Disorder) (my mom shows heavy signs of it, but is not diagnosed, my dad is) it is very much possible i could have it too, but both BPD and BD have a lot in common but are still very different (symptoms). They both have severe mood swings, They share some symptoms, such as depression and impulsive behavior. The main thing that separates them is that BPD is a Personality disorder and Bipolar is a Behavioral Mood Disorder. BD is characterized by periods of extreme highs and lows, known as manic and depressive episodes. BPD affects how individuals perceive and interact with the world around them.

They are very hard to differentiate in a patient and people usually get misdiagnosed, the symptoms are VERY similar which is why it isn’t common to diagnose minors. (it’s not impossible to be diagnosed with both as a minor.) (this is what my doctors have shared with me)

a little tangent- my dad was diagnosed with BD at a very young age (i’d say 12 or/to 16) and it was only diagnosed because he had several…”episodes” (he broke several laws and maybe/probably committed a few felonies.) i don’t know much about my dad’s past, but from what my grandpa and him have told me he’s been bailed out of jail/juvie a lot. He was not medicated because he didn’t like what the medications did to him, so that’s probably why he was so “EXTREME”.

His episodes lasted for a while sometimes 3-4 months or less, but my episodes (i have BPD) can last a few months as well(but around 2-3 months), because of clinical depression(major depressive episodes) which is a huge symptom of BPD, the longest episode i’ve had was maybe two and a half months and it happens a lot about once-twice a year, with no rhyme or reason. i'm looking into getting diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder because i have a lot of symptoms that concern me, but it's possible i was misdiagnosed with BPD(i doubt it because of the symptoms i experience) it is very much possible i could have both, which is why i need to figure it out, it's dangerous for me to not be medicated properly.

Does Toby canonically have bipolar?

If you don’t know enough about something (BD) you shouldn’t create a character with said things (BD) or at least do research before. In my opinion Toby has a personality disorder, although I cannot quite pinpoint which. If i could psycho-analyze (it’s been a while since i’ve taken a full blown look at the entirety of the character.) he most likely struggles with Bipolar but it was misdiagnosed with BPD he also shows some symptoms and traits of someone with ASPD. TECHNICALLY he has canonical BPD through his behavior, but the creator of his character "misdiagnosed" him and gave him Bipolar disorder, but it's totally okay to headcanon him with something else (or something more "fitting") or just projecting, all of it is fine to some extent.

Do you headcanon Toby to have bipolar?(or a personality disorder)

Yes, to put it simply he has potential to be a multi-faceted character, and I know a lot of people like to project onto creepypasta characters in general, as a coping skill. Toby is also “canonically” “Bipolar” i use both of those terms loosely. As someone with (possible) Bipolar and has lived around those with Bipolar I’d be open to writing his character with Bipolar, as an informed writer I would prefer people to at least do research on the subject before making assumptions on how the character would behave/think. Overall if the character’s experience is written well I wouldn't mind reading it. I do not condone misinformation, but i do condone learning about it for a passion project such as writing. As someone who hasn’t struggled with ASPD i don’t necessarily feel comfortable writing it but if i did a decent amount of research for the character and the disorder it could change my mind as long as i get outsider viewpoints.

How to properly write Toby with bipolar?

do not romanticize it not getting treated, as someone who struggles with a disorder not getting treated, it is definitely damaging to my mental and physical health. so writing for a character who isn't being treated for something is something i'm a bit iffy on- but if you do research and don't go overboard, it could end up being really good for awareness.

(i headcanon that he was originally on medication but he didn't take into account the fact that he needs his medications, so he basically fucked himself over and regrets it (subconsciously) after a manic episode of course)

there is an author(s) who does a really good job writing his character with Bipolar/BPD if you are interested in reading their work dm me!/inbox me!

maybe write about how his work relationships would be impacted, and how his friendships would be, his romantic relationships all of it, don't just focus on "ooo i'm mentally ill" it would not only affect him but it would also impact those around him by whether or not they know about his Bipolar disorder and if they know hes having an episode.

it would probably, a few times, get him caught by the law given the fact that people with bipolar are very indecisive and it would mostly be chalked up to him being like "this is wrong, i don't want to do this anymore" to "ARSON!!!" (bad analogy but you get it) his emotions and feelings on the matter of is job would fluctuate all the time, even while he's on the job. it leads him to be erratic and spontaneous. he isn't a very reliable partner, which is why he probably only goes on single missions.

i feel like if he were to be medicated it would be at the expense of Tim's medications since toby can't get his hands on other medications that are used for mood swings and such.

What do manic episodes look like? How would they effect Toby?

"Manic episodes are very intense highs in mood and energy. Despite what people say, real manic episodes are only experienced in people with bipolar disorder" @necroromantics

this is true, as someone with BPD, my "manic" episodes depend on someone that is my FP (favorite person) and when i am not having a "high" of energy i'm usually numb and my "manic" episodes are usually only an hour long or the amount of time that i am with my FP. BPD cannot get Manic.

although there are two branches of Bipolar, Bipolar 1 which is characterized as many manic episodes and less depressive episodes but Bipolar 2 is characterized as many major depressive episodes, that usually last a lot longer than the manic episodes. (this is worded as simply)

"A very real danger of manic episodes is that some people experience co-occurring psychosis alongside their episodes, such as delusions and hallucinations." @necroromantics

another thing Toby struggles with is hallucinations of his deceased sister Lyra.

"These highs can also lead to dangerous acts due to the recklessness and lack of proper judgement on whats safe/smart in that moment. There is also hypomania, which is a lesser, more mild form of mania." @necroromantics

you are mixing up both Bipolars... they are separated (from the studies i've done/researched)

Manic Episodes-

it would all depend on how exactly he feels/ the situation and how the writer decides to portray that. (if the writer is properly informed of course)

What do depressive episodes look like? How would they effect Toby?

"They typically last longer than manic episodes, usually about 1+ months." @necroromantics

this depends on whether or not it's Bipolar 1 or Bipolar 2, this is the "definition" of a Bipolar 2 Depressive episode. bipolar 2 episodes can occur for longer than a month, that is correct. bipolar 1 has longer manic "highs" than bipolar 2, bipolar 2 barely gets manic "highs" and when they do it's not for very long. (from what my doctors have told me/what i've seen in my dad (he has bipolar 1))

as someone who has seen these symptoms and had them i can assure you they are not fun, especially dealing with them WITHOUT proper medications, although currently i am very "manic" and getting a lot of shit done, kinda like i'm on adderall rn lol.(that's the closest comparison i can make to how I AM feeling.)

"He would probably disappear for a bit, to be left alone, because he doesn't want to be around anybody. He would spend his time sleeping as much as he can, and then the rest of his time doing proxy work, and then going back to sleep." @necroromantics

i wouldn't say sleeping is all he's doing, when i have depressive episodes (which episodes are different for everyone) i tend to go off my diet, make a lot of other regrettable decisions(EX: relapse, forget important stuff, become more "lazy" etc.) that prolong my episode. but sleep can also be affected such as; getting too much sleep or struggling with sleeping (i.e waking up every hour to every few hours).

What are mixed episodes?

"This can look like feeling super energetic, but also horribly hopeless and depressed, or being on top of the world one minute, and then wanting to off yourself the next. They are very intense, and dangerous. It feels like you're losing your mind, and you can't catch yourself." @necroromantics

i am going to add to this. not only will you be super energetic but you'll want to do so much but have no energy to do it, like lets say you had a great art idea, oc idea, and writing idea, but you would be too unmotivated to do any of it. sometimes you can't pinpoint what to feel/what you're feeling, and that's totally okay! confusing, annoying but still its completely okay.

I'm free to answer with my personal experience, and headcanons and prior knowledge of mental health about any creepypasta characters! DM me or inbox me!

#creepypasta #ticci toby #creepypasta fandom #creepypasta headcanon #ticci toby headcanons #toby rogers #creepypasta ticci toby #bipolar disorder

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hellosadume · 21 days ago

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"I've always questioned what everyone thinks is funny, or what I think of what it is... But I think I found the meaning of it... And I will plunge the world with the things I find hilarious." -Saturn Rocksli

Saturn Rockli is the second youngest child of her family, born from a mother with 10 different spouses with her father being one of them. Yet despite the lots of spouses in the polygamous household and many half siblings, Saturn had a decent life without any sorts of questions about the relations of her parents. The girl was mostly born normally, despite the fact that she was blessed by the Goddess of Chaos in her birth who had a connection with her father(Who himself was a chaotic man with several felonies, only for her mother to bail him out each time).

As a young child, she was once normal who had no despicable thoughts in her system.. that was until... the little girl found herself kidnapped during one of her playtimes by a band of an illegal circus family as she was forced to be a circus clown during her time there. The little girl found herself beaten and mentally abused through the acts of clownery, trying to dig in her mind of how she would act for everyone to find her "funny", in which... Disturbed her mind as a single question grew within her during these times.

"What do people consider funny?"

It took around 2 years until the illegal circus was caught by the authorities, causing those involved in the act to be arrested while the ones kidnapped were taken and traced to be sent back to their families, some having to be sent to a hospital due to the injuries they sustained, some having to be sent to a mental institute for rehabilitation due to the effects done by the circus.

The young child was sent to a child therapist during these events. It was unknown how it had affected her for some time from the event as the poor lass was silent for some time, though it didn't take until she found herself back in her feet... Somehow.

During the times of her being back home, the young child became somewhat... Unhinged in some ways, along with now slowly becoming one who is chaotic by nature, often turning the whole house upside down due to her constant needs for pranks and clownery. She is mostly seen smiling and laughing at things that she somewhat thinks are hilarious, despite that some of them were... Not at all that quite hilarious. Her humour slightly grew concerning over the years to the point where one of her mother's spouses called her a "Devil Child".

During these times, her chaotic energy grew as she became much more disturbed, finding her actions hilarious, which caught an interest in one of these... Students.

Things passed after that, she now found herself to be serving an entity that the so-called "Students" had recommended to her. The girl grew a persona in which she dressed as what she finds to be entertaining for her "audiences".

She was given all sorts of magic at her disposal due to the loyalty she had given to this entity, one of which suits her acts of clownery, and as well as the ability to go through different universes and timelines. Though despite this given ability, she found herself to target her own universe.

... To make the world funny and cause discord and chaos.

Art by Modsketc

#digital art #oc #original character #writers on tumblr #writing #oc story #character design #ocs #oc art #original world #original story #oc lore #oc world #oc works #oc work #original characters #original character art #art #story art

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justinspoliticalcorner · 3 months ago

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Jonathan Nicholson at HuffPost:

On the first night of their national convention, Democrats highlighted three stories of how abortion restrictions after Roe v. Wade was overturned had hurt women and couples, hoping to underscore the importance of reproductive rights in one of the most poignant presentations Monday night. The message: Abortion bans put lives at risk. Giving the stage over to one couple and two women who had experienced the harm of abortion hurdles in the prime-time window of the convention’s first night shows how important Democrats see the issue for Kamala Harris’ presidential race.

