11 ms·

My Son Was Killed Because I’m a Federal Judge

121 points by wglb 6y ago

giantg2 6y ago
The only problem I have with this law is that it should protect everyone, not just first class citizens like judges and law enforcement. Other professions have disgruntled customers that wish to do people harm, especially other high-stakes professions such as doctors. The more we stratify society with special protections for specific classes of people, the more we drive a divide and feeling of disenfranchisement.
- rjbwork 6y ago
  Totally agree. Get everyone's details off the internet and you get those who are more equal than others' off as well. You shouldn't get special privileges because you work for the government.
  - ahuth 6y ago
    I understand and sympathize with this view. But it seems likely that a federal judge is more likely to be a target of something like this. Mostly because of the nature of their work.
    - aminozuur 6y ago
      What about jobs in the private industry that make people roughly equally as likely to be targetted? Her proposed law doesn't do anything for them.
      - wolco2 6y ago
        Tow truck driver, repoman, meth clinic server, bouncer, loomis car driver...
    - didibus 6y ago
      Sure, but if you look at all type work injury/mortality related issues, I doubt federal judge is at the top of the list. What could happen here though is that even though federal judges arn't at that great a risk in overall work related injury or harm, because they are a high authority high yielding power role they might have their risk addressed first and foremost, while others don't.
      - Spooky23 6y ago
        That’s about as irrelevant a position as possible. In this case, the judge wasn’t injured on the job, her child was murdered by a would be assassin. How many software engineers have that problem?
        serf 6y ago
        >How many software engineers have that problem? Is that an honest question? Lots. We like to think that software engineering is a totally run-of-the-mill occupation, but even with the most basic imagination I can think of scenarios where a software engineer would be threatened by kidnapping/torture/murder/blackmail. Not all software developers are making web-apps for the next big startup, some of them are working on extremely secret, extremely secure, extremely influential, and extremely deadly software, often times employed by extremely powerful entities.
        traceddd 6y ago
        I had a disgruntled ex-customer show up at my place when a startup went under. It wasn’t violent but certainly felt like it could have been. You don’t need to be working on secret deadly software for powerful entities.
        Spooky23 6y ago
        You had a disgruntled person upset at a company. That's a threat and is scary. I'm not downplaying workplace violence -- it's a different threat with different precautions needed. In the judicial situation, you have a specific unstable/desperate person focusing their anger at Judge X. A judge is a symbol of the state, control, and of a specific matter. The person doesn't accept responsibility for his actions and holds Judge X specifically accountable for his loss of freedom/income/family/etc. In this modern world, you add on the dimension of unstable politically motived disturbed individuals goaded on by various means. We're fortunate as a society in that disturbed people tend to be disorganized and ineffective, but I think that things are changing that make some of these individuals more dangerous.
    - novok 6y ago
      So are psychologists, doctors, debt collectors, lawyers, managers (think: firing), HR staff, businessmen and many other job categories.
      - ganoushoreilly 6y ago
        Exactly and not even that, look at the number of name and shame requests for rosters based on peoples votes? How long until one of those turns into a bad situation? All data should be equally protected, lest we fall into the all animals are equal except some are more equal fallacy.
      - h_anna_h 6y ago
        Talking about lawyers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24957200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24957200
    - _jal 6y ago
      > But it seems likely that a federal judge is more likely to be a target More likely than...? It would really help understand what you're thinking if you'd finish the sentence. And I hope you aren't thinking "your average person". If we passed a law to address median risk disparities in all the places we could, essentially everything that isn't mandatory would be forbidden.
      - ahuth 6y ago
        I was thinking "more likely than me". Was mostly responding to the parent comment of "You shouldn't get special privileges because you work for the government." Maybe some people should get protection or consideration because of their occupation. Didn't mean to say that federal judges should have more than another occupation or situation that we may want to compare against. Thanks for pointing out that I could have communicated more effectively, though.!
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
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- patrickm129 6y ago
  I completely agree. The New Jersey statute itself is arguably vague with respect to what constitutes "risk" and an intent to cause harm. Such arbitrary laws give law enforcement and prosecutors significant discretion and open the door for abuse to such an extent that I could see this being used to violate peoples' First Amendment rights. Another unconstitutional law out of New Jersey, color me shocked. :o The public should be able to hold peaceful protests and hold public officials accountable.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    > The public should be able to hold peaceful protests and hold public officials accountable. That should not extend to people's private homes. You want to protest a public official, go protest at their office.
    - patrickm129 6y ago
      Why shouldn't the public be allowed to protest on the sidewalks outside of public official's homes?
      - rootsudo 6y ago
        Because it's just rude, and someones work life does not exactly correlate with who they are in their professional life. Why drag their family, the neighborhood into it?
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        Practically, it would mean that you'd have to have a police presence there, wouldn't it? Or are you going to assume that the mob will always play nice, and never decide to storm the house?
      - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
        Because unlike the most influential private individuals, they live in homes with sidewalks - not large gated compounds with their own security details, both designed to make sure the public don't get any chance whatsoever to protest. Or is that somehow different? If they're politically influential - why, exactly?
- dk1138 6y ago
  I don't think "first class" citizens is the right classification. There are certain fields/work that are inherently more risky or serve a critical component of society. We are seeing this exact thing pan out now with medical care--doctors and nurses are precious resources and if we don't protect them, we put our overall societal health at risk. Same is true for judges--if you don't protect them, you put the rule of law at risk which is a way of protecting everyone.
  - freshhawk 6y ago
