"All the rules of procedure are the handmaids of justice”
“Outsourcing the enforcement of unconstitutional laws to its citizenry” is a return in Texas to the in flagrante delicto defense for Texas cuckolds exacting revenge. The Texas legislature would like to encourage vigilantism in order to circumvent the Constitution. Like Lawrence v. Texas changed the criminality of homosexual behavior, the recent Texas Abortion Ban could in reality backfire on the Texas forced-birther fanatics by posing constitutional problems for so-called fetal rights in conflict with the bodily rights of women.
If anything the legislation is a connivance at its core in condoning litigious vigilantism. Underlying the legislation is a state’s position on official acts as the projection of vindictive “men’s rights” over women’s bodies, [maybe because “every sperm is sacred”(sic]), and in defiance of federal law. Also, It reminds us that at one time in its legal history, the only “reasonable” Texans were men with rationalized revenge.
This latest maneuver against abortion encourages and incentivizes an absurd range of participants in a lynch mob meant to intimidate and coerce patients and unwitting accomplices. At one level it’s another RWNJ stunt, but not unlike frontier vigilantism, it represents a threat to public safety.
**In Texas until 1974, a husband who killed a wife and her lover when he caught them in flagrante delicto was not judged a criminal. In fact, the law held that a “reasonable man” would respond to such extreme provocation with acts of violence.
www.nytimes.com/…
But destruction does not necessarily equal pathology. The pathological aspect of extreme jealousy, according to the mainstream wisdom, is not the jealousy itself. It is the delusion that a loved one has committed an infidelity when none has occurred. The rage itself upon the actual discovery of an infidelity is something people everywhere intuitively understand. In Texas until 1974, a husband who killed a wife and her lover when he caught them in flagrante delicto was not judged a criminal. In fact, the law held that a "reasonable man" would respond to such extreme provocation with acts of violence. Similar laws have been on the books worldwide. Extreme rage upon discovering a wife naked in the arms of another man is something that people everywhere find intuitively comprehensible. Criminal acts that would normally receive harsh prison sentences routinely get reduced when the victim's infidelity is the extenuating circumstance.
archive.nytimes.com/…
www.nytimes.com/…
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (our supreme court for criminal cases) quotes the statute in the case of Shaw v. State, 510 S.W.2d 926, 927 n.1 (Tex. Crim. Apps. 1974):
Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband upon one taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided the killing take place before the parties to the act have separated. Such circumstance cannot justify a homicide where it appears that there has been, on the part of the husband, any connivance in or assent to the adulterous connection.
The court also notes that the Article 1220 defense was repealed as of Jan. 1, 1974.
boards.straightdope.com/…
Throughout Lone Star Law, Ariens demonstrates that the history of law is intertwined with “the messiness of life” (p.284). Events both obscure and familiar illustrate this point. The “Regulator—Moderator War” during the Republic involved vigilantes trying to prevent land fraud in the contested “Neutral Ground” along the East Texas/Louisiana border. The “Salt War of 1877” involved the attempted use of the forms of law to justify a naked power grab of salt deposits in West Texas. Lynching and other tools of political and social subordination made a mockery of much of the state’s treatment of African Americans and Mexican Americans. Modern scandals such as the Sharpstown banking fiasco, and the Tulia drug bust fraud, periodically shake up the legal world, and the pendulum of politics swings as debates over tort reform and public school funding continue. One thing is sure: “when the culture changes, law follows culture, not the other way around” (p. 164). Hats off to Michael Ariens for his terrific legal tour de force.
www.lpbr.net/...
2. Simple element analysis:
-Two or more persons;
-Agree
-to unlawful purpose of intimidating women from obtaining healthcare;
-Guaranteed by US Constitution via Roe v. Wade
-Texas legislature & Governor have no statutory immunity from the criminal statute.
Charge them.
3. It is functionally different by only a matter of degree from the Texas legislature passing a law that gives all white Texans the right to shoot Black and Brown people on sight. If you would not charge that you don't belong in the Justice Dept.
@WHCOS @PressSec @AnthonyColeyDOJ
4. I think I found the flaw in the Texas law. Not a Texas practitioner so I defer to those who are but Tx civil procedure rule 103 requires a court, sheriff or constable to make service or others who are directed by a public official. Even certified mail is by the clerk.
5. So to commence a suit an official act is necessary. That's the flaw. @TheJusticeDept @CivilRights go to district court and enjoin service of process related to the statute. I did a quick word search in the statute and don't see service of process addressed.
@steve_vladeck
• • •
Friday, Sep 3, 2021 · 9:20:17 PM +00:00 · annieli
The anti-abortion group’s website has been under siege for days now, with angry protesters flooding it with fake tips — including at least one fake claim that Texas governor Greg Abbott himself had violated the law, according to NYT. One activist on TikTok even created a script that can automatically feed fake reports into the website’s tipbox, as Motherboard reported yesterday. He told the NYT that the automated tools he’d created had received over 15,000 clicks.
But on Wednesday, Gizmodo’s Shoshana Wodinsky suggested another way for activists to protest: blowing the whistle on Texas Right to Life itself, by complaining to GoDaddy about what it was doing. That’s what appears to have happened.
It’s not the first time web hosting providers or even GoDaddy specifically have played this role: Gab.com had to find a new home in October 2018, and GoDaddy took down white nationalist Richard Spencer’s Altright.com that May. Neo-nazi news site the Daily Stormer was similarly given 24 hours by GoDaddy to find a new home in August 2017, and wound up moving to the dark web instead. Gab was able to return, though, and it’s possible Texas Right to Life will find a solution as well.
www.theverge.com/...