Arizona State instructor followed, injured by Turning Point crew
Arizona State instructor followed, injured by Turning Point crew
Police investigate an altercation with a queer ASU educator as possible aggravated assault by an operative of the right-wing group.
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“All he had to do was walk away,” Kolvet said of Boyles
He tried walking away. He walked away and these guys kept following him and taunting him/defaming him. A person can only be reasonably expected to tolerate that for so long.
This was clearly harassment with the intent to goad the professor into an action that Turning Point could spin in their favor. Either a frustrated "leave me alone" or some act of violence. After that, they'd use editing to remove their harassment so that it seemed like he got flustered and/or resorted to violence after the first innocent question.
In the United States, if you insult someone so that they punch you, it's your fault. As we get more non-white or openly LGBT judges and prosecutors, hopefully they will enforce the law as written.
The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In 1942, the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine by a 9–0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire.[1] It held that "insulting or 'fighting words', those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech the prevention and punishment of [which] … have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem."
To be clear, it’s not just insults in general. If you walk up to someone and say “you look like poop” and they respond by punching you square in the face, that’s on them. You need to go above and beyond in your attempted insults to raise to the level of fighting words.
Not gonna lie if I saw someone walk up to some dude and say "you look like poop" only to get fucking decked I think id be laughing too hard to care about right or wrong.
if you insult someone so that they punch you, it's your fault
That's not quite true. That's speech that you can be arrested for.
For use of force, or throwing a punch, here's the justifications for force in one of the states in which I've had to work with the law: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.9.htm#9.22 Look at 9.31(b)(1). It specifically says that force is not justified based on verbal provocation alone. It doesn't matter what they say. As long as the speech doesn't constitute a threat, then you cannot swing freely and claim self-defense as a legal defense.
I don’t see anything in what you quoted about getting punched being your fault
Thems fighting words.
If that poster could read, they'd be very upset.
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