    But those jobs aren't more risky, not by any measurement. What they are are positions of authority. So it's hard to say "first class citizens" isn't the right term. Maybe "rulers"?
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      You don't think a job which massively inconveniences petty and violent criminals - some of whom will be part of larger crime families and networks - is inherently risky?
      - giantg2 6y ago
        I think to know if it's more risky, we would need to see violent crime statistics of people in these positions vs those who are not.
      - ardy42 6y ago
        > You don't think a job which massively inconveniences petty and violent criminals - some of whom will be part of larger crime families and networks - is inherently risky? Those jobs are, but regular people have dangerous stalkers, are subject to harassment at their homes, or just want the peace of mind of some extra privacy, too. No one's arguing that judges shouldn't have protection, it's just that the same protections should be available to everybody else. Limiting these projections to judges & police officers only really helps marketers and sleazy peoplesearch websites, etc.
      - 6y ago
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Not everyone has the same risks. Take child protective services workers as an example I’m familiar with. These folks can be systematically targeted because of their job, which is much harder to protect yourself against. I understand your thought process, but it seems unfair to not provide basic protections to people working on our behalf.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    So what's the reason for not extending these protections to all?
    - Spooky23 6y ago
      There’s no risk. The likelihood that my conduct at work will attract an assassin is zero. I’m probably more likely to choke on a pretzel.
      - robotresearcher 6y ago
        Then covering you too would be an approximately zero cost to that law. Yet it would cover retired judges, nearly-judges, people who aren't judges but have similar problems we haven't thought of yet, and have the moral advantage of treating everyone the same.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        That's just a reason why you aren't supporting the protections for everyone. What's your reason for opposing it being applied to everyone? Just because you feel there is no risk of a disgruntled person targeting you, doesn't mean that there are other people who don't have risk in other jobs (like doctors or managers).
  - thisiscorrect 6y ago
    Not everyone has the same risk of being robbed. But laws against robbery need not offer unequal protections to victims.
- yongjik 6y ago
  The US govnernment already spends $$$ to give its president the kind of protection that can be only dreamed by ordinary citizens. Bulletproof cars, Air Force One, a gang of bodyguards who are trained to put themselves between you and the bullet. Sometimes they literally block streets and your right to peacefully move or assemble. Your tax dollars at work. Why such unfairness? Because the world is full of bad actors and crazies dreaming of killing the POTUS, and it pays off in the long run to not have the president killed off in that fashion. It's not exactly black and white.
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    But these are budget items, not laws
    - daniel-cussen 6y ago
      There's also laws. I think it is a particular felony to threaten to kill the president.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    So what's the reason for not extending the proposed protections to all? Also, the difference here is that the items you describe for the president are proactive measures based on credible threats. Not all judges have credible threats against them. This also wouldn't be a proactive measure - it's just a piece of paper.
- atomi 6y ago
  You're describing the 14th amendments' equal protection clause.
- jariel 6y ago
  It's a worthy statement, but at the same time, this is not the same thing. If we didn't provide special protections for judges, 1/2 of them would be dead. Organized Crime is a very powerful thing, they kill people all the time for a lot less and witness intimidation is rampant. Judges take on a much greater responsibility than most others. If there's an opportunity for 'equity' in this special equation, it may be for those who provide testimony in the courts protections. Because they are not protected nearly as well, they are easy targets: "a study of witnesses appearing in criminal courts in Bronx County, New York revealed that 36 percent of witnesses had been directly threatened; among those who had not been threatened directly, 57 percent feared reprisals" [1] Imagine if people weren't afraid of retribution against gangs and organized criminals, the world would be a different place. [1] https://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/Publications/cops-p112-pub.pdf https://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/Publications/cops-p112-pub.pdf
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  I hate seeing this with journalists too arguing that they should get special protections and rights. Everyone should have the protections and rights. Not just judges, not just journalists.
- joecool1029 6y ago
  Absolutely correct, furthermore not only should the public be protected, but they should also be allowed to request an audit of who's querying their information. I had a (low-ranking) member of law enforcement run my plate and send a harassing letter to my family some years back. While it's fortunate nobody in my family was shot by a nutjob, I wasn't able to find out who it was until I ran into him by chance some time later writing a parking ticket (he was only a parking enforcement official). I commented about this experience more in depth on reddit[1] and also brought up that federal judges have the US Marshals Service to protect them, and our state judges have county sheriff departments to protect them. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/newjersey/comments/jxvote/governor_murphy_signs_daniels_law_bill_a1649/gd1agx0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/newjersey/comments/jxvote/governor_...
- candiodari 6y ago
  Another problem that I have is that this is once again allowing law enforcement to further damage others, which they absolutely and totally refuse to take responsibility for. Shoot someone who took a jab at you 6 times with a strong suspicion and history of racist motive ? 1) You're a private citizen: death sentence. Hundreds of thousands to millions in damages to be paid. And you can be DAMN sure nobody's will ever grant you any kind of clemency. 2) You're a police officer: Not only do you go free, you don't have to pay any damages and the incident is stricken from your record ... You MAY be asked to resign if protests get too bad. If by some magic, there are damages to be paid, they will not be extracted from the perpetrators of the crime. This, and worse, is what these protections will also be used for. Defending law enforcement personnel from the consequences of their own mistakes, their own racism, from attacking their ex-girlfriends or ex-wives, ... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52905408 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52905408
NullPrefix 6y ago
