The Amherst Stabbing Case

Well, I’m lazy, and don’t want to replow the ground that others have already plowed; I’m more inclined to do a little freelance gleaning at the corners.  And since somebody asked, and I was writing on it anyway . . .

So let’s start here, with the reporting on how Jason Vassell stabbed Bowes and Bosse. 

Sounds pretty simple, no? 

Well, no.   Quick jump to here, where prosecutor and former criminal defense attorney Ken Lammers asks a bunch of good albeit not dispositive questions. And then to here, where Scott Greenfield posts about it.  And skip to here, for a very partisan account, and do let’s remember that “partisan” and “liar” are two different words, and also different from “Fair Witness“. 

Now, as a guy who spends a fair amount of time conducting training classes for people who want to carry guns in Minnesota (and elsewhere), this one hits kind of close to home; the only way it could hit much closer, without me being the guest of honor in the proceedings, is if it were a Minnesota thing.  (The fact that the tool used either in proper self-defense and/or excessive force happened to be a knife rather than a gun may make a difference to some, but I don’t much care.)

The specifics of this case are going to be governed by Massachusetts law, and a quick glance at the MA equivalent to Minnesota’s defense of dwelling statute raises more questions than it answers. So let’s forget about that. The folks in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts are stuck with MA law, whatever it may be, and good luck to them with it.

Me, I’m not trying to decide not whether or not Vassel did everything right — that’s easy:  reading between the lines at the “Justice for Jason” site, it’s clear to me that he didn’t — but whether or not he did enough wrong that he ought to be in trouble, with a very real risk of a criminal conviction.

Again, let’s back up for a second — and I promise to stop doing that, as I’m going to start tripping over the furniture.

When we point at a thing we call “self defense”, we’re sometimes talking past each other.  In a criminal proceeding, it’s what the lawyer types call an “affirmative defense.”  To simplify (and the lawyers reading this are, as always, invited to tell me how wrong I am, and how my simplification is misleading) when a guy claims self defense, he’s saying, in effect, “yeah, I shot/beat/stabbed/hacked the guy, and I meant to do it, but I had three good reasons for it:  I didn’t want to be involved in the fight, I had a damn good reason to think that he would have killed or crippled me, and I really had no other choice, except for getting killed or crippled.”  (In some places, add . .  “. . . and among the reasons that I had no other choice is that I couldn’t run away.”)

Here’s the thing:  if the prosecutor can show that any one of those is missing, the guy goes to prison.  Just one; he’s dangling over a prison cell, clinging to a chain that has three (or four, depending) links, and since he’s in court, you can visualize the prosecutor sawing at one or more of those links, knowing that if he breaks any one — two would be fine, but one will do every bit as well — the guy falls in.

The standard for self-defense isn’t, as Justice Holmes long ago told us, whether or not detached reflection can properly be demanded in the presence of an upraised knife (or, although he didn’t say it, a couple of thugs)  after all.

And for once, the law as I understand it and what seems reasonable to me — I got my freelance philosopher’s license some years ago; it’s issued at birth with human DNA — really do agree, at least mostly.  It’s not okay to go around starting fights and beating the crap out  or killing or crippling people to take their dignity, health, or stuff; people under stress not of their making can’t be expected to sort things out perfectly, or benefit from hindsight, but can be required — under penalty of law, to not be very unreasonable when they find themselves in a mess not of their own making.

Now, back to the partisan account . . . and let’s assume that it’s spun, at least a little bit, but not horribly inaccurate as to the series of events.  I’ll indent their stuff, and undent mine. 

At approximately 4am on Sunday February 3rd two young women students visited Jason Vassell a fellow resident of MacKimmie in his dormitory room.

A bunch of college kids are still up partying after a late Saturday night.  It would not shock my conscience were some alcohol and a bit of courting behavior going on.

Upon entering and finding the room “stuffy” one of the young women crossed to the window and raised the shades. She was astonished to find the face of “a large white man” pressed against the window and staring back at her.

And were it the face of “a small Asian woman”, would she have been unastonished?  Nah.  The attempt to — quite possibly legitimately; it’s not always a forgery, you know — play the race card aside, it’s not usual to find anybody outside anybody else’s window at four in the morning, although — the face pressing aside — there likely could be an innocent explanation.

I’m guessing that there wasn’t.

 Asked by Jason to explain his presence outside his window

Please.  “What the fuck are you doing?  Get the fuck away from there,” or stronger language would be entirely appropriate under the circumstances.  

the man (John Bowes) launched into a loud tirade of racial invectives and violent threats directed at Jason. Another man was observed

Who did this observing?  I’m not sure it mattered, but when people use the passive voice, I want to frisk them to see what else they’re hiding.  

outside the room and he joined in the abuse. Told to go away, the man became more enraged and kicked in the window.

See above. There’s nothing wrong with telling somebody to get away from your window at 4AM, even if they’ve responded to your inquiry as to the reason for their presence without saying bad words or summoning jerks.

Understandably frightened, the two young women then left the room, and the police were called.

Good so far, although I’m still unhappy about the passive voice.  (Hey, partisans?  It’s okay if one of the young women called the cops, rather than Vassell.)  I sense a pattern.  The safe thing to do — in a lot of ways — is to call the cops.  Whether or not to announce that to the folks outside is a judgment call; either would be okay with me.  (At my home, I would, but I do have specialized tools available in the event that that announcement persuaded them that entering the home and beating me to death in advance of the arrival of the badged folks was a wise decision, and such tools would be in hand, as whatever kind of idiot I am, I’m not that kind.) 

While awaiting the arrival of the police, Jason, feeling outnumbered and at risk, called a friend from a neighboring dorm for support.

