Iguanas Are Now Human Beings

[Tennesseer]

What's next: toasters are human too?

Florida man accused of killing iguana uses ‘stand your ground’ defense to try to get charge dropped

By the time an animal-control officer found the green iguana in September, blood was flowing out of its mouth and nostrils. Its head appeared to be injured. It was breathing, but unconscious, according to an arrest report accusing a man of torturing the creature.

The iguana died while the officer was driving it back to the animal-control office in Florida’s Palm Beach County, the arrest report says. PJ Nilaja Patterson, 43, was charged with animal cruelty for allegedly kicking, throwing and stepping on the animal until it was near death.

He later employed an unusual argument in his defense: The iguana started it.

Patterson, who stands 6-foot-3, argued that the three-foot iguana had “viciously attacked” him and that he was immune from prosecution under Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which allows a person to use force against someone who poses an imminent threat. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Dana Gillen on Friday rejected Patterson’s argument, the South Florida Sun Sentinel first reported.

Florida’s “stand your ground” principle, which also holds that a person is not obligated to retreat when threatened, does not usually apply to reptiles. It took a turn in the national spotlight in 2012, when it formed the basis of a not-guilty verdict in the case of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, in Sanford, Fla.

Complete article here: link

[Opti]

Jun 2, 2021 16:56:29 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

What's next: toasters are human too?

Florida man accused of killing iguana uses ‘stand your ground’ defense to try to get charge dropped

By the time an animal-control officer found the green iguana in September, blood was flowing out of its mouth and nostrils. Its head appeared to be injured. It was breathing, but unconscious, according to an arrest report accusing a man of torturing the creature.

The iguana died while the officer was driving it back to the animal-control office in Florida’s Palm Beach County, the arrest report says. PJ Nilaja Patterson, 43, was charged with animal cruelty for allegedly kicking, throwing and stepping on the animal until it was near death.

He later employed an unusual argument in his defense: The iguana started it.

Patterson, who stands 6-foot-3, argued that the three-foot iguana had “viciously attacked” him and that he was immune from prosecution under Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which allows a person to use force against someone who poses an imminent threat. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Dana Gillen on Friday rejected Patterson’s argument, the South Florida Sun Sentinel first reported.

Florida’s “stand your ground” principle, which also holds that a person is not obligated to retreat when threatened, does not usually apply to reptiles. It took a turn in the national spotlight in 2012, when it formed the basis of a not-guilty verdict in the case of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, in Sanford, Fla.

Complete article here: link

That's horrible. You run away, and its over. I hope he gets some serious fines, but being Florida, probably not. 

[billisonboard]

Not a fine, time.

Jun 2, 2021 17:30:39 GMT -5 Opti said:

That's horrible. You run away, and its over. I hope he gets some serious fines, but being Florida, probably not. 

Assistant State Attorney Alexandra Dorman wrote in response to the motion to dismiss that the entire episode was captured in a 32-minute surveillance video.

She wrote that the video shows how Patterson tormented the iguana, which "was not bothering anyone and did not pose a threat to anyone." She said there was no provocation or no justification for the actions.

Patterson is due back in court on July 30. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted of animal cruelty.

[Opti]

Five years! Five years!

People who torture animals are the same folk who will abuse young kids, disabled and the elderly. 

[billisonboard]

Separating the act of the crime from the court filing. I wonder at times if things like this is some attorney who graduated from law school with no distinction basically saying, "Buddy you are screwed but let's try this and maybe the judge will buy it."

[billisonboard]

Jun 2, 2021 19:40:39 GMT -5 @x said:

Jun 2, 2021 17:55:51 GMT -5 billisonboard said:

Separating the act of the crime from the court filing. I wonder at times if things like this is some attorney who graduated from law school with no distinction basically saying, "Buddy you are screwed but let's try this and maybe the judge will buy it."

Called the shotgun approach.  

Interesting. I use that term for a very different type behavior.

shotgun approach (plural shotgun approaches) (idiomatic) An approach in which the subject is indiscriminate and haphazard, using breadth, spread, or quantity in lieu of accuracy, planning, etc

I am thinking more of a Hail Mary attempt to hit the dismissal bullseye.

[tractor]

Aren’t iguanas an invasive species in Florida?

[billisonboard]

Jun 3, 2021 11:03:26 GMT -5 tractor said:

Aren’t iguanas an invasive species in Florida?

Perhaps but Floridians still can't torture them just like they can't torture Yankees.

[Tennesseer]

Jun 3, 2021 11:03:26 GMT -5 tractor said:

Aren’t iguanas an invasive species in Florida?

From the linked article in the OP:

Green iguanas are considered an invasive species in Florida. State law allows people to “humanely” kill them on private property — a guideline generally interpreted to mean that the animal must die instantly and without suffering, the Sun Sentinel reported.

Death was not instant. It was slow and torturous.

[Tiny]

"iguanas are now human beings" well, if a Corporation can be a "human being" then why not Iguanas? Corporations might get the "man" level of human being though.. and iguanas probably the "woman" level of human being...

[billisonboard]

Jun 3, 2021 17:46:12 GMT -5 @x said:

Jun 3, 2021 14:12:09 GMT -5 Tiny said:

"iguanas are now human beings" well, if a Corporation can be a "human being" then why not Iguanas? Corporations might get the "man" level of human being though.. and iguanas probably the "woman" level of human being...

In the United States; 

In a U.S. historical context, the phrase "corporate personhood" refers to the ongoing legal debate over the extent to which rights traditionally associated with natural persons should also be afforded to corporations. A headnote issued by the court reporter in the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. claimed to state the sense of the Court regarding the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as it applies to corporations, without the Court having actually made a decision or issued a written opinion on that point.[5] This was the first time that the Supreme Court was reported to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause granted constitutional protections to corporations as well as to natural persons, although numerous other cases, since Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819, had recognized that corporations were entitled to some of the protections of the Constitution. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014), the Court found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 exempted Hobby Lobby from aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because those aspects placed a substantial burden on the company's owners' free exercise of closely held religious beliefs.[6]

U.S. courts have extended certain constitutional protections to corporations under various rationales. An early perspective, variously known as 'contractual', 'associate', or 'aggregate' theory, holds that owners of property have certain constitutional protections, even when the property is held via a corporation rather than directly under the owner's own name. Corporate attorney John Norton Pomeroy argued in the 1880s that "Statutes violating their prohibitions in dealing with corporations must necessarily infringe upon the rights of natural persons. In applying and enforcing these constitutional guaranties, corporations cannot be separated from the natural persons who compose them."


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood#:~:text=Corporate%20personhood%20is%20the%20legal%20notion%20that%20a,legal%20rights%20and%20responsibilities%20enjoyed%20by%20natural%20persons.

This mindset: "You can't separate my religious beliefs from my corporation but can separate my financial assets from that corporationI am invested in" is where I have a problem. If the corporation has your individual rights, don't duck out the back door when creditors come calling.

[billisonboard]

Jun 3, 2021 20:05:07 GMT -5 @x said:

Jun 3, 2021 18:54:27 GMT -5 billisonboard said:

This mindset: "You can't separate my religious beliefs from my corporation but can separate my financial assets from that corporationI am invested in" is where I have a problem. If the corporation has your individual rights, don't duck out the back door when creditors come calling.

Interesting comparison. 

Constitutional rights as the same as creditors. 

Equal Protection is a constitutional right. A corporate owner has the same protection of religious practice as I but has an added protection from creditors.

[djAdvocate]

Iguana Trump