An Economist/YouGov poll taken from Aug. 11 to Aug. 13 found that 75% of respondents said abortion rights were “very” or “somewhat” important to them, with 81% of female respondents feeling that way. Former President Donald Trump, who is campaigning while out on bail after his felony convictions in New York state, has said the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which tossed out Roe’s almost 50-year precedent, was good because it sent the issue of abortion to the states rather than preserving a national right. But many states have enacted total or near-total bans on abortion, and others have made abortions conditional on medical diagnoses that the woman’s life is in danger, which in turn has led to women being denied treatment until they were close to dying. “Because of Donald Trump, more than one in three women of reproductive age in America lives under an abortion ban. A second Trump term would rip away even more of our rights,” said Amanda Zurawski, who stood with her husband, Josh, on an otherwise darkened stage to discuss her experience in Texas.

[...] Kaitlyn Joshua, who was denied care in Louisiana, said she had to go to several medical facilities to confirm she was miscarrying. “Two emergency rooms sent me away. Because of Louisiana’s abortion ban, no one would confirm that I was miscarrying. I was in pain, bleeding so much my husband feared for my life,” she said. “No women should experience what I endured but too many have.” Hadley Duvall of Kentucky, the third speaker, said she had been raped by her stepfather and became pregnant at the age of 12. “I can’t imagine not having a choice. But today that’s the reality for many women and girls across the country because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans,” she said. Kentucky is listed as one of the 14 states that now have a total ban on abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

At the DNC Monday night, three women (alongside a man who was the husband of one of the speakers) who were harmed by their state’s abortion ban laws spoke the truths about how abortion bans harm women. #DNC2024 #DemConvention

#Abortion #Abortion Bans #Reproductive Health #2024 DNC #Josh Zurawski #Amanda Zurawski #Kaitlyn Joshua #Hadley Duvall #Andy Beshear #Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

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writingforfun0714 · 10 months ago

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So I wanted to wait and let the new Bad Batch trailer sink in before posting about it.

Warnings: Spoilers, some thoughts/opinions will be critical

Alright so I don’t think it’s any secret that I don’t care for the Bad Batch. Even ignoring the horrible, incredibly RACIST clone model, the writing is mid/passable at best and not even watchable for me. Most of S1 and 2 combined is the typical ‘mission of the week’ type of story where only a few Empire-focused episodes stand out. There are also instances of ableism concerning Echo in particular (CF99 are also super dismissive of him in general—going along with that whole fucking ‘superiority over regs’ thing—seriously wtf).

Most episodes were very bland and predictable. S1 had no stakes despite its finale. By Mando/ST it’s clear that something has happened to Kamino. Didn’t really need to see a 2pt ep of the city getting wiped. Plus AZI should’ve been sacrificed. Even Ahsoka learns the lesson that you can’t save everyone in S1 when she disobeys Anakin and Admiral Yularen. TBB S2 had no character development from anyone besides a little bit for Omega (and Tech—but that was always speculated by fans since S1 and he’s dead now so it doesn’t really matter). A lot of the dialogue felt…basic. I think the only thing that TBB does well is the music. It’s really amazing and beautiful along with the smooth, crisp animation/scenery. Shame they ruined it with racist clone models, racist tones with the ‘reg’ dispute in both seasons, and being ableist and dismissive towards Echo.

Which brings me to the trailer. Oh boy. First, right off the bat I noticed how similar the trailer opening is compared to the S2 trailer. I do like that Phee is back. She did take time to grow on me but I do like her character and am curious to see where they will go with her.

It’s interesting we are seeing Crosshair back with the group so soon. Personally I do believe that is Crosshair and not just someone else wearing his armor like some think. I like the idea of Omega and Crosshair escaping early on but Omega gets recaptured/separated and taken back to Tantiss.

I’m interested in Hemlock and his backstory (is his gloved hand robotic?). I wish they’d create more interesting and unique characters like Phee and Fennec Shand instead of relying on cameos of established characters/fan-favorites like Ventress. I loved Dark Disciple and I thought it was a great ending for her.

I know it’s officially said that Ventress’ story will follow Dark Disciple but I don’t see how unless they retcon her death or pull a ‘somehow she survived’. Either way that sucks. Reminder!! DAVE FELONY DIDN’T EVEN FOLLOW REBELS FOR AHSOKA. SABINE IS NOT FORCE SENSITIVE IN REBELS. DAVE RETCONS THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYTHING. I have no faith that they will remain loyal to DD. Anything that will be ‘canon’ will be mid at best because even Crosshair’s arc has been messy (which is due to the weird S1 ‘reset’ the characters go through. Like they totally should’ve appreciated ‘regs’ by the end of TBB arc in TCW S7–there was no need for that awkward food fight scene in S1).

I hate that this show has to rely on cameos to get the viewing numbers. Here is a list of every character cameo we’ve seen so far:

—Rex*

—Tarkin*

—Palpatine*

—The Lawquane Family

—The Syndullas/Chopper

—Nala Se/Lama Su*

—Cad Bane

—Bail Organa

—Riyo Chuchi

—Gungi

—Gregor

—Wolffe

—Cody

—Scorch

—Saw Gerrera

—Martez Sisters

—Kanan/Depa*

—Muchi/Rancor from RotJ

—Taun We/Halle Burtoni

—Ventress

*I consider these important/relevant cameos and am not bothered by them like the others*

What a list right? I might even be missing one. These were just off the top of my head. Some are big players, others smaller and almost not-relevant to the plot. Not counting the one’s I asterisked, it’s 15 characters. There are original characters but a lot of them, especially in S1 felt like one off, not important characters. And I hate Cid so much—glad to see she was absent in the S3 trailer. I’m really starting to love Phee and I’ve always loved Fennec Shand, and Hemlock is definitely an intriguing villain and Emerie feels like a total mystery (though the reveal was not shocking due to the similar design and accent to Omega). Like why can’t they create more characters like these? The rest just feel forgettable. And it’s clear that characters like Saw, Gungi, Scorch, Cad Bane and even the Syndulla and Lawquane families just felt like fan service. The rest kind of make sense that they’d show up but it also feels a bit like fan service.

Moving on..

I know a lot of people think that new weird dark trooper at the 1:40 mark is Tech. While I’m inclined to agree as I think the ‘Winter Soldier’ story is an obvious choice to pick, I also think that Tech is dead. I’ve changed my mind and kind of hope that Tech isn’t brought back.

I hope this is someone new. I also wouldn’t mind if it was a bounty hunter we’ve seen before. Due to the frame and stature, I could almost think of Boba due to him being older than Omega but it’s definitely more likely to be Tech than either of these choices.

It’s interesting a lot of cameo characters from S2 do not make an appearance in the trailer. Bail, Riyo, Gungi, Gregor and Cody are all absent from the trailer. Trailers usually show action shots to avoid story spoilers, but with Gungi, Gregor, and Cody all being capable fighters, I’m surprised they didn’t appear (usually stuff with politics is a story spoiler).

Overall I’m skeptical of the trailer. I don’t like Ventress being alive/in TBB being a Dark Disciple lover. There’s a lot of mystery surrounding the story of S3 so I don’t feel like I can give an accurate take on that. I hate how Omega’s longer hair looks. Curly haired Omega is adorable!! The animation (everything but the clone model) is definitely getting better. However, based on how S2 was marketed as a ‘darker story compared to S1’ and was like 80% fetch quest I’m definitely skeptical.

Those of you that made it through this post, thank you for your time and I hope I gave you something to think about. If you wanna learn more about the racism and ableism portrayed in this show, check out @unwhitewashthebadbatch for more info.

#star wars #bad batch #thoughts #unwhitewash the bad batch #uwwtbb #tbb critical #Dave Felony Brad Rau and Jen Corbett are gonna wreck Dark Disciple #and Ventress #so scared for her #tbb season 3 #tbb s3 #spoilers #tbb season 3 spoilers #tbb s3 spoilers

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outermaybanks · 5 months ago

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Out of the Woods - ch 8

a/n: soooo close, we're soooo close to something I promise

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John B still wasn’t back. We went to Heyward’s to kill time, make sure Pope’s parents weren’t too worried. We were snacking, talking about last night, when Pope’s dad came in to say someone was here for Pope, and behind him walked in a police officer, Shoupe.

“I have an arrest warrant for felony destruction of property. Hands on the counter where I can see ‘em.” Everyone began talking over each other as Shoupe put Pope in handcuffs. We all followed Shoupe, begging him to stop, yelling at him that he was wrong.

“It wasn’t him!” JJ shouted, making everyone stop, making my breath catch. “It was me. He tried to talk me out of it, but I was mad because he’d just been beaten up. I was so sick of those assholes from Figure Eight that I lost my shit. I can’t let you take the blame for somethin’ I did. You got too much to lose.” “JJ what are you doing?” Pope asked. “I’m tellin’ the truth. For once in my goddamn life, I’m gonna tell the truth,” JJ said with a smile, turning back to look at me, then back to the officer. “I took his old man’s boat, too.”

Pope tried to speak up, but JJ yelled at him to shut up, then looked at Shoupe. “He’s a good kid. You know where I’m from.” Shoupe asked Pope if this was true, and after a moment of silence, he nodded.

Shoupe took the handcuffs off Pope, and put them on JJ before putting JJ in the car. He gave me one last look before Shoupe closed the door. I put my hand on the window. “It’s gonna be okay,” I said, hoping he could hear me. When the car started, I backed up slowly then took off running.

I ran all the way to the Chateau, and grabbed the box in my bag that was from under the trailer kitchen sink. It’s where I had stashed all my money growing up, since Theodore had a habit of sneaking into piggy banks. But the fucker wouldn’t touch cleaning supplies with a 10 foot pole.

I grabbed my skateboard and went as fast I could to the police station. They said JJ was still in holding, so maybe I wasn’t too late.

“Look, I-I have money,” I told the lady at the desk, pulling out three envelopes of cash. “This is all I have, please, it’s like 2 or 3 grand, okay? Just please don’t call his dad. This has to at least cover his bail-” “We already called his father, he’s on his way.” “No, no, no, no- You have to call his father back and say there was a mistake-” “The only mistake here is my son.” I turned to see Luke walking in, immediately my stomach churned. “What? You not happy to see me?” Luke questioned.

I turned back to the officer at the desk. “How much is his bail? I’ll pay it right now.” “$1,000.” “Fine!” I opened one of the envelopes and started counting on the desk. It was mostly smaller bills, but I had saved as much as I could over my 16 years.

I could feel Luke staring at me from beside me. “Now where does a 16 year old get that kind of cash?” “From not blowing it on drugs and alcohol.” I spat back, still counting. “475, 480, 490,495- okay that’s 500-” I heard a buzz and whipped around to see them bringing JJ out. “Ma’am.” The officer reminded, I went back to counting. “20, 30, 35…1,2,3,4,5, 140-”

The door opened and JJ walked out with his head down. I started counting faster.

