The charging of Jose Alba and the war on self-defense
The war on self-defense continues, in New York City this time.
You know how it goes with these Soros-backed leftist DAs such as New York’s Alvin Bragg. When Bragg was elected in January, I wrote this post about his plans and what to expect. They’re the same sort of things we’ve become familiar with from the now-recalled Chesa Boudin of San Franisco, and from the hopefully-soon-to-be-recalled George Gascon of Los Angeles. In that post I mentioned that this was one of Bragg’s awful guidelines:
Armed robbers who use guns or other deadly weapons to stick up stores and other businesses will be prosecuted only for petty larceny, a misdemeanor, provided no victims were seriously injured and there’s no “genuine risk of physical harm” to anyone. Armed robbery, a class B felony, would typically be punishable by a maximum of 25 years in prison, while petty larceny subjects offenders to up to 364 days in jail and a $1,000 fine…
So recently Bragg finally found a criminal worthy of high bail and very serious charges: murder. Unfortunately – but not surprisingly – it was a grocery store worker defending himself against an attack:
Alba was manning the counter at Hamilton Heights Grocery on Broadway and West 139th Street Friday night when Austin Simon, a 35-year-old career criminal on parole for assaulting a police officer, stormed behind the counter and shoved him into a wall, surveillance video shows.
The ex-con then grabbed Alba as the frightened clerk tried to get past him — getting his hands on a knife and plunging it into Simon at least five times.
During the fight, Simon’s girlfriend allegedly pulled a knife from her purse and stabbed Alba three times in the shoulder and hand, according to his attorney.
She has not been charged, with the DA’s office saying only “we are continuing to review the evidence and the investigation is ongoing.”
She’d only be charged with a misdemeanor according to Bragg’s guidelines anyway, right?
I’ve read several articles about the incident, and it appears to have begun when the girlfriend tried to buy a bag of potato chips and her EBT debit card was declined. She left the store and called boyfriend Simon for assistance. He came and assaulted the older, smaller man, who grabbed a knife and stabbed Simon during the fight while Simon was apparently trying to drag him out of the store. There are also reports that the girlfriend stabbed Alba in the arm with another knife; I’m not sure what the time frame was for that, before or after or during the stabbing of Simon. The entire episode was captured on store security tape and can be viewed at many of the articles.
Originally, Bragg’s office asked for sky-high bail of $500,000; it was set at $250,000 and later, after an outcry, reduced to $50,000 of which only $5,000 had to actually be posted. Alba was freed with an ankle bracelet. Alba has no prior record, but note that Simon, the dead man, was out on parole after being charged with assaulting a police officer.
I don’t think that a grand jury would be likely to indict Alba for this, even in New York, and if indicted I don’t think a jury would convict him. Even the mayor has taken Alba’s side – although he also refused to condemn Bragg.
New York, unlike California, doesn’t have a recall provision for DAs. But there is a way to remove Bragg, although it’s not in Adams’ power. It’s in the hands of the governor, who happens to be the abominable Hochul. This was a campaign issue even prior to the Simon killing, and Hochul’s opponent Lee Zeldin is making sure the public is aware of it:
Among those who slammed Bragg on Thursday was Republican Gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin.
‘My first Day 1 action as Governor next January will be to fire Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg,’ he said.
The arrest and high bail of Alba was deliberate on Bragg’s part, meant to intimidate anyone with the temerity to defend himself or herself. If Bragg is allowed to remain in office, this sort of thing will recur. There’s a definite pattern, and it’s the same pattern that emerged years ago in Britain in order to discourage self-defense. We have a more robust self-defense tradition here than there, however, and that persists to a certain extent. But Bragg seems quite determined to end it.
That tradition of self-defense is reflected at least somewhat in a bipartisan call from some NY politicians asking Bragg to drop charges against Alba:
The bipartisan group of City Council members said the DA’s controversial, progressive approach to law enforcement was “rewarding the guilty and punishing the innocent.”
“The fact that you are even prosecuting Mr. Alba reveals how your perverse sense of justice not only protects violent criminals, but actively seeks to destroy the lives of crime victims,” the lawmakers wrote Bragg on Thursday…
“You are simply rewarding the guilty and punishing the innocent.”…
The letter was signed by Councilmembers Robert Holden (D-Queens), Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island), Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn), David Carr (R-Staten Island), Kalman Yeger (D-Brooklyn), Joann Ariola (R-Queens) and Vickie Paladino (R-Queens).