Author calls for privacy laws to protect judges. Privacy laws for general population could achieve the same.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  It's "Rules for thee and not for me"'s cousin, "Rights for me and not for thee." And it should be considered as just as hypocritical.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Privacy for me, not for thee.
qz2 6y ago
I’m sure this will be a popular comment, not, but when you arm citizens you arm morons too.
- redleggedfrog 6y ago
  Nope, love it.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  What about criminals who choose to use guns whether smart or dumb?
  - yongjik 6y ago
    When citizens aren't armed, dumb criminals can't find guns. (Where would they get one?) Smart criminals understands that using a gun in a society without guns will make themselves feature prominently in national news, and the police will make it top priority to arrest them. I mean, just visit any country where ordinary citizens don't carry guns.
    - sushshshsh 6y ago
      Several people per month are still shot in the UK. The guns are smuggled in through ports, much like drugs
      - qz2 6y ago
        Our entire country’s yearly stats are a bad weekend in Chicago. I wake up knowing I’m probably not going to be shot by some prick in Asda car park.
        sushshshsh 6y ago
        In our country, less than 10% of murders are between people who do not know each other. And if you do not live in the specific bad neighborhoods that account for nearly all of our murders, then our crime statistics are literally the same. My town of 100,000 had 0 murders last year. If you are able to solve the problems plaguing both East London and West Baltimore, I'm all ears, however it seems the war on murder will rage on
noodlesUK 6y ago
This rings true in the UK as well. With mainstream publications and members of government attacking “lefty lawyers” and “unelected judges” simply for doing their job, which is to uphold the law, we need to take the rhetoric we apply to these situations seriously. There need to be serious consequences for credible threats of violence against people, even when made by people in the public sphere. Furthermore, I hear a lot of people say things like “how can lawyers defend people who do such horrible things”. I think it is an important part of our education to understand civics, and why we are entitled to a defence, rather than just subjected to the whims of an inquisition. Having a well-resourced defence for alleged criminals (and other legal aid in civil cases) means that we can be certain as a society that we get the right person for crimes, and ensures the system runs as intended.
- throwaways885 6y ago
  Indeed. I'll be honest in saying that I do think the so called "lefty lawyers" are usually defending people most don't like (e.g. foreign criminals), but I also hate the government's characterisation of the lawyers themselves. Like freedom of speech, people have a right to a defence. In fact, part of having a strong legal system is the fact that it optimises for false negatives. Better to let 100 criminals go free than one person unjustly imprisoned.
  - noodlesUK 6y ago
    Yes, you’re right, they are (the solicitors) often defending people that are not well-liked. However, in a lot of cases, the government is losing the cases, as the govt is violating the law. Rather than attacking the process, the govt is in a position to change the law if it wants to. A side note. Barristers in the UK do not choose their clients. There’s what’s called the “cab-rank rule”, which says that if a barrister is instructed on a case they are sufficiently competent in, they must take the case without prejudice.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > “how can lawyers defend people who do such horrible things” It's perhaps worth noting that (in the UK at least), that should never happen, at least in the sense of a defence lawyer trying to get a "not guilty" verdict for a defendant they know is guilty: "It's obviously unethical and illegal for a lawyer to deceive a court knowingly. If my client tells me he's guilty, I can't say he's innocent in court. I cannot call him to give evidence that I know is false or I would be a party to his perjury."[0] Of course I'm sure it does happen all the time, but you don't need to justify a system where lawyers are lying for the benefit of their client, because that's not the system we are meant to have. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2006/jan/07/workandcareers.careers4 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2006/jan/07/workandcareers...
callesgg 6y ago
Being anonymous or more private make judges more safe but it might also make it easier for them to get away with stuff. How should one think?
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Gather data, analyze it, and see if a risks outweigh the loss of freedoms.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  You don't need to be anonymous to keep your address hidden
locusofself 6y ago
The thought of losing my only child (I have one daughter and probably won't have more) is absolutely agonizing to consider.
sp527 6y ago
It’s so odd to see a presumably very intelligent person believe that we can legislate a solution to this problem. Maybe mandated physical security for all judges (which is how it’s done in may other countries)? But Daniel’s Law just introduces a bit more friction that would almost certainly be surmounted by a highly motivated individual. The law is just window dressing.
mLuby 6y ago
> angered by the pace of a lawsuit he had filed in my court. > In my case, Roy Den Hollander, a New York lawyer who had filed a suit against the male-only military draft, harbored deadly grudges. On July 11, 2020, he killed a lawyer in California. Eight days later, he came to our door and killed Daniel. Too late, I learned that he had often described himself as “anti-feminist.” In a self-published memoir, he described me as “a lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama.” Aside from easy access to guns, we can add slow legal system and political radicalization to the compounding factors of this tragedy.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Really seems like someone who made a vexatious litigant out of themselves on the back of "mens' rights" pet issues should probably have a full-time FBI tail.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tomcam 6y ago
That’s not the way the law works. I am surprised a federal judge is unable to understand this, but of course she has lived through the worst thing a parent could experience. And it is indirectly why we in the USA have a second amendment. Hear me out before downvoting me. The police, sadly, are not here to prevent crime. That’s why people who get restraining orders continue to live in fear. Our legal system simply has no concept of preventing crime except through statute. That’s why some of us, especially those living in rural areas where the police could be half an hour away or more, are afforded self protection through firearms.
- titanomachy 6y ago
  I don't understand what this comment has to do with the article. The author doesn't discuss reforming firearm laws. She is trying to get support for a new law that increases privacy guarantees for judges. What exactly is she unable to understand?
- fmajid 6y ago
  The Second Amendment is explicitly framed as resisting tyranny, not self-defense from criminals.