“Once your girlfriend is finished counting, you’re good to go. Hearing will be in two weeks, if you fail to show up, you will forfeit your bail. The restitution is based on the average of three outside estimates-”

“Restitution?” Luke questioned. “Pay for what he broke. It’s part of the plea.” I tried to focus on counting. “350, 360, 380, 385…” “Sir, can you sign these?” Luke grabbed the clipboard. “Also, she isn’t his girlfriend. She’s just my loser son’s loser friend.” “Well this loser is paying your son’s bail. 425, 445, 455… 1,2,3,4,5- 460- anddddd here. $1000.” I said, handing the stack of cash to the officer. “C’mon JJ,” I tried to quickly get him out, but his dad grabbed my arm, hard. “He’s coming home with me.” “Like hell-” “Junie, it's fine. Just go,” JJ said softly, sounding so defeated. “Let’s go. Now!” Luke said. I felt so powerless. JJ didn’t even look at me as his dad made him leave.

“Do you want a receipt?” The officer asked.

I scoffed. “No, I want you guys to do your fucking job for once. Protect and serve my ass,” I said, pushing myself off of the desk and walking out of there. JJ was stood at the end of the street, about to get in his dad’s truck. “Go,” He mouthed. My lip quivered, I dropped my skateboard, and started pushing to go back to the Chateau.

I was alone, laying in the hammock, crying but trying to hide it despite the fact no one was around. I suddenly heard a commotion and sat up, seeing John B and- “JJ?” I called, scrambling to get out of the hammock and run over. JJ held a finger up to his lips, telling me to be quiet, then he pointed to a car sitting, watching us.

JJ had the idea to go through the marsh to get to the dock, but we’d be neck deep in water, all three of us held our bags over our heads as we slowly walked through the water. JJ climbed in first, then took my bag and helped me up.

“Hey, thanks for paying my bail,” JJ said casually. My face was twisted in horror. “JJ, your face…” I said, slowly reaching to hold his face. “Hey, I’m okay. We kinda match now. Friendship bruises.” “I’m gonna kill him. Where did you put my bag?” JJ quickly kicked it over to John B, who grabbed it and went to turn on the boat. “JJ!” “If you go to jail, who’s gonna pay bail? Huh? They’ll call your mom, and Theodore, and it just goes around and around.”

John B drove us to an isolated part of the marsh, and JJ caught him up on what he missed, saying we should all just dip.

“Okay, where do you wanna go?” John B asked. JJ looked at me. “Yucatan.” I smiled to myself. “Mexico?” “I’m dead serious right now. Surf all day, and then we can just live off lobsters we catch with our bare hands.” “You just wanna leave ‘cause you got your ass beat?” “Hey!” I called. “You didn’t see the photos man-” JJ said.

But John B didn’t want to hear it, and JJ told him he needed to give up or we’d die, and John B shoved JJ, so I forced myself between them.

“Stop!” I shouted. “The last time I saw my dad we got in an argument. Then he took all of our rent money and dipped for this Royal Merchant. And then I told him he was a shit father, and you know how the rest of the story goes,” John B confessed, finally backing off. “That wasn’t your fault, bro!” JJ said. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, JJ!” John B screamed. “Hey! He’s your friend, knock it off John B.” “Of course you’d take his side, real predictable Junie. You’re so obvious with it, there’s no way he hasn’t noticed so maybe it’s time to start asking why he doesn’t want to be with you, Ju-” I cut him off with a slap, hard across the face.

“Fuck you, John B,” I spat before turning away from him and walking away. “Fuck- Junie- Junie I’m sorry!” John B called after me. “What did you just say?” I heard JJ’s voice ask before I walked out of hearing range. I couldn’t be around John B, and I sure as fuck couldn’t be around to handle the aftermath of him telling JJ.

I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t go home, couldn’t go to the Chateau. So., I started walking towards Figure Eight, to Kie’s house. By the time I got there, I couldn’t hold back my tears. I told her everything, about JJ's father, about John B telling JJ I loved him.

Kie had a Kook event, and she asked if I’d come with her. At first I thought she just wanted to give me a distraction, but when her mom came in to help her with her dress, it became obvious she didn’t want to go at all, but especially alone.

“Mom, it’d be okay if Juniper came, right?” “We’re allowed to bring guests… do you have a dress sweetheart?” Her mom asked. “Uh-” “She can borrow one of mine. Thanks mom.”

And just like that, Kie put one of her dresses on me, and did my hair for me, and suddenly I was in a rich ass house, surrounded by rich ass people. I lost Kie, and it felt like I was drowning in overwhelming ignorance. I could see why Kiara didn’t like these people despite being born into them.

“Hey, I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these before”. I turned to see a boy, around my age. He was tall and blonde with blue eyes. He was like a Kook JJ, with bigger teeth. “Yeah, I um… My family made me come, I don’t usually do things like this.” “Well, I’m Tobias, you can call me Toby. Maybe you’ll like these things more if you have a friendly face”. Then he smiled, and I could tell by the way he did it, he was used to getting what he wanted with it, then it hit me, he was flirting with me.

“I’m June. Thank you, Toby, that’s very, uh, sweet of you.” “Do you wanna take a walk with me? It can be a bit much to be in the heart of one of these things.” “Ummm,” I looked around for Kie, finding her and Pope watching me closely, both of them snickering at the sight. “Yeah, sure. Thank you.” “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be standing alone,” He said, giving me that smile again. I forced one back. I take it back, this guy was nothing like JJ, with JJ I didn’t need to force a smile, this guy felt like he was putting on a performance.

I walked beside him for a while, he told me how his family got rich, or really, how they stayed rich. We made our way back to the party after the sun went down. He was telling me about how he was gonna go to his father’s college and join his fraternity, while I looked for Kie or Pope. But to my surprise, I saw JJ, walking over to Sarah Cameron.

“What about you?” Tobias voice cut through my train of thought. “Huh? Oh… Uh… Well, I’m gonna be a junior, haven’t really thought about college yet.” “Do you know what you want to do?” “What I want to do? Like just in general?” Tobias chuckled, “Yeah, like in general.”

I thought it over for a minute, before smiling to myself. “I want to move to Yucatan. With a man that looks like Harry Styles.” “Oh yeah?” Tobias asked with a chuckle, obviously flattered. “Junie!” I turned to see Kie rushing over. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere-” she was cut off by a commotion, shouting. We turned to see JJ getting escorted out by security.

“Stop!” I shouted, “Kie, do something.” “Let go of him! You can’t just boot him, I invited him here, I’m a member of this club,” Kie shouted. JJ shouted at the security guard, trying to wriggle free of his grasp. “Hey, mandatory power hour at Rixon’s, bugs, Kie. Pope, you as well, right? Alright, let’s go!”

Me and Kiara exchanged looks before we took each other’s hands and ran after JJ.

When we got to Rixon’s cove, JJ and John B got to work building a fire, while I sat with Kie. John B gave me an apologetic look at every opportunity that he got, but I wasn’t ready to talk to him. I needed to find out what he said to JJ after I left, and if JJ believed him.

“Junie, please, we can talk somewhere private-” John B said once the fire was stable. “I thought Pogues didn’t have secrets?” JJ interjected, making me look at him. It felt like it was confirmation that now he knew, and everything was ruined. “Hey guys, my dad is gonna kill me, so what’s this mandatory meeting about?”

John B gave me another look, as if he was still begging me to talk to him, but he had to give up when I looked away from him. John B sighed, then told us the gold didn’t go down with the Royal Merchant, it’s been hidden on land. Pope was skeptical, but John B had evidence, he had figured it all out.

But, Kie had a problem when John B said Sarah Cameron was coming with the map we needed, and then the truth came out that that’s where JB had been yesterday, in Chapel Hill with Sarah.

“He was mackin’ on her,” JJ added. “What?!” I finally spoke up, in shock if nothing else.

Kie wasn’t happy, at all, and I couldn’t tell if it was because she hated Sarah Cameron, or if she was hurt by John B kissing someone else. But he swore up and down, it was just for information, nothing else.

John B had a meeting time with Sarah, so we all loaded into the Twinkie, but after we got to the meeting spot and parked, JB said he was gonna do this one alone.

“I just don’t want to spook Sarah with the peanut gallery,” John B said. “I just don’t understand why we’re involving her at all,” Kie said, still upset. “Kie, we’re not involving her, okay? It’s just, like, a business meeting,” JB explained.

JJ mimicked giving a blowjob to his blunt, making me and Pope chuckle.

“Look, once we get what we need, we cut her loose, alright? Plus we need the map.” “Cut her loose after we use her? What are we, Kooks?” I spoke up, earning a look of annoyance from both John B and Kie. I turned back around with my hands up in surrender. “Promise me nothing’s happening between you,” Kie said. “Nothing is happening, Kie.” “I’m being serious. This isn’t about you, this isn’t about us. This is about her. Dude, she’s gonna get inside your head. Just promise me nothing’s happening between you guys.” “I promise.” “That was really believable,” JJ spoke up. “A hundred percent believable.” Pope agreed. John B looked to me, almost like he was hoping I would dog on him too, but I just looked down.

“Anyway… I’m gonna go take care of business.” “Yeah, you’re gonna take care of it,” JJ teased.

JJ handed me the blunt, then lit it for me once it was in my mouth. Pope was trying to comfort Kie, but I was nervous. This was the closest me and JJ have been since John B said I was in love with him. “Hey…” JJ whispered as I inhaled.

I sucked in the smoke then handed him the blunt. “Hey.”

“It’s, uh… been a crazy day. You-” JJ cleared his throat, which made Pope and Kie stop talking, but I don’t think he noticed. “You look really pretty.” “Thanks, Kie let me borrow her dress.” “Keep it. It looks better on you,” Kie spoke up, making me smile. Then JJ leaned closer, to get my attention. “I was hoping we could talk… about what happened earlier.”

I looked over to Kie and Pope, both of whom looked like two children who had a secret.

“Yeah, yeah, we can talk.” “Cool, uh-” JJ stood up from the open door, and I followed him. We walked around to the back of the van for more privacy. “So… John B said some crazy things, right?” JJ started. I crossed my arms and leaned against the van. “Yeah…” “But he was just saying them to be an asshole, right?” JJ chuckled, I didn’t respond, unsure if I could continue to lie to him. “Bugs?”

I brought the blunt to my lips and inhaled, exhaling while looking down. I couldn’t even face him. “Junie, c’mon. You can’t just ignore me when I’m asking you if it’s true.” “If what’s true, JJ? I don’t think John B would lie about getting into a fight with his dad.” “I’m asking you if you-if you have feelings for me, Juniper.” “JJ, I love you, you’re my best friend.” JJ's jaw tensed, and he looked down. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

I finally forced myself to look at him, there was that serious look on his face. “Someone help!” A voice shouted. “Did you guys hear that?” Kie asked, and we all took off running. We found Sarah leaning over John B. “What happened?” Kie called as we came running. “I don’t know what to do, he needs help. Topper shoved him.”

Pope went to call for help. Sarah cried over John B, and it became very clear there wasn’t nothing going on between them.

©outermaybanks 2024 taglist: @lilliebellee

#outer banks #outer banks fanfiction #jj maybank #jj maybank x oc #jj #jj maybank fanfiction #ootw

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reasonsforhope · 2 years ago

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"After days of uncertainty and speculation, it’s actually happened: Former President Donald Trump has officially been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on charges of, reportedly, more than 30 counts related to business fraud.

