I'm usually one to say wait till the investigation is complete and we have all the facts but this to me seems obvious this guy gasser is a manic and pos and hopefully he goes to jail where he belongs
Well, score one for the prosecution. Original trial date was set for August 7th, but the prosecution appealed a lower court decision that made Gasser's previous road rage incident inadmissible. Prior bad acts can be a slippery slope. Anyway, it was reversed by a higher court. The prior road rage incident is in. New trial date set for Nov. 7th. I always thought it was weird - if true - that McKnight was shot through the passenger side window. That tells me that Gasser either 1) lowered the window in order to shoot McKnight or 2) he could've CLOSED the window in McKnight's face to avoid further confrontation. Can it be inferred that Gasser could see McKnight's hands and that McKnight was unarrmed (bank on Gasser's atty saying he couldn't). Dunno. Can it be inferred that Gasser never brandished his weapon as a warning? Dunno that, either; but why would an unarmed man approach an armed man no matter how angry he was unless he 1) had a death wish (verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry unlikely - McKnight has a young child) or 2) did not know Gasser had a gun. Would McKnight be alive if he looked the other way? Yes. Is that victim blaming? Yes. Does it matter who started it? No. Could Gasser have peeled out of there even if the light was red if he felt that McKnight was threatening his life? If not, why not? I don't pretend to have the answers to these questions and I don't know all of the facts (obviously). All I know is that Joe McKnight is a dead man and he shouldn't be. http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2017/08/appeals_court_agrees_ronald_ga.html We'll see how it plays out. I just hope that when the case is presented that the verdict falls on the side of justice. I'd say it's looking pretty good for McKnight's family right now, but I've been way wrong before.
Trial date finally set, both sides asked for more time from the Nov 7th date and now set for Jan 16th
http://www.wwltv.com/news/local/report-new-trial-date-set-in-killing-of-joe-mcknight/484577169 WHAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTT. I'm thinking that's incorrect (?), but WTH?!
Manslaughter not 2nd degree murder, I could see the judge giving him a somewhat light sentence like 5-15 years
15 years for a 56 year old guy pretty much ends his productive years. i read an article about it a few minutes ago and didnt realize he had followed mcknight off an exit he wouldnt use. these are the dangers of road rage, both of them apparently were guilty of that and one is dead and the other hopefully will spend the next 10-20 in the slammer. people need to realize that you cant just go around acting like an asshole and or shooting people after having a way to diffuse the situation and not taking it.
WELL HE GOT 30 YEARS....... http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2018/03/ronald_gasser_sentenced_to_yea.html#incart_2box
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-st...ts-sentence-reconsideration-in-mcknight-death His sentence is being appealed, though re: prior bad acts being let in.
Is this hump getting out?! Manslaughter charge overturned. https://nypost.com/2021/12/17/man-who-killed-ex-jet-joe-mcknight-cant-be-tried-again-for-murder/ https://www.newsweek.com/man-who-ki...ight-cant-retried-murder-charge-court-1660685 @BrowningNagle , because we were just talking about McKnight.
Gasser was convicted 10-2 of manslaughter. I did NOT know that. I thought it was always a 12-0 unanimous decision regardless of the state? Found to be unconstitutional that he can't be re-tried on double jeopardy for murder. I get the double jeopardy part, but I had no idea about not all jurors being in agreement to garner a conviction. WTF. Overturned and gonna walk.
This is an interesting scenario. The jury deliberated until they got their 10-2 verdict of guilty, so there was no reason to continue to deliberate further to get a unanimous verdict. Had they known it had to be unanimous they could either have continued to deliberate and come back hung and he could have been retried. It’s intellectually dishonest to change the requirement to have to be unanimous and then treat this as if it was a not-guilty verdict in which double jeopardy would apply; this should clearly be treated as a hung jury scenario.
I never heard of anything like this in my life. I'm still very confused. I know I'm being somewhat repetitive here, but I always thought it had to be 12-0 or hung on the main charge. I know of course that if you have several charges lodged against you that you could be not guilty of some and guilty of others, but I still had no idea that you didn't need 12-0 especially on something as big as manslaughter charge. EDIT: @JetBlue , I re-read your post, but still confused. Thanks for trying to clarify this for me, but whose fault is this? The prosecution, the judge, or both? That, and doesn't the defense usually poll the jury on a guilty verdict for a charge like that? I just don't get it. The Menendez Brother's trial got hung twice because it wasn't 12-0 is what comes to mind.
OK, I just read something else. Gasser was charged with second-degree murder but the jury could also consider manslaughter. They couldn't agree on a second-degree murder charge, so they went with 1st degree manslaughter. It wasn't 12-0, so he's getting a get-out-of-jail-free card. Somebody seriously screwed up here. How could something be this sloppy?! I wish we had some criminal lawyers on here who could really explain this. Paging Saul Goodman.
At the time, the only other state that allowed nonunanimous verdicts for serious crimes was Oregon. Shortly after Gasser was convicted, Louisiana voters approved a law getting rid of them, so even if the US Supreme Court hadn't gotten involved, there was going to be a retrial anyway (a Louisiana court had ruled that the new law would apply retroactively, although interestingly the US Supreme Court said last year that it wouldn't). An interesting part of the story is that there was no way he was going to be convicted of murder by the original jury. This story with a juror at the time makes that clear. At the start, only five of the jurors were considering a murder conviction. Right before the final 10-2 vote, the vote was 2 for murder, 8 for manslaughter, and 2 for acquittal on all charges. What happened was that the two jurors who wanted a murder conviction ultimately agreed to the manslaughter conviction. If there hadn't been the possibility of a 10-2 conviction, it's very reasonable to think that there would have been a hung jury anyway because of the two acquittal holdouts and maybe the two murder holdouts, and they would have had to start all over again (and when they did, they would be able to consider murder again). The Appeals Court ruling is logically inconsistent, but might not actually matter for this particular case based on how the first trial went (you never know what will happen with a new jury, of course).