  - tomcam 6y ago
    If you read it, you'll see that it is not explicitly framed in any way. Few items in the Bill of Rights are.
einpoklum 6y ago
Obligatory: This suggestion immediately reminded me of: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/JudgeDredd https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/JudgeDredd But let's leave that aside for a second. I would say that the order in which people should be better protected (w.r.t. the legal system) is: 1. Prisoners, from abuse by prison staff (and to some extent from inter-prisoner violence. 2. Detainees, from abuse by police and prison staff. 2.1 Your average joe. 2.2 Poor and minority detainees. Case in point: George Floyd. But there are lots and lots of deaths: https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/deaths-police-custody-united-states/ https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-... ... and I'm guessing a lot of non-lethal violence. 2.3 People of political significance. Major case in point: Jeffrey Epstein, whose extremely suspicious death has made many suspicious of foul play: https://heavy.com/entertainment/2020/05/who-killed-jeffrey-epstein-theories-death/ https://heavy.com/entertainment/2020/05/who-killed-jeffrey-e... 3. Judges and such. Why? Those people who attack, who hurt, who punish, who bind - at best, what they do is a necessary evil. But they are acting from positions of institutional power. The more you are considered out-of-order, abnormal, criminal, you are generally weaker, have less recourse, less able to protect yourself and more tempting to abuse. ---------------- I also disagree with the judge's conclusion on the question of means rather than ends. Instead of giving judges special protection, I would rather US society did something about its horrible gun culture. The number of killings in the US is spectacularly high. And always it seems that the solution they opt for is _more_ violence, militarization, retaliation through superior firepower, body and vehicle armor etc. US police is already heavily militarized, being fed a nearly-infinite supply of military surplus equipment. Now we'll have fortified compounds where judges are isolated from people? No. That actually does reminds me of Judge Dredd, even if not of the exact details.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
It certainly wouldn’t hurt if our political leaders wouldn’t immediately bash judges if a decision doesn’t go their way. With the current election fraud outrage I see this even get worse.
dukeofdoom 6y ago
Only in movies do judges get every ruling right. There is an error rate, but thats the best case scenario. In reality many judges are political hacks, and cowards that will rule in line with their political backers when it matters. This has been true for as long as humans have lived in civilization. Laws like this just give them more cover.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >In reality many judges are political hacks, and cowards that will rule in line with their political backers when it matters. This has been true for as long as humans have lived in civilization. Laws like this just give them more cover. The law in question[0], in part, requires: "The bill amends the Open Public Records Act (“OPRA”) to exclude from the definition of a government (i.e., public) record the portion of any document which discloses the home address of any active or retired 1) judge, 2) prosecutor or 3) law enforcement officer. Further, the bill prohibits government agencies, individuals and businesses from knowingly publishing on the internet, or otherwise making available, the home address or unpublished home telephone number of any active or retired judge or any active or retired prosecutor." Now there's certainly an argument to be made that such restrictions, if we are to have them, should be much, much, broader, given the harassment (including SWATting[1]) of other folks outside the specific job functions mentioned in the law. I'm trying to view your comment in the best possible light, but I keep coming back to the last sentence: "Laws like this just give them more cover." How, exactly, do you mean that restricting access to the home addresses of such folks "gives them more cover?" Is it your assertion that judges and other folks should have their home addresses available as some sort of extra-legal check on their authority? What purpose does that serve? So that those who disagree with such people can go over to their house with a fruit basket and calmly discuss how their decision was incorrect and caused harm? That seems pretty unlikely. As such, I'm forced to interpret your statement as: "We should publish the home addresses of these people so they can be harassed, threatened, assaulted or killed if they make decisions I disagree with." If I misunderstand you, please explain and accept my apologies. If not, I hope I don't live anywhere near you. [0] https://nj.gov/governor/news/news/562020/approved/20201120b.shtml https://nj.gov/governor/news/news/562020/approved/20201120b.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
> In my house, the only way to see who has come to the front door is to peek through a bay window. In mid-July, after four months of Covid-19 restrictions, home deliveries occurred almost daily. Daniel’s killer took advantage of this familiar routine, coming to our door posing as a Fed-Ex delivery courier. This to me is the most incongruous thing about this story. Why bother with a disguise if your intent is just to shoot everybody? He ended up just going home and killing himself, so it's not like he planned a big escape. Salas was also coincidentally(?) overseeing a class action lawsuit against Deutsche Bank in connection with Jeffrey Epstein, leading to much speculation. The NY Times piece does a good job placing the motive solely on the FedEx hitman.
- wvenable 6y ago
  > Why bother with a disguise if your intent is just to shoot everybody? To get access.
lihaciudaniel 6y ago
Man Trump is a clown
zapdrive 6y ago
https://www.nj.com/news/2020/07/roy-den-hollanders-crusade-to-get-women-drafted-may-have-fueled-deadly-attacks.html https://www.nj.com/news/2020/07/roy-den-hollanders-crusade-t... Reason behind the attack. Good read. Basically the attacker, a lawyer, had sued the army to allow women to register for draft, and felt that the female judge was delaying the case. He was fighting for the women's right to be treated equally when it comes to drafting.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  I've been online for 25 years. There were always trolls, devil's advocates, provocateurs, apologists... But something has changed in the last 5 years. It's like all those roles have been rolled up into a uniformed propaganda department.
  - shard972 6y ago
    they grew up
- _underfl0w_ 6y ago
  Oh wow, this is a very isolated take, seemingly based solely off on snippet from TFA. I initially thought the same because I was genuinely surprised women couldn't already register, but a quick internet search of the assailant's name gave me whiplash. If outspoken misogyny isn't your bag, you may want to look into him further before getting behind him.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - zapdrive 6y ago
    Nobody is born an outspoken misogynist. I wonder what kind of life experiences he had.
asab 6y ago