The charges are still under seal, but they are expected to be related to Trump’s involvement in hush money payments made to porn performer Stormy Daniels and associated efforts to falsify business records. The indictment is a historic one, making Trump the only former president who’s ever been criminally charged.

The news begs a key question: What is an indictment, anyway?

Basically, it means a person is formally being charged with a felony by a grand jury. Charging someone in this manner is required in many felony cases, like the one involving Trump. As laid out by the New York State Constitution, Trump had to be indicted by a grand jury before prosecutors could proceed further. Now that he has been, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is able to coordinate [Trump's] surrender and pursue a trial.

“When a person is indicted, they are given formal notice that it is believed that they committed a crime,” notes the Department of Justice. “The indictment contains the basic information that informs the person of the charges against them.”

An indictment [note: pronounced in-die-t-ment] is a key step in criminal cases such as this one. First, a prosecutor decides to pursue a case against a person and presents witnesses and evidence in front of what’s known as a grand jury. The grand jury — a randomly selected group of 16 to 23 people — will weigh the information and then decide whether they believe there is probable cause that this person committed a crime and if there should be a trial...

If at least 12 jurors believe there is probable cause and vote to indict, then the person is officially charged and the case has the potential to go to trial. The grand jury does not determine if a person is guilty or not guilty like a trial jury does, however.

Understanding the Trump indictment

What is an indictment?

What happens next?

Can Trump still run for president?

What is the Republican response?

What will this mean for Trump’s 2024 campaign?

In Trump’s case, enough members of the Manhattan grand jury concluded that there is sufficient evidence to charge him with a crime. The indictment includes specific information about the charges and explains what laws the jurors believe Trump broke.

At this point, courts have not ruled on whether he is guilty or not; the grand jury has simply determined that he should be charged and that the case can go to trial. Following an indictment, a prosecutor can decide whether to pursue these charges or to drop them if there’s insufficient evidence. That the process appears to be going forward signals Bragg believes in the grand jury’s findings.

Trump’s next step is to surrender to law enforcement and have the charges read to him in court in what’s known as an arraignment. Trump is reportedly expected to turn himself in on Tuesday, when he’ll be taken into police custody and arrested, at which point his fingerprints and mugshot will also be taken.

He’ll then be arraigned later in the day, when he’ll be able to enter how he pleas in the case. After that, he’ll likely be able to leave without bail since the charges he faces are nonviolent felonies. [Note: apparently this is a recently implemented New York law, not just massive racism and classism in the legal system.]

The trial process for the case could ultimately be a drawn-out one since Trump is expected to contest the charges. If convicted, he could be sentenced to as much as four years in prison, the penalty for falsifying business records."

-via Vox, 3/31/23

#trump #donald trump #trump indictment #indictment #justice system #alvin bragg #legal system #new york #manhattan #district attorney #breaking #no one is above the law #united states #us politics #explainer #good news #hope

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 6 months ago

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By: Matt Naham

Published: May 21, 2024

20-year-old woman completely made up story that ‘creepy’ man tried to rape her outside of supermarket, leading him to be wrongly jailed for a month: DA

A man spent a month in jail after being accused of attempting to rape and kidnap a woman in a Pennsylvania supermarket parking lot in April, but there’s just one problem, according to the district attorney: the accuser’s story was completely made up, and she admitted as much when cops confronted her.

The startling turn of events in Bucks County was announced Monday, as 20-year-old Anjela Borisova Urumova, identified as a Bristol Township resident, was charged for lying about the attack.

[ Anjela Borisova Urumova in a mug shot (Bucks County DA); the Redner’s supermarket parking lot (WPVI/screengrab) ]

DA Jennifer Schorn’s office said that Urumova falsely accused Daniel Pierson, 41, of pulling her pants down and striking her outside of a Redner’s supermarket in Middleton Township on April 16.

Pierson went on to face felony charges and spent exactly 31 days behind bars before charges were dropped last Friday and he walked free, the DA said, noting that neither surveillance footage nor Urumova’s iPhone corroborated her claims.

“As part of the investigation, Middletown Township Police collected and reviewed available surveillance video from multiple retailers in the area of the reported attack, and a detective with the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office conducted a forensic review of Urumova’s cellphone data,” the DA’s office said. “The review led to the discovery of multiple inconsistencies and contradictory information with Urumova’s account of the attack at the Redner’s parking lot.”

Prosecutors said that police detectives as recently as Friday “confronted” Urumova and got her to admit that she fabricated the allegations.

“This investigation concluded that Urumova falsely reported an attack to police on April 16, and specifically targeted, and later identified, Pierson as her attacker,” the DA’s office added. “Urumova said she gave a description of his truck and identified him because she had seen him and the truck in the past[.]”

Local ABC affiliate WPVI reported that Urumova admitted she falsely accused Pierson because she’d seen him before and believed him to be “creepy.” The defendant further said that her claimed injuries stemmed from an incident with her grandmother, the report said. The complaint obtained by Law&Crime revealed even more about that.

“Her grandmother, who Urumova claimed suffered from dementia, did not recognize her as she entered the house and threw a plastic object at her, striking her in the lip. This incident allegedly caused the laceration to her lip that she later blamed on Pierson,” court documents said.

Authorities said that the defendant specifically described the nonexistent attacker’s truck as having a “Thin Blue Line” sticker on it.

After investigators tracked Pierson down and put him in a photo lineup the following day, Urumova said she was “60% sure” he was the suspect, documents said.

Court records reviewed by Law&Crime show that Urumova was arraigned Monday on charges for making false reports (two counts), causing false alarm to an agency of public safety, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, and for “unsworn falsification to authorities” (three counts).

[ Anjela Urumova charges ]

Bail was set at $30,000, records also show. It’s unclear if Urumova has an attorney yet. She turned 20 years old on May 9.

Read the criminal complaint obtained by Law&Crime here.

So, a guy's going about his day, minding his own business and this woman just randomly takes a dislike to him and decides he needs to be disappeared from society.

That's all it took.

Now imagine how much more motivated a spiteful ex or a regretful one-night stand would be. Don't tell me false accusations are rare when they're this easy to make.

Here's the ironic part: studies suggest she's far more likely to be sexually assaulted by another woman in prison than by a man in the free world.

[ Source: "The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions", Lara Stemple, JD, and Ilan H. Meyer, PhD ]

#false accusations #false rape accusations #believe women #religion is a mental illness

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beardedmrbean · 2 years ago

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They present themselves as rebels against the system, fighting to preserve a piece of local woodland.

Yet many of the terrorist suspects arrested and charged over occupying government property and the violent attack in downtown Atlanta on Saturday are children of pampered privilege from out of state.

Hundreds of far-left activists, including Antifa, had gathered on Saturday evening at the Five Points neighborhood in downtown Atlanta to protest the death of their comrade who died in a shootout with police earlier in the week at an occupation south of the city.

On Jan. 18, Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, of Tallahasse, Fla., shot and severely injured a Georgia State Patrol trooper at the so-called “autonomous zone” before being killed by returning fire from police. The year-and-a-half long occupation is at the heart of the “Stop Cop City” movement to shut down the construction of the future Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a proposed training site for law enforcement and first responders. They hate it because it’s a police center, but also claim that they are protecting a forest.

At Saturday’s gathering, masked militants dressed head to toe in black marched in the streets, shouting: “If you build it, we will burn it.”

They then smashed up businesses, cars and the Atlanta Police Foundation building. An Atlanta police cruiser was set on fire with an explosive. Livestream videos recorded at the scene showed the violent extremists working in an organized manner, such as using a large vigil banner to hide the rioters who torched the vehicle and grabbing large rocks from a shared bag to use as projectiles.

Some of those arrested represent the sort of professional leftist agitator who have popped up across the country after George Floyd’s death:

Francis Carroll is the son of a yacht-sailing, multi-millionaire family.

Carroll was already out on bail for a domestic terrorism arrest at the Atlanta autonomous zone last month. He is the son of a yacht-sailing, multi-millionaire family and hails from the wealthy Maine city of Kennebunkport, also home to former president George W. Bush.

Carroll, who lived in his parent’s mansion before going to Atlanta, was among six people arrested and charged with domestic terrorism, aggravated assault and other crimes on Dec. 13 following a string of property attacks around the area, a carjacking and assaults on officers. They were all bailed out by activists who crowdfunded their legal defense using Twitter.

Madeleine “Henri” Feola is orginally from the wealthy Portland, Ore., suburb of Happy Valley.

Feola is a trans nonbinary activist and 2022 alumna of Oberlin College, where they studied archaeological studies with a focus on decolonization. They’re from the wealthy Portland, Ore., suburb of Happy Valley before relocating to Spokane, Wash. Feola authored a February 2022 blog post on the American Scientist titled, “It’s Time to Stop Gatekeeping Medical Transition.”

Emily Kathryn Murphy says her own family “doesn’t fully understand what being vegan means.”

Murphy is a middle-class vegan activist who previously served as the at-large chair for the Chicago chapter of Al Gore’s “Climate Reality Project” organization before becoming further radicalized into eco-ideology. “I have been vegan five and a half years now, and, no matter how much explaining I do, my own family still doesn’t fully understand what being vegan means,” Murphy complained once in a blog post for the group.

Ivan James Ferguson is an award-winning classically trained clarinet player.

Ferguson is a 23-year-old award-winning classically trained clarinettist from Henderson, Nev. who studied at the prestigious San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Before becoming radicalized, Ferguson regularly performed in classical concerts in California and Nevada.

They’ve each been charged with: felony domestic terrorism, felony interference with government property, felony first-degree arson, felony second-degree criminal damage, riot, unlawful assembly, willful obstruction of a law enforcement officer and pedestrian in roadway.

At an emergency press conference following the riot, Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens revealed a shocking discovery: “Some of them were found with explosives on them. You heard that correctly, explosives.”

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies have tried multiple times to end the violent occupation of the woods. Yet militants have regrouped and continued to occupy the area, heeding the call shared on anarchist sites for comrades to “defend the Atlanta forest.” At the first police raid in May 2022, police were met with Molotov cocktails. The GBI also said it found gas masks and edged weapons at the raid.

During the protest, an Atlanta police cruiser was set on fire with an explosive.FOX 5

Among the previous arrests were more privileged protesters:

* Teresa Yue Shen, a Brooklyn woman arrested on Jan. 18 who graduated from Barnard College before working at Reuters and CNN, according to her LinkedIn. She is charged with domestic terrorism.

* Abigail Elizabeth Skapyak, of Minneapolis. Skapyak is a former Justice Department intern who graduated from American University. She was arrested on May 17.

* Marianna Hoitt-Lange, a violinist who graduated from New York University. She was arrested on May 17.

* Madeleine “Matthias” Gunther Kodat, of Philadelphia, is the daughter of the former provost and dean of faculty at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis. who was arrested on May 17.

Protesters torch police car, damage businesses in Atlanta after activist killed

In November, rioters tried to set a man on fire who drove into the area.

“It seemed to me like they were going to burn the truck with me in it,” Richard Porter told 11Alive News at the time. He was forced to flee for his life as his truck was torched. In early December, two under-construction homes next to the occupation were burned to the ground. The same month, another raid resulted in six being arrested and charged with domestic terrorism.