Two of the signers are Republicans from Staten Island, the only reddish borough in New York City, and the smallest. One of the signers, a Republican from Queens, is none other than Vickie Paladino. I covered her in this post from two years ago. She wasn’t a City Council member then, but apparently she is now. Extremely feisty lady.
Criminals are the Marxists best friends.
They want them to hunt you down to keep you at bay.
Fight against them and you will pay the price.
This is perverse beyond comprehension.
As far as Paladino is concerned, once again we see that establishment Republicans are the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters. Too polite and not interested in the rough and tumble of politics. That’s why I do not respond to fundraising by the RNC.
If there is no right to self-defense, then there are no rights at all and tyranny reigns. In which case, the only alternative to “politics by other means” is to “Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.”
and we’ve seen the face of tyranny,
https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/freedom-convoy-organizer-tamara-lich-to-learn-whether-shell-remain-in-jail
In the past, in some states, the girlfriend could or would have been charged with murder, I believe. I’ve seen cases of two home invaders where one is killed by the home owner, and then the other perp is charged with murder. They both chose to commit a crime that led to the death of one of them.
Something tells me that Bragg won’t be looking at that option. I’m guessing it’s probably not an option in NYC anyway.
If they want to stop/slow gun violence, then why on earth do they not throw the damn book at people who use a gun to commit a crime?
Not to mention, Mr. Alba is also a Senior Citizen by definition, and also not to mention the conspiracy angle – where the girlfriend, knowing she didn’t have the money for a purchase, solicited for muscle and came back to take it by force, in addition to participating in the attack. A proper DA would have a field day with this case.
I don’t know what these Soros-backed DA’s think they will achieve by taking such strategies. I find it baffling that any trained legal mind could conceive or endorse that such antithetical ideas could ever be beneficial or constructive in society. And I haven’t seen a statement of principles that lays it out, so: It’s easy to conclude that the purpose is to create societal mayhem and destruction of faith in the institutions. But, to what end?
because they want to punish law abiding citizens, that is the objective, arlington, kenosha, new york
I didn’t see this addressed, buy New York is not a stand your ground state.
“NYS Penal Law, Article 35, Section 15, paragraph 2:
A person may not use deadly physical force upon another person under circumstances specified in subdivision one unless
(a) The actor reasonably believes that such other person is using or about to use deadly physical force. Even in such case, however, the actor may not use deadly physical force if he or she knows that with complete personal safety, to oneself and others he or she may avoid the necessity of so doing by retreating; except that the actor is under no duty to retreat if he or she is
(i) in his or her dwelling and not the initial aggressor;
I don’t know where the bright line of using lethal self-defense lies. Does the exception for being in your dwelling apply to a commercial space?
Neo’s use of ‘war’ in this context is appropriate, and we should take it to heart. Targets of the war appear to have little recourse other than moving to areas where more traditional American legal principles are valued. This is part of my personal long term plan.
very curious pattern
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/why-do-so-many-top-democrats-have-no-problem-robert-spencer/
TommyJay – I believe you’re referring to felony murder. If the DA could demonstrate that the girlfriend was committing a felony, and the boyfriend was killed in the course of the felony being committed by the girlfriend, then the girlfriend could be charged with felony murder. The problem is that I doubt her machinations over a bag of chips constitutes a felony. Stabbing the clerk might be a felony, but if she got involved after the scuffle started, I doubt felony murder would apply.
Also, from the angle of the video I saw, it looked as though the boyfriend was blocking the clerk’s exit from the bodega. I’m not sure how he could have retreated.
Just made a contribution to Zeldin.
If Austin Simon, the assailant, was a white guy, you can bet that no charges at all would have been filed against Alba.
Bauxite; Brian E:
I agree that felony murder would almost certainly not apply here, for the reasons you state. Plus of course Bragg would never charge her with it even if he could.
The consensus among people who watched the video is that Simon made it impossible for Alba to retreat.
Related to Brian E’s comment; it seems Simon’s girlfriend used the same deadly form of physical force, wasn’t in her dwelling for sure, and managed to retreat. Setting the aside the cynical but likely accurate reason; does deadly physical force have to result in death to be called such? Is it ok to just stab a person in a robbery so long as you don’t cause death? If so, then I understand the lighter sentence, but now I’m far less interested to visit NYC for any reason.