I want judges to be safe. I also want to understand the motivations of this attacker. Their actions weren't justified, but having a long-running court case that can decide the course of your life can cause many new problems. What level of desperation would cause someone to lash out like this? There will always be unreasonable people, but I wonder if this outcome would have been different if courts did indeed process cases in a timely way. We know it is especially cruel to people who have nothing to defend themselves with.
- johnbcoughlin 6y ago
  The murderer was a lawyer who had appeared in her court, not a defendant.
- titanomachy 6y ago
  The article explains his motivations. Apparently he was driven by his ideology rather than personal desperation. From the article: Roy Den Hollander, a New York lawyer who had filed a suit against the male-only military draft, harbored deadly grudges. On July 11, 2020, he killed a lawyer in California. Eight days later, he came to our door and killed Daniel. Too late, I learned that he had often described himself as “anti-feminist.” In a self-published memoir, he described me as “a lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama.”
- ilamont 6y ago
  An openly misogynistic lawyer who is believed to have killed the son of a female federal judge in New Jersey had a list of more than a dozen other possible targets, including three other judges and two doctors, three people with knowledge of the matter said. ... While his precise motive for making the list remains unclear, Mr. Den Hollander had received a terminal cancer diagnosis, and F.B.I. agents earlier this week were exploring whether that news set him off on a mission of revenge against those he believed were his enemies. ... Mr. Den Hollander described himself as an anti-feminist and had made a career out of filing lawsuits, some of them frivolous, alleging discrimination against men. He also published blog posts in 2006 arguing women were inferior to men and advocating physical violence against them. In one post, he said women should be strapped to missiles and dropped in the Middle East. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/nyregion/roy-den-hollander-esther-salas-list.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/nyregion/roy-den-hollande...
t0mbstone 6y ago
This going to be an unpopular opinion I'm sure, but maybe if you are a judge who holds the power to literally destroy lives on a whim with your judgements, you should be fully accountable for those actions. And yes, maybe this means having your personal information public for all to see. If you make a shitty judgement and destroy someone's life and you end up getting targeted as a result, then maybe you shouldn't have made an unjust judgment and destroyed someone's life. Your judgements should have weight, and shouldn't be made lightly. Maybe if there was more personal accountability in our justice system then the American judicial system would stop focusing so much on prison profitability and punishment, and would start focusing more on positive concepts like rehabilitation and social support structures?
- titanomachy 6y ago
  What if you make a fair judgment and still destroy someone's life? Should they still come to your house and kill your child, or is that only allowed if it was an unjust ruling? Who decides if the ruling was just or not?
- a_t48 6y ago
  > If you make a shitty judgement and destroy someone's life and you end up getting targeted as a result, then maybe you shouldn't have made an unjust judgment and destroyed someone's life. Your judgements should have weight, and shouldn't be made lightly. In regards to woman's son's death, this is entirely victim blaming. What judgement did she make that destroyed someone's life? What did she do that warranted her son being killed?
- Meekro 6y ago
  They have what you're advocating over in Mexico, where a judge that rules against the cartel can expect to be killed the same day. Judicial elections are an option for accountability, setting up judges to be gunned down is not.
  - onyx_ 6y ago
    Judicial elections are also problematic - we've seen what lobbyists can do to Congress, and there's no reason to expect them to be more tame in a scenario where the Judiciary is also elected.
huffmsa 6y ago
Limiting it to just a select protected class is creating asymmetries that strike me as Un-American. Slipper slope to there being harsher penalties for even mentioning a judges name. LEO covering or removing their name tags and badge numbers for "safety". Fuck off with that.
coding123 6y ago
I definitely agree that there should be a law like this, but one that basically makes distributing EVERYONEs home address or phone number illegal. I've been asking for this for years.
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
what? judges pass laws in their own best interest? shocking. next you're going to tell me lawmakers pass laws that only benefit them.
stevehawk 6y ago
secret police behind the guise of "think of the children." nice
stevespang 6y ago
Don't forget that decades ago none of the local courthouses and Federal buildings had metal detectors and cops scanning you, but the separation of the high priests of justice and the "enforcers" from the regular citizenry has become so pronounced and citizens are becoming so enraged at how badly they feel they are getting screwed over it is no wonder we have come to this. It will only get worse if we continue down this path as a nation.
content_sesh 6y ago
I feel for her but this entire line of reasoning and Daniel's Law are hypocritical and self-serving. For our nation’s sake, judicial security is essential. Federal judges must be free to make their decisions, no matter how unpopular, without fear of harm. The federal government has a responsibility to protect all federal judges because our safety is foundational to our great democracy. Since Daniel’s death, I have vowed to do everything I can to make similar tragedies less likely. Last month New Jersey passed what is known as “Daniel’s Law,” which prohibits the distribution of personal information, including home addresses and phone numbers, for judges, prosecutors and law enforcement personnel. Where are protections for defense attorneys? Or private citizens who serve on juries - especially in unpopular cases? Surely their sense of safety must also be foundational to our great democracy. This "remedy" here is extremely inequitable, and I'd rather see protections extended to everyone, not just classes that have lawmakers' favor.
diebeforei485 6y ago
It's crazy how many places people's personal information is. DMV databases and voter files are semi-public, but there are also things like data from credit reports.
DlSGUSTING 6y ago
Remember this man, Seth Rich, Michael Hastings, and Harrison Deal.
underseacables 6y ago
Judges and prosecutors have way too many protections as it is, they can flat out lie, cheat, and railroad you into prison and you can’t do a thing about it.
dusted 6y ago
I don't think it should be any more illegal to kill ones another than anothers. It should be equally, maximally illegal to kill people and everyone should have the same guarantee to personal safety, no matter how much at risk they are. Here in DK we have some weird law that somehow, murders related to gang activity is punished harder (read: more illegal) than other murders, this is insane! It signals that gang members are more important, and killing them therefore punished harder.