The attackers have kicked in a window (either that, or the partisans are lying; I’m betting that the window was broken inward, and by the jerks), a guy could reasonably feel that he wasn’t safe where he was, and wouldn’t want to be alone.  How long until the cops get there?  I dunno, either, but “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”  Phone a friend?  Sure.

When his friend arrived Jason went to the lobby and not seeing his tormenters, opened the outside door.

Excuse me, folks.  You forgot about the knife.  I’m not irritated with your guy for getting it, and I’m very much not irritated with him and/or his lawyer for not discussing that with you, but, sheesh:  yeah, he grabbed something that he might be able to use for self-defense, if things continued to go pear-shaped.  This proves one thing: he’s not an idiot. 

As his friend was entering the two intruders appeared from the side and entered the lobby. The big intruder assaulted Jason and broke his nose. In the ensuing skirmish both intruders were stabbed.

A guy’s in his dorm room, quite possibly intending to put some moves on some friendly young women (there’s not anything wrong with that, you know), only to find some creep trying to peek in through the window. 

Epithets are exchanged; a window is broken.  The guy grabs a knife (and I don’t care whether it’s a steak knife that he keeps to cut his food or a P’Kal identical to the one in my right front pocket at the moment; it’s a fargin’ tool) and retreats from his room, to go down to the front door to let in a friend who he’s asked to come over while he’s waiting for the police to show up (and, remembering that he’s not an idiot, probably to take possession of the knife and fade slowly into the woodwork when the cops do, just so there won’t be a misunderstanding), and the two jerks rush in.  (Both the news report and the partisan site are clear that the confrontation happened in the dorm lobby; Amherst dorms are locked at night — I just checked — and they couldn’t have gotten in without the door being opened for them; while it’s a safe guess that Bosse is or was an Amherst student, Bowes never was.)

He gets a broken nose in the fracas that they instigated, and then they get themselves cut up some. 

How much?  Well, remembering that even  an out-of-shape overweight fifty-four year-old can stab something (or, conceivably, somebody) more than ten times in two seconds, maybe we can cut a bit of slack to a kid whose nose has just been broken, in a fight that, in this version, he didn’t start, and which he wasn’t outside trying to continue? 

Sheesh. 

Let me give you another version of what happened . . .

A couple of relatively harmless — so far; yeah, maybe, there was the trouble that there were in in high school for racially motivated attacks, possibly — but more than a little obnoxious white kids are partying at at night at Amherst, and haven’t left, as they haven’t managed to score with any of the cute Amherst girls (and/or cute Amherst guys) by four in the morning; as is often the case, the booze that they’re drinking just makes everybody else more attractive. They’re lounging about outside a dorm, maybe having a cigarette — near the one where they’ve been partying (it’s February, and it got just a little below freezing there that night; they’re not going to be partying outside), and some guy leans out a nearby window and shouts, not in a friendly way, to get away. 

Words are exchanged.  Everybody uses bad words.  They use worse words, maybe, and one of them starts pounding on the window with his closed fist.  Bad choice; the window breaks.  The guy inside announces that he’s calling some friends to come and beat them, and they’re on their way.  (They don’t hear that the cops have been called.)  

And then . . .

And then the whole story that they’re the imperfect victims breaks down.  Because the imperfect victims might not be scared off — they’ll stand their ground, even though it’s not their ground — or they might run, but the one thing that they don’t do is figure out a way to get into a locked dorm building to confront the guy whose window they’ve just broken in the lobby.  Wait for the cops so that they can get their story in first?  Sure.  Outside.  Run away, and kind of hope that ends it?  Possibly.

Shove their way into a locked dorm to continue the confrontation, break a guy’s nose.  Sure:  if they’re looking for more trouble, not happy with what they’ve found.

Something stinks, and it’s not just the food at the dining hall, either.

So, why would a prosecutor push this?  I dunno.  If you want to assume that the prosecutor is being reasonable, about the only thing that makes sense is that, after defending himself with the knife — it’s not reasonable to require a guy to be able to push away his attacker without tools, unless he’s some sort of martial artist, and probably not then — he kept going and going, or at least the prosecutor thinks that. 

Which, of course, leaves us with the problem that both of the imperfect victims are not only still alive, but were out of the hospital in fairly short order.

I’ll try to keep an open mind, but, gee, this sounds like it can’t be a lot better than, well, it sounds like.   

Provably some, probably many prosecutors really hate self-defense.  Some feel that if you let people protect themselves, that’s a long step down the slide to vigilantism.  (There’s a technical term that we self-defense activists use about people who think that way; we call them “morons.”  Strong language to follow.)

One local-to-me city attorney has been known to say that any time that somebody takes out a gun, he should be prosecuted, regardless of the facts — let the jury sort it out.  And if that means he has to bankrupt himself to pay a lawyer, well, that’s his problem.

After we passed the our carry reform law in 2003, word went out in my county that the County Attorney herself had passed the word that at least the first permit holder to use a gun in self-defense would be prosecuted, period, pour encouragez les autres, and was prepared to, at a moment’s notice, slide down the firepole she had installed between her office and the press room at the HCGC to announce the indictment.  (She is, I’m happy to say, no longer my County Attorney; alas, Amy the Klo is my US Senator, so that story doesn’t end happily.)

So, yeah; I’m willing to be open-minded, but this does look pretty awful, and I’m hearing the sounds of the choo-choo; Vassell is, by first approximation, the victim of a railroading.

Which makes him better off than crippled or dead, but that’s about the only good thing that can be said about it.

Not the only time that the prosecutors have gone after the victim, mind you; google for “Martin Treptow” sometime.