Talk:Mike Schmidt (lawyer)

"133 felonies were for riot, which in Oregon can be even be applied to a passive bystander in a group"

Tedder, my interpretation of the article (In fact, under Oregon law, a person can be accused of rioting if “participating with five or more other persons the person engages in tumultuous and violent conduct.” During protests, police would often label a crowd a riot because an individual set a trashcan on fire or threw rocks — and then charge any other individual arrested in that context with rioting, even if that individual was not engaged in the riotous behavior.) is that to be guilty of rioting the person must be an active participant in the 'tumultuous and violent conduct'.

It sounds like the police were initiating arrests based on an excessively broad interpretation, which I'm defining as one that is unlikely to result in a conviction in court, but the article makes it sound like that excessively broad interpretation is actual Oregon law. Paisarepa 06:17, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

See the second part of the paragraph: "Schmidt has said his office will prosecute individuals actively engaging in harmful behavior, but not those who merely find themselves in a place where someone else is. “That’s not good enough to implicate you in a felony,” he said." Paisarepa 06:21, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

I think we agree, it's just the wording, but please correct me if the interpretation is incorrect. What I'm saying is the police, and letter of the law, allows the broad interpretation. Schmidt is refusing to prosecute that definition, but will prosecute against active conduct. Do we agree on this part? If so, how can the wording in the article be improved? If not, happy to continue discussing until we both understand where the disagreement is. tedder (talk) 19:16, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

User:Tedder I disagree that the letter of the law allows the broad interpretation. The law uses the words 'the person engages' -- passive bystanders are by definition not engaging in the relevant actions. And Schmidt specifically used the word 'implicate': “That’s not good enough to implicate you in a felony”. He isn't just saying those passive bystanders won't be prosecuted, he's explicitly saying they are not guilty. It is relatively common for people to be arrested or ticketed based on an officer's misunderstanding of the law or based on abuse of discretion, but quite rare for a conviction to occur under those circumstances. Do we know if a passive bystander has ever been convicted of felony rioting in Oregon?

One possibility is changing the wording "44 of 133 felonies were for riot, which in Oregon can be even be applied to a passive bystander in a group" to "of 133 felonies, 44 were for rioting, which included passive bystanders who were not participating in riotous behavior" or something along those lines. Paisarepa 06:20, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Title: Lawyer or Attorney?

Which title do we all think works better? Both would be accurate, though Attorney might be more prudent considering it would be seen as more relevant. GrandPeople44 (talk) 18:02, 30 December 2023 (UTC)