121 points by wglb 6y ago

The only problem I have with this law is that it should protect everyone, not just first class citizens like judges and law enforcement. Other professions have disgruntled customers that wish to do people harm, especially other high-stakes professions such as doctors. The more we stratify society with special protections for specific classes of people, the more we drive a divide and feeling of disenfranchisement.

rjbwork 6y ago
Totally agree. Get everyone's details off the internet and you get those who are more equal than others' off as well. You shouldn't get special privileges because you work for the government.
- ahuth 6y ago
  I understand and sympathize with this view. But it seems likely that a federal judge is more likely to be a target of something like this. Mostly because of the nature of their work.
  - aminozuur 6y ago
    What about jobs in the private industry that make people roughly equally as likely to be targetted? Her proposed law doesn't do anything for them.
    - wolco2 6y ago
      Tow truck driver, repoman, meth clinic server, bouncer, loomis car driver...
  - didibus 6y ago
    Sure, but if you look at all type work injury/mortality related issues, I doubt federal judge is at the top of the list. What could happen here though is that even though federal judges arn't at that great a risk in overall work related injury or harm, because they are a high authority high yielding power role they might have their risk addressed first and foremost, while others don't.
    - Spooky23 6y ago
      That’s about as irrelevant a position as possible. In this case, the judge wasn’t injured on the job, her child was murdered by a would be assassin. How many software engineers have that problem?
      - serf 6y ago
        >How many software engineers have that problem? Is that an honest question? Lots. We like to think that software engineering is a totally run-of-the-mill occupation, but even with the most basic imagination I can think of scenarios where a software engineer would be threatened by kidnapping/torture/murder/blackmail. Not all software developers are making web-apps for the next big startup, some of them are working on extremely secret, extremely secure, extremely influential, and extremely deadly software, often times employed by extremely powerful entities.
        traceddd 6y ago
        I had a disgruntled ex-customer show up at my place when a startup went under. It wasn’t violent but certainly felt like it could have been. You don’t need to be working on secret deadly software for powerful entities.
        Spooky23 6y ago
        You had a disgruntled person upset at a company. That's a threat and is scary. I'm not downplaying workplace violence -- it's a different threat with different precautions needed. In the judicial situation, you have a specific unstable/desperate person focusing their anger at Judge X. A judge is a symbol of the state, control, and of a specific matter. The person doesn't accept responsibility for his actions and holds Judge X specifically accountable for his loss of freedom/income/family/etc. In this modern world, you add on the dimension of unstable politically motived disturbed individuals goaded on by various means. We're fortunate as a society in that disturbed people tend to be disorganized and ineffective, but I think that things are changing that make some of these individuals more dangerous.
  - novok 6y ago
    So are psychologists, doctors, debt collectors, lawyers, managers (think: firing), HR staff, businessmen and many other job categories.
    - ganoushoreilly 6y ago
      Exactly and not even that, look at the number of name and shame requests for rosters based on peoples votes? How long until one of those turns into a bad situation? All data should be equally protected, lest we fall into the all animals are equal except some are more equal fallacy.
    - h_anna_h 6y ago
      Talking about lawyers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24957200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24957200
  - _jal 6y ago
    > But it seems likely that a federal judge is more likely to be a target More likely than...? It would really help understand what you're thinking if you'd finish the sentence. And I hope you aren't thinking "your average person". If we passed a law to address median risk disparities in all the places we could, essentially everything that isn't mandatory would be forbidden.
    - ahuth 6y ago
      I was thinking "more likely than me". Was mostly responding to the parent comment of "You shouldn't get special privileges because you work for the government." Maybe some people should get protection or consideration because of their occupation. Didn't mean to say that federal judges should have more than another occupation or situation that we may want to compare against. Thanks for pointing out that I could have communicated more effectively, though.!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
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patrickm129 6y ago
I completely agree. The New Jersey statute itself is arguably vague with respect to what constitutes "risk" and an intent to cause harm. Such arbitrary laws give law enforcement and prosecutors significant discretion and open the door for abuse to such an extent that I could see this being used to violate peoples' First Amendment rights. Another unconstitutional law out of New Jersey, color me shocked. :o The public should be able to hold peaceful protests and hold public officials accountable.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > The public should be able to hold peaceful protests and hold public officials accountable. That should not extend to people's private homes. You want to protest a public official, go protest at their office.
  - patrickm129 6y ago
    Why shouldn't the public be allowed to protest on the sidewalks outside of public official's homes?
    - rootsudo 6y ago
      Because it's just rude, and someones work life does not exactly correlate with who they are in their professional life. Why drag their family, the neighborhood into it?
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Practically, it would mean that you'd have to have a police presence there, wouldn't it? Or are you going to assume that the mob will always play nice, and never decide to storm the house?
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      Because unlike the most influential private individuals, they live in homes with sidewalks - not large gated compounds with their own security details, both designed to make sure the public don't get any chance whatsoever to protest. Or is that somehow different? If they're politically influential - why, exactly?
dk1138 6y ago
I don't think "first class" citizens is the right classification. There are certain fields/work that are inherently more risky or serve a critical component of society. We are seeing this exact thing pan out now with medical care--doctors and nurses are precious resources and if we don't protect them, we put our overall societal health at risk. Same is true for judges--if you don't protect them, you put the rule of law at risk which is a way of protecting everyone.
- freshhawk 6y ago