Criminals are the Marxists best friends.
They want them to hunt you down to keep you at bay.
Fight against them and you will pay the price
That is because the Marxists are the real criminals.
@ miguel in re Robert Spencer’s post about prominent Democrats’ ties to a notorious Muslim anti-Semite.
Satan’s target is Israel; the rest of us are just in the way.
This is what the voters voted for. I think it’s pretty much that simple.
Leland:
I’m having some trouble understanding your comment. You write:
No one was assaulting her or restraining her, so why wouldn’t she be able to retreat?
You also write:
As far as I know, all jurisdictions make distinctions between types of attack. There’s assault and battery:
And then there’s attempted murder. Basically a more serious assault that might have killed the person and where the intent was to kill the person. Sometimes a person is charged with attempted murder initially, and then the victim dies of his or her wounds and the charge changes to murder, even though the act was the same.
These differences are universal in the US and not unique to NY, although the details of the rules are different in different states.
A few years ago I got into a Facebook debate with a couple of lefty friends of one of my conservative friends. Actually this was a regular occurrence, but the particular debate this article reminds me of was about a case of a pastor stopping a rampage by criminal. These lefties were just aghast that a pastor would shoot someone. They insisted that the Mosaic “ Thou shalt not kill” was somehow an absolute pacifist command. Without getting into the original language, which modern translations translate as “ murder”, not “ kill”, I tried pointing out the context of the Mosaic Code where capital punishment was commanded . I do not remember if I also pointed out that the Mosaic Code also had provisions for self defense under some circumstances.
Also, as I recall, in that case the pastor fired maybe one or two shots, hit his target, and then performed first aid on the suspect until the ambulance arrived. One of the lefties kept saying the pastor shot the place up, just ignoring the facts of the case.
Richard Cook:
No, I don’t think it’s that simple at all.
One thing I have never understood is the extraordinarily low turnout in NYC municipal elections. In November of 2021, when Adams was elected mayor, turnout was 1.1 million voters, or 21% of the over 5 million registered voters in the city.
Bragg is the DA for Manhattan, not the other boroughs, so only voters in Manhattan were allowed to vote for him. There are over a million voters eligible to vote in Manhattan. Bragg got 83% of the vote, which amounted to 182,828 votes.
As I said, I’m not sure why turnout is so low there for something so important. Many voters probably didn’t follow the race because in the past it didn’t matter much because most DAs were interested in actually putting criminals behind bars.
Plus, since Democrats almost always win in NYC, it’s the primaries that count. But in NYC even the primaries have a very low turnout. When Bragg won the Democratic primary, many of his opponents were even more leftist and “reformist” than he. He may have seemed like one of the more moderate choices of all the people running as Democrats. What’s more, because there were seven candidates, he didn’t have to get a majority of the votes in order to become the nominee, just a plurality. He actually only won 34% of the votes, and that made him the Democratic nominee, which almost automatically made him the winner in November. The total number of votes cast in the Democratic primary for DA was 250,603, and Bragg received 85,720. That’s out of about 1,051,000 enrolled active voters in Manhattan. Which means that about 8% of NYC voters voted for Bragg in the primary, and that determined the outcome.
Neo: Now I think you start to get close to the mechanics of machine politics. Maybe it starts with the primaries. Maybe the trick is to demotivate voters from participating, but behind the scenes, build a bench of reliable machine voters. And with shrewd polling to get an idea of a candidate’s support levels, your bench doesn’t need to produce all the votes; it only needs enough voters to win. Maybe in this case for example, 20,000 additional sure-thing, purchased votes were enough to reliably assure that Bragg would win the primary with 85,000 or so votes. I can see how this might be an achievable target for a machine political operative. For instance, if I dispatch 25 trusted political operatives with instructions to sign up and pay off 1000 votes each, I’d be there. And then they can start working the database sheets of known ‘reliable voters’ as well as the nursing homes. I can see how it could be done, but it would rely on influencing turnout. There have been several voter fraud cases in Texas resulting in convictions that had numbers within this range.
Tom Wolfe ~ ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’ DA gets the ideal big news crime, white guy is charged with the death of a black man. This is a great book published in 1987 and it might have meaning today.
Neo –
I do believe it really is that simple. The baseline for any representative form of government is an informed and involved electorate. Why didn’t Bragg’s link to Soros raise more alarms? Was this even mentioned during the election cycle? It is beyond the bounds of logic that, knowing what Soros financed DA’s have done in other cities, anyone observing this could think it would somehow be different for NY.
