Exactly. There’s a huge prototyping process. I would expect to make, at an absolute minimum, a dozen prototype stages. And each will take hours to print. This is not some covert process you’re doing in a hostel or homeless shelter. And even if you have access to a makerspace, they’re going to notice and immediately kick you out. No maker space wants that kind of heat on them. And you’ll also need access to a firing range that will let you test your sketchy home-made gun there. And again, no gun range wants that type of liability.

So again, I ask. Where is Luigi’s workshop? Unless you have an owned or rented space, that only you have access to, it is virtually impossible to make a ghost gun without someone finding out.

You almost need to own or rent a large piece of rural land if you want to actually do this.

This is a self-serving lie promulgated by legislators and jurists who loathe a check on their own power.

Form follows function. The jury nullification “loophole” has been known for centuries. Entire constitutions have been written knowing full well that they will enable jury nullification. There are ways you could design a legal system that wouldn’t allow nullification. Yet time and time again, the people have chosen not to reform the system to eliminate jury nullification.

Yes, giving juries power to judge the law often produces negative outcomes. But that’s simply democracy. Sometimes democracies produce bad outcomes, just like any system of government.

Why have juries at all then?

Assuming the trial results in a hung jury the state can refile the case over and over again - but if the outcome isn’t viewed as a fluke then it’s just a huge waste of money.

I’ll elaborate on this. In order to actually be acquitted, ie found not guilty, the jury has to unanimously vote him “not guilty.” A hung jury is if that jury cannot come to a unanimous decision.

In a case like this, if we get a hung jury, the prosecution isn’t likely to let it go. It’s too high profile of a case. What tends to happen in cases this high profile is that the prosecution tries again, but with a lesser set of charges.

So here they’re trying murder one. If that results in a hung jury for all the charges, then they will try again. Next time, they charge him with murder two. If that results in a hung jury, they’ll charge him with manslaughter.

Eventually, the charges they’re considering get low enough that the defendant will likely just take a plea deal for a lesser charge. Maybe Luigi takes a plea deal for 2nd degree manslaughter, or whatever the equivalent is in NY. At that point he would likely already have been in prison for years, and he might just be let off with time served.

I don’t know how likely that scenario is, but that’s what would probably happen if his trials just kept resulting in hung juries. Prosecutors rarely try defendants on the exact same set of charges. If they got a hung jury, they know they were probably over-reaching on the previous set. So each time they dial it back and hope to get the guy on something.

It’s not some minor quirk of the system. It’s the only reason we have juries at all. If you just wanted a group of 12 people to decide guilt and innocence based on the facts of the case and the letter of the law, you would never hire 12 random untrained nobodies for that purpose. If that is all juries were for, you would have professional juries; being a juror would be a career that required a law degree.

We have juries to protect against corrupt laws. That is the only saving grace of having guilt and innocence be decided by 12 random untrained nobodies. Legislatures can become corrupted and end up criminalizing things that the vast majority of the population does not consider to be wrong. A jury of your peers is the last line of defense against corrupt laws. And this mechanism is the only reason we have juries like we do.

I mean, if he actually were convicted, executed, and later proved innocent…

That is one of the few circumstances that an official “Saint Luigi” could literally happen. Despite the memes, it is an understatement to say that it is extremely unlikely that the Catholic church would ever beatify someone for shooting someone else in the back with a silenced pistol. But to be falsely convicted and executed for the crime? That would make Luigi a completely innocent martyr for the cause of the sick and injured. That’s the stuff sainthood is made of.

What really moved me to the camp that “Luigi might actually be innocent” was what Luigi said in perhaps his only public statement after being arrested. His lawyer has wisely since told him to shut up, but he did make one shouted public statement to the cameras.

He shouted, “this is extremely out of touch; this is an insult to the intelligence of the American people!”

To me, that doesn’t really sound like the proclamation of a John Brown-type figure. Here’s what John Brown’s words were.

Luigi supposedly planned this elaborate killing down to a T. He even wrote his message on the shell casings. And he wrote a hand-written manifesto. Yet in his one chance so far to speak to the media, did he say, “I apologize for nothing!” Did he say, “Robert Thompson murdered thousands of people; I just brought him justice!” Did he say anything of the sort? Do his words sound like those of a revolutionary, boldly willing to die for his cause?

No. He sounds like a scared kid, caught in over his head, who knows he his being framed and facing potential capital punishment for a crime he didn’t commit. That is how I would sound if I were being charged for those murders. I would probably be shouting something very similar if I were currently being framed for some high-profile murder. It would be an insult to the intelligence of the American people, and I would be rightfully scared and infuriated.

Now, it’s certainly possible that this whole thing was an act. Maybe Luigi just planned that statement to garner public sympathy. IDK. But at least in terms of publicly observable demeanor, he really doesn’t seem like some wild-eyed revolutionary. He seems like a scared kid who knows he’s being framed.

https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/12/13/edny-fbi-investigating-nypd-drug-planting-allegations/

https://lawandcrime.com/police/nypd-says-cops-who-allegedly-planted-drug-evidence-on-black-men-did-nothing-wrong/

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/18/nypd-misconduct-body-cameras-marijuana/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ex-nypd-cop-we-planted-ev_n_1009754

https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-throws-man-guilty-plea-224510985.html

It’s a hard truth to accept that police lie, falsify evidence, and frame people. And I don’t even need to make the claim that cops in general plant evidence. I can make that claim for the NYPD specifically.

NYPD has been caught before planting evidence on people. They were caught doing this not in the dark days of Tammany Hall, but literally just within the last 10 years.