Serena Hertal, of Sun Valley, Idaho, was one of the militants charged with domestic terrorism, aggravated assault and criminal trespass. She graduated from Pitzer College, a private liberal arts university in Claremont, Calif. where yearly costs are over $82,000.In addition to the weekend violence in Atlanta over the shooting death of the gunman, far-left sympathizers from around the country have held solidarity direct actions and urged retributive violence. “Scenes from the Atlanta Forest,” a collective that represents the autonomous zone, called for “reciprocal violence” against police in a heavily shared post on Twitter.

In solidarity with the Atlanta occupation, the trans child of Democratic House Minority Whip Katherine Clark was arrested for alleged vandalism and assault of an officer. Jared “Riley” Dowell, 23, was charged with assault by means of a dangerous weapon, destruction of injury of personal property and damage of property by graffiti.

In Lansing, militants attacked a bank, writing, “Stop cop city.” Six were arrested. A Portland UPS center was also purportedly set on fire, with a claim of responsibility posted online saying it was retribution over their comrade’s death.

“We call for more actions directly toward the companies that are donating to and funding the Cop City project in Atlanta. Forest defenders have a right to stay in the forest, and groups will continue to retaliate until the Cop City Project is canceled,” reads the anonymous statement.

#nunyas news

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augment-techs · 1 year ago

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Write about a blackout + SPD Kids 👀

Here's the thing about living on the street for so long: you learn to spot when someone is not at all worth your time because they are totally untrustworthy, and you know when someone has been taken advantage of. Which is a big part of the reason why Z and Jack never imbibe in any sort of alcohol during celebration parties in the aftermath of big battles that could have been the end for all of them. SPD were the good guys, or tried to be the good guys; tried to do the right thing. But with absolute power and authority comes the revelation that some people hide their truest selves under a thin veneer of being charismatic or 'hard but fair' when they're actually sociopaths or narcissists on a power trip. Case in point: both of them have had to bail out a fellow teammate at least once from getting taken advantage of from someone else in the department. Higher officials, fellow trainees, a fan that had only signed up to get closer to B Squad. Syd was the most memorable for Z, because on some level she thought the blonde should have known better. She'd joined the SPD to get away from her fame and family expectations, but she couldn't see vapid compliments and too much presumptuous hand or shoulder touching as a red flags. True, she was a sucker for being flattered, even by some guy that hadn't even finished up the ranks to join D Squad, but Z was red in the face and fully disgusted by the time the little snake made his move. And by then he'd had three clones on him and Z had been shoving a glass of salt in water down Syd's throat; a fourth clone holding a bucket so the smaller Ranger could puke up the little translucent pill that would have looked kind of beautiful if Z didn't know what it was. She'd taken Syd to their shared room while the clones dragged the fucker to Doggie directly, all four of them explaining about old-school drugging and memory loss of the victim and how carrying even one pill was a felony and, "Oh, the bruises? No, he didn't have thought earlier, but that's what happens when you trip into the buffet table." Then of course there was that time the both of them had to take care of poor Bridge when he got into a drinking game with some of C Squad. Perfectly harmless, perfectly friendly, perfectly on the up and up since all of B Squad were participating--except. Except Bridge had a food sensitivity to the crappy beer they'd gotten for the occasion. He'd only had the one bottle and...well. Z and Jack could safely say they had never seen someone throw up that much. They stopped counting after the fifth time and just lifted the poor Green--huh, new pun joke--over their heads like ants picking up a stick and fucking ran for the hospital wing. Jack's worst time being sober, though, was handling Sky in the aftermath of an enemy who could change faces sneaking in after Piggy said something he shouldn't have, after he'd sold something he really shouldn't have, and Sky fell like a tree in the middle of having a simple conversation about getting up early in the morning for training when Jack was trying so very hard to encourage him to relax. Oh, the irony. Of course, yes, Sky did end up "resting" in bed for three days, but it wasn't exactly relaxing since he kept waking up screaming, having no idea where he was, had Kat and Boom trying to take care of him while the other Rangers tracked down the fucker that got to their Blue; and then only really went into a calming supine position when Jack had enough and parked on top of him like an oversized cat. Sky still didn't remember anything when the crap had made its way through his system and he was clear eyed and groggy on the fourth day to find not just Jack parked on top of him, but Z as well. More weight, less flopping around, less waking up terrified. A totally Kodak Moment if there ever was one--which Syd and Bridge were totally okay taking advantage of with their phone cameras when Blue, Yellow, and Red all woke up to turn various shades of what Syd called, "Blush and Bashful."

#boom! comics power rangers #Power Rangers SPD #Z Delgado #Sky Tate #Jack Landors #Syd Drew #Bridge Carson #ask fill #prompt fill

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davidpwilson2564 · 25 days ago

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Bloglet

Friday, November 1, 2024

A happy Dewali, to those who observe it. Now that Halloween is over maybe my local grocery store will take down some of the graveyard trappings ("Rest in Peace" etc.) Too morbid for an old guy like me.

More insults from the Trump camp. He suggests that Liz Cheney is a chicken hawk, wanting war. Says Liz should go into battle. Should be shot at. Funny for him (the coward of all time) to say. A man whose, uh, bone spurs kept him from serving.

It is said that Trump may have violated his bail agreement by having made what sounded so much like a death threat. It's woefully complicated but in a felony case, we are told, someone awaiting sentencing cannot pose a danger to the community, or to even one person. Trump has never followed any rules. And Trumpists carry signs that say "I'm for the felon."

The weather is ideal.

Election time draws ever nearer. A friend suggests there could be a civil war. Trump is expected to announce his victory on Wednesday morning.

Donald on the campaign trail, sounding ever more wacky and deranged. Odd how certain words have found a place in the verbal battle, and become cudgels. "Weird"..."Fascist"..."garbage." That last one getting quite a ride, with Donnie dressed as a garbage man.

Evening: Pre Marathon fireworks in Central Park. A yearly event ; We are told there will be 50,000 participants.

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attheheartofwriting · 4 months ago

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How Much is a Bail Bond? Breaking Down the Costs and Fees

Determining how much is a bail bond costs is essential for anyone navigating the legal system. The cost of a bail bond typically varies based on several factors, including the type of crime, the bail amount set by the court, and the state’s regulations. Generally, bail bonds are priced at a percentage of the total bail amount, usually between 10% and 15%. Additional fees may apply, such as service charges or collateral requirements. It’s important to consult with a licensed bail bondsman to understand the exact cost in your specific situation. Knowing how much a bail bond will cost can help you make informed decisions and plan accordingly during a legal emergency.

How Much is a Bail Bond? Factors Affecting the Cost

Understanding how much is a bail bond costs involves considering various factors that influence the final price. Typically, the cost of a bail bond is a percentage of the total bail amount set by the court, usually ranging from 10% to 15%. Factors such as the severity of the offense, the defendant's criminal history, and flight risk can affect this percentage. Additionally, local regulations and the bail bond agency’s policies may introduce variations in cost. For example, a more serious charge or a high bail amount could lead to higher costs or additional fees. Consulting with a bail bondsman can provide a clearer understanding of how much a bail bond will cost based on your specific situation.

How Much is a Bail Bond for Misdemeanors vs. Felonies?

When determining how much is a bail bond costs, it’s crucial to distinguish between misdemeanors and felonies. Generally, bail for misdemeanors is lower compared to felonies due to the perceived lower risk and severity of the offense. The cost of a bail bond for a misdemeanor may be lower, often around 10% of the bail amount. Conversely, felonies usually involve higher bail amounts and thus higher bail bond costs, which can be around 15% or more. The specific charge and associated risks also play a role. Understanding how much a bail bond is for different types of offenses can help in planning and budgeting for legal proceedings.

How Much is a Bail Bond in Different States?

The cost of a bail bond varies significantly across different states due to differing regulations and legal practices. In some states, the percentage charged for a bail bond may be regulated by law, while others allow bail bond companies to set their rates within certain limits. For instance, California might have a standard rate of 10%, whereas New York could have a different percentage or additional fees. Additionally, state-specific factors such as the nature of the offense and local regulations impact the total cost. Understanding how much is a bail bond costs in different states is essential for accurately anticipating expenses during legal situations.

How Much is a Bail Bond if You Have Bad Credit?

If you have bad credit, you might wonder how much is a bail bond will cost you. While your credit score does not directly impact the percentage charged for a bail bond, it can affect the terms and conditions set by the bail bond agency. Agencies might require collateral or additional fees to mitigate the risk associated with bad credit. This could increase the overall cost of securing a bail bond. It’s important to discuss your financial situation with the bail bondsman to understand how much a bail bond will be under these circumstances and explore available options.

How Much is a Bail Bond When Collateral is Required?

When collateral is required for a bail bond, the cost can be higher due to additional requirements. Typically, bail bonds are priced at a percentage of the bail amount, but if collateral is needed, it’s usually to secure the bond or reduce the risk for the bail bond company. This means you might need to provide assets such as property or vehicles as security, which can impact the overall cost. Understanding how much is a bail bond will be when collateral is involved helps in preparing for the financial commitment and ensuring you meet the conditions set by the bail bond agency.

How Much is a Bail Bond for High Bail Amounts?

The cost of a bail bond for high bail amounts is generally proportionate to the bail set by the court. For high bail amounts, the percentage charged by bail bond companies remains consistent, typically between 10% and 15%. However, the overall cost can be substantial due to the higher base amount. For instance, if the bail is set at $100,000, a 10% bond would cost $10,000. This significant cost reflects the risk and responsibility assumed by the bail bond company. Understanding how much is a bail bond will cost for high bail amounts can help in preparing financially for such situations.

How Much is a Bail Bond Understanding Upfront Costs?

Understanding how much is a bail bond will cost includes knowing the upfront costs involved. Typically, bail bonds are priced as a percentage of the total bail amount, but additional fees may apply. These fees could include administrative costs, processing charges, or service fees. It’s important to clarify these costs with the bail bond agency before committing. Knowing the full range of upfront costs helps in budgeting and ensures there are no unexpected financial burdens during the bail process. A clear understanding of how much a bail bond will cost, including any extra fees, can facilitate smoother legal proceedings.

Conclusion

Determining how much is a bail bond costs involves considering various factors such as the type of offense, location, and specific requirements set by the bail bond agency. Costs generally include a percentage of the total bail amount, typically ranging from 10% to 15%, with potential additional fees for collateral or expedited services. By understanding these elements, you can better prepare financially and make informed decisions during a legal emergency. Consulting with a licensed bail bondsman will provide precise information tailored to your situation, ensuring you are fully aware of the costs and requirements involved.

#how much is a bail bond

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getlegalattorney · 6 months ago

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Understanding Felony and Its Charges

Few words in the legal sphere conjure up as much seriousness and ramifications as "felony." With its origins firmly ingrained in judicial systems across the globe, a felony represents more than just a misdemeanor; it is an act of great social transgression that frequently carries heavy consequences.

Felons include a wide range of misconduct, from violent crimes to white-collar crimes, and each one necessitates a close investigation of the evidence, the offender's motive, and the consequences. These crimes, which lie on the line between misdemeanors and felonies, represent a turning point in the legal system where the consequences of illegal activity become more serious.