New Yorkers have been diverging from putting criminals behind bars since the Guiliani days.
There are a million and one excuses, but, like I said above the primary responsibility rests with the voter. If we shirk that responsibility sucks to be us.
Maybe I take such a hard line because, during my time in the military, I saw people risking their lives to vote.
Can’t be bothered to research the issues and get off your (not you personally) behind to vote? Don’t be surprised when things go south.
The Soros prosecutors are a sea change in that they are actively doing the opposite of the job that they are entrusted to do. (And thereby doing grevious damage to the rule of law.)
Anyway, I suspect that urban voters had no idea of what they were voting for or what was going to happen if they didn’t vote. Since time immemorial, a prosecutor was a prosecutor and the difference between a good one and a bad one had almost no practical effect on the life of the average citizen. No more.
But I don’t think that urban citizens were ever going to listen to us going on about George Soros. (Do we ever listen to lefties prattling on about the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson?) Sadly, I think bitter voter experience is the only thing that will fix this problem.
Richard Cook 11:57 PM. I agree with your assessment 100%. Living here in the San Fernando Valley I have witnessed the devolution of our society compliments of the voting public. We had a chance to break off and be our own city but no, voted down. I need to drive over the hill to observe where our confiscatory city taxes are spent, while we here are treated as the ugly step-sister. Go to any Next Door Neighbor site to witness the acceptance of the narrative that the lawful, hard-working, tax-paying person is responsible for the homeless, drug-addicted and criminal among us. This view is easily supported by at least 1/2 of any commenters regarding the lawlessness in our midst. The millions upon millions of dollars spent have had the exact opposite effect and escalated the problems these programs were intended to solve. The “public servants” are enriched and we can go to hell if not somehow connected to the Oligarchs. Pure foolishness on a grand scale.
Adelson was an outrage because he dared to own newspapers (one lefty writer mike davis even painted him as an evangelical) he turned out to be a fraud. Carlos slims operational control of the Times is a well kept secret.
Welp, the last two close liberal friends have signed off. Every time I present the case that “you hate police and don’t want individual self defense” the change the subject fast.
Hard to think Bragg actually believes this is justice or law. Occam says Bragg is trying to create either a revolution or a dystopia, deliberately. Which is to say, on purpose. As in knowingly.
Thus, arguments of logic based on concepts of law or justice are a waste of breath.
Mr. Bragg’s ideology demands that he treat criminals leniently and prosecute the innocent harshly.
In the old Soviet Union, the founders believed that criminals were the product of the old, evil system — they were victims, and thus required a certain leniency when held accountable for their crimes. Every so often Moscow would decree an amnesty for common criminals, after which the Militia (the police) would have to round them up all over again.
Whereas the innocents were political prisoners (Article 58 in the Soviet Constitution) and were deviants in the new system — by rejecting scientific socialism they were indeed criminals and thus deserved the harshest sentences and conditions. They were the ones sent to the ‘corrective’ labor camps in the Kolyma and other regions; they dug coal, mined for lead, and dug the canals, and died by the hundred-thousands.
The natural law of self-defense was likewise perverted in the Soviet Union; Solzhenitsyn outlines this very well in Gulag.
None of this is exclusive to the Soviets; every socialist system organizes itself in this way.
Now you understand why Mr. Bragg charged Mr. Alba — the latter is an innocent, and the former is a socialist.
Richard Cook “Why didn’t Bragg’s link to Soros raise more alarms?”
I’m still waiting for various liberal acquaintances to realize (admit?) that Soros is a malevolent force for harm.
Next thing you know, we’re all going to wake up and discover we’ve metamorphosed into giant cockroaches.
Let’s go back to the precipitating event. Woman wanted a free bag of potato chips. EBT card means someone else, the taxpayer, pays for it. When she is denied the free bag of potato chips because she’s spent her allotted monthly allowance already, she throws a temper tantrum and brings in some muscle for a bigger temper tantrum.
LBJ’s Great Society has created a class of entitled spoiled children in adult bodies.
$5,000.00 cash for bail is low compared to the original amounts and affordable to us commenters.
However, to a minimum wage senior citizen worker with a poor family and no savings account, it is not inconsequential.
This D.A., and the original judge who “lowered” it to 250 thousand, are disgusting .