  But those jobs aren't more risky, not by any measurement. What they are are positions of authority. So it's hard to say "first class citizens" isn't the right term. Maybe "rulers"?
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    You don't think a job which massively inconveniences petty and violent criminals - some of whom will be part of larger crime families and networks - is inherently risky?
    - giantg2 6y ago
      I think to know if it's more risky, we would need to see violent crime statistics of people in these positions vs those who are not.
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > You don't think a job which massively inconveniences petty and violent criminals - some of whom will be part of larger crime families and networks - is inherently risky? Those jobs are, but regular people have dangerous stalkers, are subject to harassment at their homes, or just want the peace of mind of some extra privacy, too. No one's arguing that judges shouldn't have protection, it's just that the same protections should be available to everybody else. Limiting these projections to judges & police officers only really helps marketers and sleazy peoplesearch websites, etc.
    - 6y ago
Spooky23 6y ago
Not everyone has the same risks. Take child protective services workers as an example I’m familiar with. These folks can be systematically targeted because of their job, which is much harder to protect yourself against. I understand your thought process, but it seems unfair to not provide basic protections to people working on our behalf.
- giantg2 6y ago
  So what's the reason for not extending these protections to all?
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    There’s no risk. The likelihood that my conduct at work will attract an assassin is zero. I’m probably more likely to choke on a pretzel.
    - robotresearcher 6y ago
      Then covering you too would be an approximately zero cost to that law. Yet it would cover retired judges, nearly-judges, people who aren't judges but have similar problems we haven't thought of yet, and have the moral advantage of treating everyone the same.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      That's just a reason why you aren't supporting the protections for everyone. What's your reason for opposing it being applied to everyone? Just because you feel there is no risk of a disgruntled person targeting you, doesn't mean that there are other people who don't have risk in other jobs (like doctors or managers).
- thisiscorrect 6y ago
  Not everyone has the same risk of being robbed. But laws against robbery need not offer unequal protections to victims.
yongjik 6y ago
The US govnernment already spends $$$ to give its president the kind of protection that can be only dreamed by ordinary citizens. Bulletproof cars, Air Force One, a gang of bodyguards who are trained to put themselves between you and the bullet. Sometimes they literally block streets and your right to peacefully move or assemble. Your tax dollars at work. Why such unfairness? Because the world is full of bad actors and crazies dreaming of killing the POTUS, and it pays off in the long run to not have the president killed off in that fashion. It's not exactly black and white.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  But these are budget items, not laws
  - daniel-cussen 6y ago
    There's also laws. I think it is a particular felony to threaten to kill the president.
- giantg2 6y ago
  So what's the reason for not extending the proposed protections to all? Also, the difference here is that the items you describe for the president are proactive measures based on credible threats. Not all judges have credible threats against them. This also wouldn't be a proactive measure - it's just a piece of paper.
atomi 6y ago
You're describing the 14th amendments' equal protection clause.
jariel 6y ago
It's a worthy statement, but at the same time, this is not the same thing. If we didn't provide special protections for judges, 1/2 of them would be dead. Organized Crime is a very powerful thing, they kill people all the time for a lot less and witness intimidation is rampant. Judges take on a much greater responsibility than most others. If there's an opportunity for 'equity' in this special equation, it may be for those who provide testimony in the courts protections. Because they are not protected nearly as well, they are easy targets: "a study of witnesses appearing in criminal courts in Bronx County, New York revealed that 36 percent of witnesses had been directly threatened; among those who had not been threatened directly, 57 percent feared reprisals" [1] Imagine if people weren't afraid of retribution against gangs and organized criminals, the world would be a different place. [1] https://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/Publications/cops-p112-pub.pdf https://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/Publications/cops-p112-pub.pdf
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
I hate seeing this with journalists too arguing that they should get special protections and rights. Everyone should have the protections and rights. Not just judges, not just journalists.
joecool1029 6y ago
Absolutely correct, furthermore not only should the public be protected, but they should also be allowed to request an audit of who's querying their information. I had a (low-ranking) member of law enforcement run my plate and send a harassing letter to my family some years back. While it's fortunate nobody in my family was shot by a nutjob, I wasn't able to find out who it was until I ran into him by chance some time later writing a parking ticket (he was only a parking enforcement official). I commented about this experience more in depth on reddit[1] and also brought up that federal judges have the US Marshals Service to protect them, and our state judges have county sheriff departments to protect them. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/newjersey/comments/jxvote/governor_murphy_signs_daniels_law_bill_a1649/gd1agx0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/newjersey/comments/jxvote/governor_...
candiodari 6y ago
Another problem that I have is that this is once again allowing law enforcement to further damage others, which they absolutely and totally refuse to take responsibility for. Shoot someone who took a jab at you 6 times with a strong suspicion and history of racist motive ? 1) You're a private citizen: death sentence. Hundreds of thousands to millions in damages to be paid. And you can be DAMN sure nobody's will ever grant you any kind of clemency. 2) You're a police officer: Not only do you go free, you don't have to pay any damages and the incident is stricken from your record ... You MAY be asked to resign if protests get too bad. If by some magic, there are damages to be paid, they will not be extracted from the perpetrators of the crime. This, and worse, is what these protections will also be used for. Defending law enforcement personnel from the consequences of their own mistakes, their own racism, from attacking their ex-girlfriends or ex-wives, ... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52905408 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52905408

