• TechyDad@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    111
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    “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.

    • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      54
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words

      • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          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.

      • SheDiceToday@eslemmy.es
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.