What Is a Felony?

A serious offense for which a person may get a sentence of more than one year in prison is referred to as a "felony." In addition, a prisoner serving a term for a felony is normally housed in a state or federal prison as opposed to a local or county jail.

How Does a Felony Differ from Other Types of Crimes?

There are many ways that felony charges differ from those of other criminal prosecutions:

If you are found guilty of a felony, you may be arrested and held in custody right away. You would also probably need to post bail in order to be freed. Arrest and detention are also possible outcomes of misdemeanor charges (not only violations).

A convicted felon may get the death sentence in states where it is legal. Convictions for misdemeanors do not allow for the death penalty.

You can ask the court to assign an attorney to represent you pro bono, or at no expense to you, if you are accused with a felony but cannot afford legal representation. Generally speaking, defendants in minor cases are not entitled to court-appointed legal counsel.

When a felony is committed, the fines imposed might be far greater than when a misdemeanor or infraction is committed. While some misdemeanor convictions in some places, including Alaska, may result in fines of up to $25,000, felonies can carry fines of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Expungements of felonies are much more difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, and usually require a longer waiting period before the court will grant the request.

While a conviction on a misdemeanor may result in probation once the term is completed, a conviction on a felony has extra lifetime restrictions in addition to probation:

A convicted felon may lose the right to vote.

A convicted felon may not be able to hold public office.

A convicted felon may be prevented from owning firearms or certain other weapons.

A convicted felon may be prohibited from holding a professional license.

A grand jury must be called and it must return an indictment in every federal felony proceeding. A grand jury indictment is another need that some states, but not all, have in order to move on with a felony trial.

What Crimes Are Typically Charged as Felonies?

A wide array of criminal wrongs are almost always charged as felonies:

Violent crimes

Homicide offenses, including first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and manslaughter

Robbery—committing a theft through the threat or use of force

Burglary—entering a building or home with the intention of committing a theft offense

Serious sexual offenses, such as rape, human trafficking, child molestation, and child pornography

Serious drug crimes, including manufacturing or cultivating controlled substances, distribution, sale, and trafficking

Property crimes, including malicious destruction, arson, misappropriation of property, and grand theft

White collar crimes, such as fraud, misrepresentation, identity theft, embezzlement, securities fraud, and tax evasion

Can the Same Criminal Act Be Prosecuted as a Misdemeanor or a Felony?

Yes, there are situations where a misdemeanor can rise to the level of a felony and be charged as such:

Statutes frequently provide prosecutors the option to press either misdemeanor or felony charges against a repeat offender. This procedure is frequently used on repeat DUI/DWI offenders.

If the victim falls within one of certain categories—such as being a kid, having mental health issues, or working as a law enforcement officer or other public official—a crime that would normally be charged as a felony.

Depending on whether the defendant's conduct were deemed aggravated or done with wanton disregard for the worth of human life, certain offenses may be classified as felonies or misdemeanors. For instance, if the defendant utilized a gun or other weapon, ordinary assault might escalate to felonious assault.

#felony #felony definition #what is a felony

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amistadbailbonds · 10 months ago

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Shoplifting in North Carolina: What if You Are Caught?

Okay, if you have to name some of the most frequent crimes in North Carolina, shoplifting would probably top the list. Do you have any idea that 10% of American citizens have said that they have shoplifted at least once in their lives, what’s shocking is for many, shoplifting is a weekly or even a daily habit. Yes, if you are arrested for shoplifting, a North Carolina bondsman can help you get out of jail before your trial, but do you know what should you do when you are caught for shoplifting? Well, here’s a brief!

What is Shoplifting?

Most people don’t realize that shoplifting can change their life and send them to jail. Some individuals shoplift for financial issues, whereas others do it because they enjoy the rush, but this small crime that doesn’t seem like a big deal can have a serious impact on the shoplifter’s life. Let’s be clear shoplifting doesn’t just mean pocketing candy or something tiny and walking out of the store without paying for it; it means cops arresting you for theft in a store.

In North Carolina, shoplifting falls under the broader category of larceny, which involves the unlawful taking of someone else's property. Shoplifting can encompass various actions, including concealing items, altering price tags, or simply leaving the store without paying for merchandise.

What after you are caught?

When you are caught shoplifting, several things could happen after that point:

You may be allowed to leave with a warning.

The store might ask you to fill out paperwork and/or ban you from ever returning to the store.

Depending on how much you stole, the store can ask you to compensate for the product.

Or in the worst-case scenario, they can call the cops.

Penalties for Shoplifting

If you are caught shoplifting in NC, the severity of the penalties typically depends on the value of the stolen goods or your prior criminal record. Typically, for first-time offenders, and low-value thefts, the consequences encompass minor fines, community service, or probation. However, for larger thefts or repeated offenses, the penalties can escalate to felony or misdemeanor charges and potentially lead to imprisonment.

Legal Procedures When You Are Caught:

When you are apprehended for shoplifting in NC, the store has the right to detain you and involve law enforcement. In such situations, it's imperative on your part to remain calm and cooperative. After that, you will be issued a citation or a Notice to Appear, which indicates a date for a court appearance. You must take this notice seriously and appear before the court as instructed.

Apart from criminal charges, individuals caught shoplifting in North Carolina might also face civil penalties. Storeowners have the option to pursue civil claims to recover damages resulting from the theft, and this could involve paying for the stolen items, compensating for any damages caused during the incident, and covering the store’s legal fees.

Conclusion

Shoplifting charges can be severe, but they can be even more critical when it’s associated with an illegal immigrant. Whether you are associated with an immigration violationor arrested for shoplifting, feel free to reach out to the North Carolina bail bondsmanat Amistad Bail and Immigration Bonds, and they can help you understand everything surrounding bail bonds. Need more information, or want to schedule a consultation with a Raleigh, NC bail bondsman? Contact us today!

Blog Source: https://www.amistadbailbonds.com/shoplifting-in-north-carolina-what-if-you-are-caught/

#North Carolina bondsman

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xtruss · 1 year ago

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What Happened When the U.S. Failed to Prosecute an Insurrectionist Ex-President

After the Civil War, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, was to be tried for treason. Does the debacle hold lessons for the trials awaiting Donald Trump?

— By Jill Lepore | December 4, 2023

Trump Looking at a Statue of Jefferson Davis. The American Presidency is draped in a cloak of impunity. If Davis had been tried and convicted, things might have been different. Illustration by Barry Blitt

Jefferson Davis, the half-blind ex-President of the Confederate States of America, leaned on a cane as he hobbled into a federal courthouse in Richmond, Virginia. Only days before, a Chicago Tribune reporter, who’d met Davis on the boat ride to Richmond, had written that “his step is light and elastic.” But in court, facing trial for treason, Davis, fifty-eight, gave every appearance of being bent and broken. A reporter from Kentucky described him as “a gaunt and feeble-looking man,” wearing a soft black hat and a sober black suit, as if he were a corpse. He’d spent two years in a military prison. He wanted to be released. A good many Americans wanted him dead. “We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour-apple tree,” they sang to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.”c

Davis knew the courthouse well. Richmond had been the capital of the Confederacy and the courthouse its headquarters. The rebel President and his cabinet had used the courtroom as a war room, covering its walls with maps. He’d used the judge’s chambers as his Presidential office. He’d last left that room on the night of April 2, 1865, while Richmond fell.

Two years later, when Davis doddered into that courtroom, many of the faces he saw were Black. Among the two hundred spectators, a quarter were Black freedmen. And then the grand jury filed in. Six of its eighteen members were Black, the first Black men to serve on a federal grand jury. Fields Cook, born a slave, was a Baptist minister. John Oliver, born free, had spent much of his life in Boston. George Lewis Seaton’s mother, Lucinda, had been enslaved at Mount Vernon. Cornelius Liggan Harris, a Black shoemaker, later recalled how, when he took his seat with the grand jury and eyed the defendant, “he looked on me and smiled.”

Not many minutes later, Davis walked out a free man, released on bail. And not too many months after that the federal government’s case against him fell apart. There’s no real consensus about why. The explanation that Davis’s lawyer Charles O’Conor liked best had to do with Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, known as the disqualification clause, which bars from federal office anyone who has ever taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and later “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” O’Conor argued that Section 3’s ban on holding office was a form of punishment and that to try Davis for treason would therefore amount to double jeopardy. It’s a different kind of jeopardy lately. In the aftermath of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, legal scholars, including leading conservatives, have argued that the clause disqualifies Donald Trump from running for President. Challenges calling for Trump’s name to be blocked from ballots have been filed in twenty-eight states. Eleven cases have been dismissed by courts or voluntarily withdrawn. The Supreme Court might have the final say.

The American Presidency is draped in a red-white-and-blue cloak of impunity. Trump is the first President to have been impeached twice and the first ex-President to have been criminally indicted. If he’s convicted and sentenced and—unlikeliest of all—goes to prison, he will be the first in those dishonors, too. He faces four criminal trials, for a total of ninety-one felony charges. Thirty-four of those charges concern the alleged Stormy Daniels coverup, forty address Trump’s handling of classified documents containing national-defense information, and the remainder, divided between a federal case in Washington, D.C., and a state case in Georgia, relate to his efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election, including by inciting an armed insurrection to halt the certification of the Electoral College vote by a joint session of Congress. His very infamy is unprecedented.

The insurrection at the Capitol cost seven lives. The Civil War cost seven hundred thousand. And yet Jefferson Davis was never held responsible for any of those deaths. His failed conviction leaves no trail. Still, it had consequences. If Davis had been tried and convicted, the cloak of Presidential impunity would be flimsier. Leniency for Davis also bolstered the cause of white supremacy. First elected to the Senate, from Mississippi, in 1848, Davis believed in slavery, states’ rights, and secession, three ideas in one. Every state had a right to secede, Davis insisted in his farewell address to the Senate, in 1861, and Mississippi had every reason to because “the theory that all men are created free and equal” had been “made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions,” meaning slavery. Weeks later, Davis became the President of the Confederacy. His Vice-President, Alexander Stephens, said that the cornerstone of the new government “rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.” Trump could win his Lost Cause, too.

Davis fled Richmond seven days before Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. “I’m bound to oppose the escape of Jeff. Davis,” Abraham Lincoln reportedly told General William Tecumseh Sherman, “but if you could manage to have him slip out unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much.” After Lincoln was shot and killed, on April 15th, his successor, Andrew Johnson, issued a proclamation charging that Lincoln’s assassination had been “incited, concerted, and procured by” Davis and offering a reward of a hundred thousand dollars for his arrest.

Union troops captured Davis in Georgia on May 10th as he attempted to sneak out of a tent while wearing his wife’s shawl. He was conveyed to a military prison in Virginia. Captain Henry Wirz, who had served as the commandant of an infamous Confederate prison in Andersonville, Georgia, where thirteen thousand Union soldiers died of starvation and exposure, was captured three days before Davis. Tried before a military commission, Wirz was found guilty and hanged.

