The arrest of a US army veteran who protested against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has raised alarms among legal experts and fellow veterans familiar with his service in Afghanistan.
Bajun Mavalwalla II – a former army sergeant who survived a roadside bomb blast on a special operations mission in Afghanistan – was charged in July with “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining a demonstration against federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Spokane, Washington.
Legal experts say the case marks an escalation in the administration’s attacks on first amendment rights. Afghanistan war veterans who know him say the case against Mavalwalla appears unjust.
That’s going to get thrown right the fuck out of court, not even the fascist judges will bother with that shit.
But he’ll be stuck in the jail system until that point, which is the real intent.
Yeah but did you read the person’s name?
How dare their parents name them that?! Now they have no option but to become a terrorist /s
He had so many chances in his life to change his name to Johnny Patriot, too.
And all his biometric and other data will be part of Palantir for use down the road when they start to claim “biomarkers that signal traitorous citizens” or some shit to round people up
Don’t count on it. They got the indictment which means enough jurors thought it more likely than not that he did it. Remember the charge is “conspiracy to impede or injure officers.” To prove this all they need is a social media post between protestors before the fact saying that they were going to block the drive way. That would, I suspect, constitute impeding the officers. This is a really stupid arrest, but unless some jurors just flat out refuse to convict, this guy could spend real time in jail.
A reminder that Grand Juries indict 99.99999% of the time. To the point where the multiple grand Juries that refused to indict the guy that threw the sandwich at ICE officers was actually newsworthy.
They aren’t there to determine whether it is likely someone did something, just whether the charges are even minimally plausible.
They also generally only hear what the prosecution wants them to hear. If you only hear one side of the story, then it’s easy to err on that side.
Regular juries asses whether the charges are “proven beyond a reasonable doubt.” Grand juries have a different standard of, “more likely than not.” The prosecutors in this case convinced enough of the grand jury that he 'more likely than not commuted the crime. Not sure how you meant “minimally plausible” but those are the standards the courts use.
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They’re not hand picked at all. They are randomly chosen. Source: was on one.
The standard for a grand jury is probable cause, not more likely than not. Civil court is preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not), and criminal is beyond a reasonable doubt.