I expect no protests and agitators outside their homes or harassment when they are in public.
Only a matter of time before the girlfriend claims Alba repeatedly and threateningly used the N word.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/07/biden-admin-finds-way-to-punish-border-patrol-agents-falsely-accused-of-whipping-migrants-even-after-clearing-them/
Another few who did nothing wrong are being punished for optics gyned up by the Democrats Propaganda Ministry and bought hook line and sinker by the administration.
This is an ideal case for the victim (Alba) to sue the prosecutor. I hope he has the leisure, and finances, to pursue a suit.
This is all much of a muchness. Get back to me when Bragg is put up against the wall. Until then, this is so much posturing for “justice” which is always denied and never delayed.
Below the pond scum of NYC swims the corpulent toad Alvin Bragg.
I voted for Zeldin in the New York primary and will do so again in the general election.
The Democrat-overrun NYC dominates the entire state, except Buffalo, which has also been Democrat.
If I remember the video correctly, the girlfriend’s arm crossing the counter looked white. And the thug was as black as 3AM. We see this increasingly, and it is not a good sign, IMO. One may prattle on about the goodness of interracial relations including the sexual (since blacks seldom marry), but it is nonsense. The FBI crime data, by race, bear me out. Black males are simply more often violent, commit more murders and other felonies than any other ethnic. But these problems seem predominant in Yankee areas, excepting (shudder) Atlanta and leftist cities like Durham, NC, the home of highly paid leftist faculties of Duke U.
I live in the Deep South in a town that is more than 30% black, and we do not have the proportionate problems of NYC.
The larger picture:
P\acking the Supreme Court….
“One Overlooked Democratic Plan That Could Have Catastrophic Consequences Before Mid-Terms”—-
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/one-overlooked-democratic-plan-could-have-catastrophic-consequences-mid-terms
Cicero:
There is no question that the black crime rate is high. The black marriage rate is significantly lower than that of other races, as well. But “seldom” is not the right word for it. Plenty of black people get married.
And big cities are different than smaller towns, even in the north. It is my impression – although I could be wrong about this – that black people in the northeast live mostly in the large urban areas.
@ Steve White in re the Soviet Constitution.
That useless, perverse document also came up in a Tweet that Christina Pushaw of Florida’s Team DeSantis responded to, although referencing Article 139 rather than 58, on “the limits of necessary self-defense” – basically, you have no rights if attacked, as set out in excruciating detail.
The victim in the example faced a situation very like Mr. Alba’s, and was also prosecuted and jailed for murdering his hoodlum attacker.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1545204221666000899?cxt=HHwWhoCwnbDD1fEqAAAA
“Soros DA’s think the Gulag Archipelago is an instruction manual”
@ rbj1 > “LBJ’s Great Society has created a class of entitled spoiled children in adult bodies.”
Temper tantrums are not uniquely male.
https://notthebee.com/article/these-3-women-went-and-destroyed-a-nyc-restaurant-sending-one-employee-to-the-hospital-because-of-a175-upcharge-for-sauce
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Regarding Solzhenitsyn and Articles 58 (counterrevolutionary activities) and 139 (self-defense): these are from the 1926 RSFSR (Russian Federation) Penal Code, not the 1936 Soviet Constitution (the so-called “Stalin Constitution”).
History of Article 58 in the RSFSR Penal Code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_58_(RSFSR_Penal_Code)
This is basically the version of the RSFSR Penal Code that would have been in force when Solzhenitsyn was arrested in 1945. It was substantially revised in 1960, six years after his release from the gulag.
Text of the 1926 RSFSR penal code (in Russian–use Google translate): https://tinyurl.com/7v6c5vt6
Text of the 1936 USSR Constitution (in English): https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.html
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}}} There’s a definite pattern, and it’s the same pattern that emerged years ago in Britain in order to discourage self-defense.
It is certainly dead in GB.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/10/myleene-klass-knife-intruders
Over 12 years ago.
Seriously — A woman alone with her child — she had strange men poking about the entrance to her home, took a knife, and waved it at them, they left, she called the police.
The police told her she was wrong to wave the knife at them.
SMH, these people are freaking insane.
Soros and his ilk need to be banished from America for life we cant allow for Globalists scum balls like him to send someone to prison and the ICC for the simple act of self defense.Its time to return Soros to Europe to face war crimes from WW II
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