From the start, the prosecution of the former rebel President was more complicated. “I never cease to regret that Jeff. Davis was not shot at the time of his capture,” the dauntless Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner said. Sumner wanted Davis tried, like Wirz, before a military commission. “I am anxiously looking forward to Jefferson Davis’s Trial,” the Columbia law professor Francis Lieber wrote to Sumner at the close of Wirz’s trial. But “suppose he is not found guilty; is he not, in that case, completely restored to his citizenship, and will he not sit by your side again in the Senate? And be the Democratic candidate for the next presidency? I do not joke.”

Lieber, who grew up in Prussia, had taught at South Carolina College for twenty years before moving to Columbia, in 1857. “Behold in me the symbol of civil war,” he once wrote. A son of his who fought for the Confederacy had been killed; another, who fought for the Union, had lost an arm. During the war, Lieber had prepared a set of rules of war that Lincoln issued as General Orders 100, better known as the Lieber Code. (It later formed the framework of the Geneva Convention.) Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, appointed Lieber to head the newly created Archive Office, charged with collecting Confederate records. Lieber fully expected to find evidence showing a “perfect connexion” between Davis and Lincoln’s assassination. That evidence was not forthcoming. Johnson vacillated, but by the end of 1865 he decided that he wanted Davis tried not for war crimes but for treason.

The Constitution defines treason as levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to its enemies. If Davis couldn’t be convicted of treason, the Philadelphia Inquirer remarked, “we may as well . . . expunge at once the word from our dictionaries.” Although Congress had modified the definition of treason in 1862, there remained ambiguity about what distinguished it from rebellion or insurrection. Lieber hoped that the prosecution would “stamp treason as treason,” but he was worried. “The whole Rebellion is beyond the Constitution,” he maintained. “The Constitution was not made for such a state of things.” In 1864, he quietly circulated to Congress a list of proposed constitutional amendments, including one that would end slavery, or what became the Thirteenth Amendment. (“Let us have no ‘slavery is dead,’ ” he wrote to Sumner. “It is not dead. Nothing is dead until it is killed.”) He also proposed an amendment guaranteeing equal rights regardless of race, or what became the Fourteenth Amendment. And he proposed an amendment clarifying the relationship between treason and rebellion: “It shall be a high crime directly to incite to armed resistance to the authority of the United States, or to establish or to join Societies or Combinations, secret or public, the object of which is to offer armed resistance to the authority of the United States, or to prepare for the same by collecting arms, organizing men, or otherwise.” Lieber’s Insurrection Amendment was never ratified. If it had been, Americans would live in a very different country.

Can Donald Trump get a fair trial? Is trying Trump the best thing for the nation? Is the possibility of acquittal worth the risk? Every trial on charges related to the insurrection gives him a stage for making the case that he won the 2020 election, any acquittal will be taken as a vindication, and his supporters will question the legitimacy of any conviction. But failure to try him is an affront not only to democracy but to decency.

In 1865, plenty of Americans wanted Davis tried without delay. A rope-maker from Illinois wrote to Johnson, volunteering to make the rope to hang him. But U.S. Attorney General James Speed, belying his name, wanted to slow things down. Americans were still mourning Lincoln and all that they had lost in the war. Speed, cautious by nature, wanted temperatures to cool. Many feared that bringing Davis to trial risked handing a rather stunning victory to the defeated Confederacy, as the legal historian Cynthia Nicoletti argued in a brilliant and exhaustively researched 2017 book, “Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis.” To a charge of treason, Davis was expected to respond that he had forfeited his American citizenship when Mississippi seceded from the United States, and you cannot commit treason against another country. According to Nicoletti, the worry that an acquittal would have established the constitutionality of secession meant that interest in prosecuting Davis simply evaporated. There are other views. In a 2019 book, “Treason on Trial: The United States v. Jefferson Davis,” Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez, a former criminal-defense attorney, wrote that the prosecution unravelled because the men involved in it had towering political ambitions and were unwilling to risk losing so prominent a case. Neither explanation covers all the facts.

One hurdle had to do with the venue. Johnson’s advisers disagreed about whether a military commission could, in peacetime, conduct a trial for treason. For the sake of both fairness and political legitimacy, it seemed safest to conduct the trial in a civilian court. That would require holding the trial where Davis had allegedly committed the crime, which meant Richmond. But what jury in the former capital of the Confederacy would possibly convict Davis of treason?

Lieber proposed a constitutional amendment to deal with this problem, too. One draft read, “Trials for Treason or Sedition shall be in the State or district in which they shall have been committed unless the administration of justice in the respective State or district shall have been impeded by the state of things caused by the commission of the criminal acts which are to be tried.” In other words, you shouldn’t have to try someone for treason in a state where you can’t possibly convict him of treason. That proposal went nowhere. A doctrine called “constructive presence,” which informed the 1807 prosecution of Aaron Burr, might have argued for holding the trial in a Northern state—the governor of Indiana, for instance, volunteered to try Davis in his state, where the Confederate Army had marauded. But Speed, exercising the greatest possible caution, resolved that the case would be tried in Richmond, partly because Salmon P. Chase, the Chief Justice of the United States, was on the U.S. circuit court in Richmond. (At the time, Supreme Court Justices rode circuit.) Chase, who had previously served Ohio as a U.S. senator and as its governor, was best known for his abolitionism (people called him “the attorney general for fugitive slaves”) and for his ambition (he was, it was said, as “ambitious as Julius Caesar”). In 1864, even while he was Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, he had sought the Republican nomination for President, after which Lincoln accepted his resignation and nominated him to the Supreme Court. Speed hoped that Chase’s presence on the bench at the Davis trial, alongside a district-court judge, would provide the proper degree of authority and solemnity. This didn’t solve the jury problem.

Then there was the question of the lawyers. Speed assigned the case to the federal district attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lucius H. Chandler, who had virtually no trial experience. Having moved to Virginia from Maine, and never having supported the Confederacy, Chandler was one of only two lawyers in Virginia who had not been disqualified from practicing in federal court in Richmond owing to disloyalty. Speed brought in the New York lawyer William Evarts to direct the prosecution. Evarts, nearly as ambitious as Chase, was happy to participate in what he called “the greatest criminal trial of the age.” But he left the legwork to Chandler.

Davis, still in military prison, arranged for his wife, Varina, to retain Charles O’Conor, the celebrated New York trial lawyer and pro-slavery Confederate sympathizer. “I have not left a stone unturned under which there crept a living thing,” O’Conor liked to say. He was among the most famous lawyers in the country; he was also despised by Black Americans. An editorial in a Black newspaper based in San Francisco declared that he was “as great a traitor as Jeff Davis.” O’Conor’s strategy for his new client was to delay a trial for as long as possible, while the national mood cooled. Luckily for O’Conor, slow-rolling is what Speed wanted, too.

Lieber was not wrong to worry that Davis could run for President. In January, 1866, Alexander Stephens, the former Vice-President of the Confederacy, was elected to the Senate. Two former Confederate senators and four former Confederate congressmen had also been sent to the Thirty-ninth Congress, which had convened the previous month for its second session. The clerk refused to call their names at roll, and they were never sworn in. But their presence made clear the need for measures keeping “from positions of public trust of, at least, a portion of those whose crimes have proved them to be enemies to the Union, and unworthy of public confidence,” as a congressional committee wrote.

A fifteen-man Joint Committee on Reconstruction began considering proposals to disqualify former Confederates from federal office and, at the same time, to guarantee the equal citizenship of freedmen. In January, 1866, the committee held hearings to inquire into the delay in prosecuting Davis, and called the Virginia judge in charge of the case, John C. Underwood. A New York-born abolitionist and Radical Republican appointed to the U.S. District Court by Lincoln in 1864, Underwood had issued a series of rulings protecting equal rights, declaring, in one case, that “all distinction of color must be abolished.” He’d also suggested that he intended to sell Davis’s Mississippi plantation to ex-slaves for a half-dollar an acre. White Virginians despised him; the feeling appears to have been mutual. The committee asked Underwood whether any jury in Virginia was likely to convict Davis of treason. “Not unless it is what is called a packed jury,” Underwood answered. The committee then summoned Robert E. Lee, who offered a similar assessment:

Question. Suppose the jury should be clearly and plainly instructed by the court that such an act of war upon the United States, on the part of Mr. Davis, or any other leading man, constituted in itself the crime of treason under the Constitution of the United States; would the jury be likely to heed that instruction, and if the facts were plainly in proof before them, convict the offender?

Answer. I do not know, sir, what they would do on that question.

Question. They do not generally suppose that it was treason against the United States, do they?

Answer. I do not think that they so consider it.

What about a Black jury? Black men were banned from jury service, with dreadful consequences. In 1865 and 1866, in five hundred trials of whites accused of killing Blacks in Texas, all-white juries found all five hundred defendants not guilty. “Are our lives, honor, and liberties to be left in the hands of men who are laboring under the most stubborn and narrow prejudice?” the editor of one Black newspaper asked. In March, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which enshrined the right to testify in criminal trials. Johnson, in a statement that the attorney Henry Stanbery helped craft, vetoed the bill, warning that it might lead to Congress declaring “who, without regard to color or race, shall have the right to sit as a juror.” Congress overrode the veto, and kept on with the work of extending rights to Black men and denying them to former Confederates. In April, the Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens added to the proposed Fourteenth Amendment a new section that would disqualify from Congress any former federal officeholders or servicemen who had taken “part in the late insurrection.” There followed much discussion of who, exactly, was to be disqualified, with one version of the amendment stating, “The President and Vice-President of the late Confederate States of America so-called . . . are declared to be forever ineligible to any office under the United States.” This, however, was not the version that Congress sent to the states for ratification, in June, which, in any case, the states of the former Confederacy refused to ratify. Congress, one North Carolinian said, wanted Southerners to “drink our own piss and eat our own dung.”

Lieber grew resigned to a foul outcome. “The trial of Jeff. Davis will be a terrible thing,” he thought. “Volumes—a library—of the most infernal treason will be brought to light,” but “Davis will not be found guilty, and we shall stand there completely beaten.” Frederick Douglass blamed Johnson, predicting, as a newspaper reported, that “Davis would never be punished, simply because Mr. Johnson had determined to have him tried in the one way that he could not be tried, and had determined not to have him tried in the only way he could be tried.” And, even if he were tried, any verdict would be appealed to the Supreme Court, which, in the aftermath of the Dred Scott decision, could hardly be said to have enjoyed unqualified confidence. Harper’s Weekly asked, “Does anybody mean seriously to assert that the right of this Government to exist is a question for a court to decide?” Will Americans trust the Supreme Court to decide a question of such moment in 2024?

Donald Trump has made much of the fact that three of the four prosecutors who are heading criminal prosecutions against him are Black: Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia; Letitia James, the attorney general of New York; and Alvin Bragg, the district attorney of Manhattan. Trump has labelled the three prosecutors “racist,” calls Bragg an “animal” and James “Peekaboo,” and insists that the charges against him are both politically and racially motivated. Sometimes it feels as if the century and a half separating the trial of Jefferson Davis from the trials of Donald Trump were as nothing.

