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‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

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Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#31

Post by harimau777 »

vkou wrote: post #12
leetcrew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it seems like a more extreme version of jury nullification. if it became widespread, it would essentially be the end of rule-of-law. but in isolated and rare situations, perhaps it's a beneficial escape valve? easy to suggest from my comfy office in a quiet suburb of course.

It's not a 'beneficial escape valve' when the community decides to, say, kill the n_______ who had the audacity to sleep with a white woman. Which is a far more common application of lynching. We should not be glorifying this.

Regardless of whether or not vigilantism is ever justified, I don't think that killing someone that has made a credible threat which law enforcement has shown they are unable to protect you against is equivalent to killing motivated by racism.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#32

Post by [deleted] »

widowlark wrote: post #22
chrisco255 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were half right until you dug into the helplessly racist narrative. The wild west had many incidences of such events and the victims were often white. One need only look at the story of Billy the Kid and the regulators or Wyatt Earp's arc for evidence. The only thing that makes this unusual is it was in 1981. EDIT: person I'm responding to makes the case that this case is SPECIAL in U.S. history and draws a direc…

helplessly racist? Thousands of lynchings occurred like this across the country for a hundred years - you can bet they weren't lynching whites more often.

[deleted]

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#33

Post by [deleted] »

jcims wrote: post #29
dwheeler wrote: post #10

> frontier justice came for McElroy courtesy of the residents of Skidmore (population 440 at the time of the crime). Shaken by the man’s ability to evade jail even after being convicted of a near-fatal attack on a grocery store owner... Belkin also details Skidmore’s plague of subsequent violence ... the series persuasively contends that these crimes indicate that the McElroy episode taught younger Skidmore generatio…

This is my prevailing theory as to why minority enclaves in metropolitan areas tend to have higher violent crime. It's not socioeconomic as much as it is folks being forced to mete out justice on their own.

[deleted]

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#34

Post by mieseratte »

neaden wrote: post #2

To be clear, community murders like this happened all the time in US history. The thing that makes this special is that the man killed was white and actually guilty of crimes.

> The thing that makes this special is that the man killed was white

From https://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/

> Out of the 4,743 people lynched only 1,297 white people were lynched.

Would not appear that being white and lynched are not necessarily unique, though perhaps for the time period.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#35

Post by majos »

jascii wrote: post #27
IronWolve wrote: post #19

This is still going on in Alaska, many remote areas have some bullies getting away due to no police. I'm sure some end up missing too, but there is a big lack of funding for state marshals to deal with the problems.

I am not saying you are wrong, however this comment would be a lot more useful/interesting if you mentioned some sources.

Not parent, but this well-researched and gripping anecdote [1] may offer a helpful picture of American places where the law is not so dependable.

[1] https://magazine.atavist.com/outlaw-country-klamath-county-o...

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#36

Post by vkou »

harimau777 wrote: post #31
vkou wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a 'beneficial escape valve' when the community decides to, say, kill the n_______ who had the audacity to sleep with a white woman. Which is a far more common application of lynching. We should not be glorifying this.

Regardless of whether or not vigilantism is ever justified, I don't think that killing someone that has made a credible threat which law enforcement has shown they are unable to protect you against is equivalent to killing motivated by racism.

Lynching has always been driven by people reacting to what they believe was a credible threat, that law enforcement has failed to protect them from.

In the historic case, that 'credible threat' was 'race mixing', uppity ______s, jews that were too well off for their own good, etc.

When you let the most violent members of a small town community unilaterally decide what is, and what is not a credible threat, that is exactly what you will get.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#37

Post by jgwil2 »

ProAm wrote: post #24
dwheeler wrote: post #10

> frontier justice came for McElroy courtesy of the residents of Skidmore (population 440 at the time of the crime). Shaken by the man’s ability to evade jail even after being convicted of a near-fatal attack on a grocery store owner... Belkin also details Skidmore’s plague of subsequent violence ... the series persuasively contends that these crimes indicate that the McElroy episode taught younger Skidmore generatio…

> That doesn't make the actions acceptable, of course. But it does put a spotlight on the importance of having a working legal system that provides some reasonable level of protection to the larger community. This man was tried and convicted by a jury of his peers, it was just in a different courtroom.

That's the kind of logic used to justify lynchings. We have a legal system that enforces a certain burden of proof, that takes place in a courtroom where strict procedure is enforced by an ostensibly impartial judge, and evidence is weighed by an impartial jury. The system is carefully set up to balance the rights of the accused against the interests of the community. It may not work all the time, but it exists for a very good reason, and mob justice is no substitute.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#38

Post by yummypaint »

leetcrew wrote: post #5
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #3

This is a review of the documentary covering a 'Town Bully' who had evaded authorities and continued to harm people repeatedly. In order to protect the community, a group of vigilantes murdered them, and the community refused to issue any statements to authorities regarding anyone's involvement. I think broadly, I wonder what the place of vigilanteism like this should serve. The sentiments to protect the community ag…

it seems like a more extreme version of jury nullification. if it became widespread, it would essentially be the end of rule-of-law. but in isolated and rare situations, perhaps it's a beneficial escape valve? easy to suggest from my comfy office in a quiet suburb of course.

I think this is different. Jury nullification is about a lawbreaker not being punished. Vigilantiism is about an innocent person (innocent until proven guilty through judicial process) being punished. If we as a society have committed to the idea that option a is better than option b, then they seem more like opposites.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#39

Post by coldtea »

chrisco255 wrote: post #20
neaden wrote: post #2

To be clear, community murders like this happened all the time in US history. The thing that makes this special is that the man killed was white and actually guilty of crimes.

You were half right until you dug into the helplessly racist narrative. The wild west had many incidences of such events and the victims were often white. One need only look at the story of Billy the Kid and the regulators or Wyatt Earp's arc for evidence. The only thing that makes this unusual is it was in 1981. EDIT: person I'm responding to makes the case that this case is SPECIAL in U.S. history and draws a direc…

>The wild west had many incidences of such events and the victims were often white

Yes it did. But there were many incidences of such events AFTER the wild west era, and the victims were mostly black...

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#40

Post by ceejayoz »

ProAm wrote: post #24
dwheeler wrote: post #10

> frontier justice came for McElroy courtesy of the residents of Skidmore (population 440 at the time of the crime). Shaken by the man’s ability to evade jail even after being convicted of a near-fatal attack on a grocery store owner... Belkin also details Skidmore’s plague of subsequent violence ... the series persuasively contends that these crimes indicate that the McElroy episode taught younger Skidmore generatio…

> That doesn't make the actions acceptable, of course. But it does put a spotlight on the importance of having a working legal system that provides some reasonable level of protection to the larger community. This man was tried and convicted by a jury of his peers, it was just in a different courtroom.

The Constitution provides for an impartial jury, along with other important factors. A lynch mob is no such thing.
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