What the hell?
EDIT FUNCTION !!!
Jeffrey Sumpter, a 21-year-old of Bridgeport, Connecticut, was convicted of felony first-degree assault, and was sentenced at a Stamford courthouse on Monday to 18 months in jail. He was assaulted by three juveniles while at work, and will serve time in jail for stabbing an attacker.
Attacked at work by 3 guys. Defends himself. And now he’s going to prison.
Well there you go Sneaky. Welcome to liberal Utopia.
Under Connecticut law, assault victims cannot use deadly force if they are able to retreat from their attackers.
Judge John Blawie told Sumpter that he believed his version of events, but had to follow the letter of the law.
Spineless judge.
And the prosecutors should be disbarred
After being assaulted inside the coffee shop, Sumpter ran outside and stabbed one of the men.
Now I feel pretty dumb. The paper says he pursued them.
I was wondering how 12 people were persuaded into convicting him.
He should pursue a federal habeas corpus appeal on the stated grounds that self defense is an inherent right and that a victim has no duty to retreat in lieu of self defense and then pursue that appeal all the way to the Supreme Court.
Now if he actually pursued them, that is a different matter entirely.
Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.
I don’t think it was a jury trial. Would have been a good case for jury nullification.
No it isn’t.
That’s what makes me doubt that the Fox article is the correct version. 9/10 would take that before a jury and never plea that down.
If the local paper it links to is correct, they probably scared him into taking a plea.
You can’t do that and expect not to get charged.
I know a guy who defended himself in a bar fight with a pool cue and got eight years for attempted murder, that was a miscarriage of justice.
Bad law. When is the fight over?
Legalities care little for practicalities.
Bad law…
Self defense is a proportional response to an imminent threat. I’m not sure how chasing after someone in the process of retreating is an imminent threat.
A more thorough explaination…
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If true that complicates things a bit.
From the article you linked:
"In the eyes of the law what we have here is not a single fight in which Sumpter defended himself against the attack of the three aggressors. That fight did happen, but it also ended, when the aggressors left the coffee shop.
When Sumpter then pursued them and stabbed them, he became the aggressor in a second fight. [emphasis mine] As the aggressor in this second fight, he lost the element of innocence, and thus lost self-defense as a justification for his stabbing one of the aggressors."
Good find, SV.