In March, 1867, again overriding Johnson’s veto, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, which called for the occupation of the former Confederacy by the U.S. Army and stipulated that no state could reënter the Union without first ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress also endorsed jury service for Black men. In Texas, when the military governor announced that Black men would be allowed on juries, some judges refused to hold court. In Virginia, Underwood impanelled Black jurors for Davis’s trial. Many Northerners approved. “The trial of Jefferson Davis, for leading the Rebellion in behalf of Slavery, should be before a jury made up in part of freedmen, if only for the historic justice, not to say the dramatic beauty and harmony, of such a denouement,” the New York Tribune wrote. But Southern newspapers expressed disgust at the “African quota of the Grand Jury,” describing the men, swearing an oath on the Bible, as having “smacked their lips over the sacred volume when permitted to get at it.” And an editorial that ran in both the North and the South asked, “If Davis is to stand before a nigger jury, what becomes of the notion that a man is to be tried by a jury of his peers?”

When a new trial date came—June 5, 1866—Davis wasn’t there; he was in military prison. Lucius Chandler stayed home sick. Chief Justice Chase spent the day in his library in Washington, where he wrote a letter to his daughter. Outside his window, he could hear a newsboy crying, “ ‘Dai-l-y Chron-i-cle!, full account of ’ something I don’t understand what and ‘trial of Jeff Davis!’ ” O’Conor, knowing that Chase wouldn’t be there, didn’t bother to show up, either. Chase maintained that he could not possibly attend a civilian court in Virginia, because the state was still under military rule. Chase planned to run for President in 1868, and he wanted no part in the trial of Jefferson Davis. He had his eye on the election.

Underwood rescheduled the trial for October. But the Chief Justice had no intention of showing up in October, either. Meanwhile, any momentum there ever was to prosecute Davis withered as congressional Republicans pursued Reconstruction, a plan that involved treating the former Confederacy as a conquered nation. If a trial were held and Davis argued that he could not have committed treason because, after Mississippi seceded, he was no longer a U.S. citizen, the government would have to argue that he had always been a U.S. citizen. But if he had been a U.S. citizen during the war, then the Confederacy had not been a foreign belligerent, and the U.S. could not justify its occupation of the region as a “conquered province.” Under these circumstances, Radical Republicans became some of Davis’s most ardent defenders. Gerrit Smith, a fiery abolitionist, helped post bail, and that fiercest of congressional radicals, Thaddeus Stevens, secretly offered to represent Davis.

Over the summer, Speed resigned: he supported the Fourteenth Amendment; Johnson opposed it. In Speed’s place, Johnson appointed Stanbery, who’d written the President’s veto of the Civil Rights Act. When Chandler travelled to Washington to confer with Evarts and Stanbery, the new Attorney General explained that he not only wouldn’t lead the prosecution but also wouldn’t attend the trial. The three men decided not to object to O’Conor’s request that Davis be released on bail. And so it was that on May 13, 1867, Jefferson Davis walked into the federal courthouse in Richmond, eyed the grand jury, and smiled. (Grand jurors operate in secrecy and would not normally appear at such a hearing, but Underwood had seemingly insisted on the presence of the mixed-race jury, to serve, as he said, as “ocular evidence that the age of caste and class cruelty is departed, and a new era of justice and equality, breaking through the clouds of persecution and prejudice, is now dawning.”) When the prosecution said that it was not prepared for trial, Underwood agreed to release Davis on bail. “The business is finished,” O’Conor wrote to his wife. “Mr. Davis will never be called up to appear for trial.”

A new trial date was set, for November 25th. No one expected the prosecution to be ready. Two years after Davis’s arrest, Chandler had still not conducted any investigation, or prepared a superseding indictment. Underwood told Speed that he believed Chandler was a Confederate sympathizer who was making money by selling pardons. But it may well be that the prospect of Black men on the jury led the government to abandon the prosecution, fearful that Black men issuing a verdict that condemned a white man to death would inflame the country beyond any possibility of repair. O’Conor at one point assured Varina Davis, “Chandler professes the kindest disposition and says he will try to get a White jury. But this is impossible. Underwood is a devoted courtier at the feet of Sambo and there is no appeal from his decisions.” The trial jury, O’Conor warned, “will be composed of 8 or 9 negroes and 3 or 4 of the meanest whites who can be found in Richmond.” He wrote to Varina, “I find it impossible to believe that we are destined to play parts in a farce so contemptible as a trial before Underwood and a set of recently emancipated Negroes, but it is equally impossible to assert with confidence that the thing will not happen.”

The thing did not happen. On the day the trial was to begin, a crowd assembled in Richmond to wait for the train from Washington. “The colored population seemed to take a deep interest in the proceedings, and were on hand en masse,” a correspondent for the New York Times reported. The train pulled up. “Has Mr. Chase come?” people cried. He had not. At the courthouse, Underwood announced that the court was adjourned. It’s one of the sorriest moments of the whole sorry story. A newspaper reported that there had been a crowd outside the courthouse, “consisting chiefly of blacks,” but upon hearing the announcement the crowd “quietly dispersed.” No justice, only peace. And peace is not enough.

Then as now, what one half of the country thought best for the country the other half thought worst. In February, 1868, the House impeached Johnson, having investigated him for, among other things, intentionally derailing the Davis prosecution. Lieber favored impeachment, not least for the precedent that it would establish. “As to history, it will be a wonderful thing to have the ruler over a large country removed for the first time without revolution,” he wrote. The same hesitancy that derailed the Davis prosecution derailed the Johnson impeachment: so grave a thing, to try a king. In any event, the Johnson impeachment trial grossly interfered with the Davis treason trial. At the Senate impeachment trial, Chase presided, as Chief Justice, and Evarts led Johnson’s defense, joined by Stanbery (who had resigned his position as Attorney General), which led to yet more postponements.

There was one last gasp. With Chandler’s term as district attorney expiring in June, Evarts recruited the Boston lawyer Richard Henry Dana to join the prosecution. Dana worked hard to prepare for trial. In a Richmond hotel, he and Evarts readied a new, fourteen-count indictment, based on the testimony of multiple witnesses, including Robert E. Lee, who had testified against Davis before a new grand jury. (Evarts wrote a parody of Chandler’s earlier, cursory indictment: “I have arrived at the fact that J.D. used to wear a Confederate uniform on great occasions, and have a witness who can prove it, in the person of a colored waiter who came to me last evening.”) But Dana reluctantly concluded that the trial should not proceed. What seemed more urgent was to disqualify Davis from ever again holding public office; sending him back to prison, or, God knows, hanging him, could have been almost as bad for the country as acquitting him. Dana drafted a letter of resignation on both lawyers’ behalf, and sent it to Evarts, who pocketed it, unsure what to do.

By the time Chase and Underwood finally held court together in Richmond, in December, 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified, and Chase had discreetly suggested to the defense a new line of reasoning: that Davis could no longer be prosecuted for treason because, having been disqualified for office upon the amendment’s ratification (“It needs no legislation on the part of Congress to give it effect,” the defense said), he had already been punished. O’Conor gleefully offered up this argument, suggested to him by the Chief Justice himself. Dana, who knew the argument to be nonsense, countered that the Constitution is not a criminal code and that being disqualified from office is not a penalty. Chase agreed with O’Conor; Underwood agreed with Dana. The case would have gone to the Supreme Court. But, on Christmas Day, Johnson pardoned “every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion,” and, not long after that, the prosecution entered a nolle prosequi. The end.

It has been nearly three years since the Capitol attack. In November, a district-court judge in Colorado found that Trump did indeed engage in insurrection against the United States, but the judge refused to order the removal of Trump’s name from the state’s primary ballot. Will the Supreme Court find that the Fourteenth Amendment disqualifies Trump? Will any jury in New York, Florida, Georgia, or Washington, D.C., convict him of a crime? He could be acquitted. Or he could be convicted, win the Presidency, and pardon himself. Whatever the outcome, it will be contested by half the country, and there will be a cost, which won’t be borne equally.

Amnesty is a kind of charity. It is not usually given with malice toward none. “More than six years having elapsed since the last hostile gun was fired between the armies then arrayed against each other,” Ulysses S. Grant told Congress in 1871, “it may well be considered whether it is not now time that the disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment should be removed.” Over the objections of the first Black members of Congress, Congress voted for a general amnesty. In the Senate, Charles Sumner tried to attach civil-rights provisions to the bill, on the ground that both measures involved the removal of disabilities and the guarantee of rights. “Now that it is proposed that we should be generous to those who were engaged in the rebellion,” Sumner said, “I insist upon justice to the colored race everywhere throughout this land.” Or, as the Black congressman Joseph Rainey said of ex-Confederates, “We are willing to accord them their enfranchisement, and here today give our votes that they may be amnestied,” but “there is another class of citizens in this country who have certain dear rights and immunities which they would like you, sirs, to remember and respect.” The amnesty bill passed, without civil-rights guarantees. A civil-rights bill did pass in 1875; eight years later, the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional.

Salmon Chase ran for President in 1868 and 1872 and lost. Lieber died in 1872, Chase and Underwood in 1873, Sumner in 1874. In 1876, Lucius Chandler put stones in his pockets and drowned himself. Jefferson Davis died of a cold in 1889, at the age of eighty-one. He was buried in New Orleans; his remains were later moved to Richmond. In 2020, Black Lives Matter protesters pulled down an eight-foot-tall statue of him that had been made by Edward Valentine and erected on Richmond’s Monument Avenue in 1907. The fifteen-hundred-pound statue—defaced, toppled, and streaked with paint—is currently on display in a room at Richmond’s Valentine museum, whose founding president was the sculptor himself. In 2021, a group calling itself White Lies Matter stole a stone chair dedicated to Davis from a cemetery in Selma, and held it for ransom. Harper’s reported this fall, “A New Orleans tattoo shop owner was cleared of charges in a ransom plot to turn the Jefferson Davis memorial chair into a toilet.”

Aside from that single day in Richmond in May of 1867, Davis never appeared in a courtroom to defend himself against the charge of treason. But, for the Presidential trial that never happened, twenty-four men had been assembled for a jury pool. Twelve of them were Black. So momentous was the occasion that the twenty-four men sat for a photograph: twelve white men and twelve Black men posed, cheek by jowl, hands on one another’s shoulders, the picture of a promise. Joseph Cox was a blacksmith who, like his fellow-juror Lewis Lindsey, served as a delegate to Virginia’s 1867 constitutional convention. At the event, where delegates elected Underwood to preside over the proceedings, Lindsey proposed a disqualification clause, which would bar former supporters of the Confederacy from holding office. John B. Miller, born free, worked as a barber; he was later elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. Albert Royal Brooks, born into slavery in 1817, had bought the freedom of his wife, Lucy Goode, their three youngest children, “and the future increase of the females”—his own unborn, nor yet conceived, children and grandchildren—for eight hundred dollars. Lucy Goode Brooks had a cameo made: a silhouette of her husband taken from that photograph of him as a juror called to determine whether Jefferson Davis had committed treason against the United States. She wore it as a brooch for the rest of her life. ♦

— Jill Lepore, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is a Professor of History and Law at Harvard. She is the host of the Five-Part Podcast Series “Elon Musk: The Evening Rocket” on BBC Radio 4.

#Jill Lepore #Civil War | Jefferson Davis | The President of the Confederacy #Donald J. Trump #Insurrectionist Ex-President #The New Yorker

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