The only physical evidence linking Luigi to the crime scene is a bottle or wrapper that was found in a nearby trashcan that had his DNA on it. The shooter was dressed in a similar outfit to Luigi, a generic outfit that hundreds of men in NYC are wearing at any given time of the day or night. It might have been Luigi that placed that trash there. Or it could have even been the real killer. The real killer could have simply waited until someone that looked a bit like him dropped a wrapper in the trash, and then transported it to the scene of the crime. For a killer that seems to have planned things to such a level of intricacy, planting a false trail of evidence really doesn’t seem unlikely.

I could absolutely see the NYPD convincing themselves, “well, we got Luigi’s DNA near the scene. We have a video that appears to be him putting it in the trash can. This is almost certainly our guy, but he’s a crafty one and knew what he was doing. Let’s just fabricate some additional evidence to really seal the deal.”

It’s telling that Luigi is just the kind of target that the NYPD would pick out if they were going to frame someone for this. Yes, he is from a wealthy family, but he’s been completely no-contact with them for the better part of a year. His family was actively looking for him. Luigi personally was not someone of high social status. He appears to have been living as a drifter and living in hostels and homeless shelters for the last year.

If the NYPD was going to try and frame someone, who better than some random homeless queer kid?

Do I think Luigi actually did it? Probably. But we don’t convict people on “probably.” At least with the evidence we’ve seen in public so far, I would vote not guilty for Luigi. I would want to have a lot more info on the provenance of the weapon and manifesto they had on him before I would vote to convict.

For example, here’s what I want to know. Where is Luigi’s workshop? You’re not making that kind of 3D printed gun in a shared bedroom of a youth hostel. You need space, tools, and privacy. And no maker space is going to let you make and prototype guns on their printers. Where exactly did that gun come from? Where is Luigi’s workshop?

It’s just another part of democracy. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.”

Any form of government can produce positive and negative outcomes. Even absolute monarchy had its moments. Once in a very blue moon, you would actually get a “good” king or tyrant, one that really did try to use his power and influence for the greater good. But through trial and error we learned that, on average, democratic systems produce far better outcomes than monarchical or dictatorial ones. No system of government has entirely positive outcomes; they just vary in their ratio of positive to negative.

Repost of my own comment in a different community:

I would say that jury nullification isn’t just some accident of the legal system, but the primary reason we have juries in the first place.

Judges will say that juries are meant to just decide the simple facts of the case. But what sane person would ever design a system that assigns 12 random untrained nobodies to do that task? If all that mattered was judging the facts of the case, why not have 12 legal scholars instead? Why isn’t “juror” a profession, just like being a lawyer or judge is? If we want people to just apply the letter of the law to the facts of a case, why not fill juries with professionals, each who had a legal degree, and who have sat as jurors hundreds of times? Judging evidence and reading law is a skill. And it’s one that can be educated on, trained, and practiced. Why do we have amateur juries, when professional juries would clearly do their purported job so much better? Or why not just do what some countries do, and have most or all trials decided solely by judges? What exactly is the point of a jury? Compared to everything else in the courtroom, the jurors, the ones actually deciding guilt or innocence, are a bunch of untrained amateurs. On its face, it makes no damn sense!

No, the true reason, and really the only reason, we have juries at all is so that juries can serve to judge both the accused AND the law. Juries are meant to be the final line of defense against unjust laws and prosecution. It is possible for a law itself to be criminal or corrupt. Legislative systems can easily be taken over by a tiny wealthy or powerful minority of the population, and they can end up passing laws criminalizing behaviors that the vast majority of the population don’t even consider to be crimes.

The entire purpose of having a jury is that it places the final power of guilt and innocence directly in the hands of the people. Juries are meant as a final line of defense against corrupt laws passed by a minority against the wishes of the greater majority. An unaccountable elite can pass whatever ridiculous self-serving laws they want. But if the common people simply refuse to uphold those laws in the jury box, those laws are meaningless.

THAT is the purpose of a jury. It is the only reason juries are worth the trouble. A bunch of rank amateurs will never be able to judge the facts of a case better than actual trained legal scholars with years of experience. But by empowering juries, it places the final authority of the law firmly in the hands of the people. That is the value of having a jury at all.

Jury nullification is not just some strange quirk or odd loophole in our justice system. It’s the entire reason we have juries in the first place.

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It really wouldn’t be the end of NATO. Greece and Turkey have had numerous spats while both NATO countries. An Article 5 resolution can be vetoed by any other NATO member. The US would assuredly do this.

A much more worrying possibility would be Denmark specifically withdrawing from or reducing cooperation with NATO. Forget Greenland, Denmark itself is in a very strategic location, considering its place in the Baltic.

My guess is it’s an LAPD operator. The civilians stayed out of the restricted airspace. Some chud cop thinks the rules don’t apply to him, so he flies a drone in an unauthorized zone. He manages to hit a firefighting plane. And the LAPD quickly sweeps the whole thing under the rug and blames it on a never-found civilian.

My money’s on it being LAPD. A cop would have just the attitude needed to think the rules don’t apply to them.

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He’s one of the lesser known Snow White dwarfs. Explody.

Generally you pay a grid connection based on the type of connection you have. A giant factory has a much beefier grid connection than single family residence, so the big factory has a higher connection charge.

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He’s out there with a hair dryer trying to melt it faster…

It will be released. But it will be 200 pages long, with approximately ten total pages worth of sentences not redacted. The only parts not redacted will be things already part of the public record.

This is still Merrick Garland’s DoJ. It doesn’t seek to actively do evil; it’s not Trump’s DoJ. But it does put defense of the powerful above any kind of justice. For Garland, protecting the powerful comes first; justice comes second.