NullPrefix 6y ago

Author calls for privacy laws to protect judges. Privacy laws for general population could achieve the same.

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
It's "Rules for thee and not for me"'s cousin, "Rights for me and not for thee." And it should be considered as just as hypocritical.
bigbubba 6y ago
Privacy for me, not for thee.

qz2 6y ago

I’m sure this will be a popular comment, not, but when you arm citizens you arm morons too.

redleggedfrog 6y ago
Nope, love it.
sushshshsh 6y ago
What about criminals who choose to use guns whether smart or dumb?
- yongjik 6y ago
  When citizens aren't armed, dumb criminals can't find guns. (Where would they get one?) Smart criminals understands that using a gun in a society without guns will make themselves feature prominently in national news, and the police will make it top priority to arrest them. I mean, just visit any country where ordinary citizens don't carry guns.
  - sushshshsh 6y ago
    Several people per month are still shot in the UK. The guns are smuggled in through ports, much like drugs
    - qz2 6y ago
      Our entire country’s yearly stats are a bad weekend in Chicago. I wake up knowing I’m probably not going to be shot by some prick in Asda car park.
      - sushshshsh 6y ago
        In our country, less than 10% of murders are between people who do not know each other. And if you do not live in the specific bad neighborhoods that account for nearly all of our murders, then our crime statistics are literally the same. My town of 100,000 had 0 murders last year. If you are able to solve the problems plaguing both East London and West Baltimore, I'm all ears, however it seems the war on murder will rage on

noodlesUK 6y ago

This rings true in the UK as well. With mainstream publications and members of government attacking “lefty lawyers” and “unelected judges” simply for doing their job, which is to uphold the law, we need to take the rhetoric we apply to these situations seriously. There need to be serious consequences for credible threats of violence against people, even when made by people in the public sphere. Furthermore, I hear a lot of people say things like “how can lawyers defend people who do such horrible things”. I think it is an important part of our education to understand civics, and why we are entitled to a defence, rather than just subjected to the whims of an inquisition. Having a well-resourced defence for alleged criminals (and other legal aid in civil cases) means that we can be certain as a society that we get the right person for crimes, and ensures the system runs as intended.

throwaways885 6y ago
Indeed. I'll be honest in saying that I do think the so called "lefty lawyers" are usually defending people most don't like (e.g. foreign criminals), but I also hate the government's characterisation of the lawyers themselves. Like freedom of speech, people have a right to a defence. In fact, part of having a strong legal system is the fact that it optimises for false negatives. Better to let 100 criminals go free than one person unjustly imprisoned.
- noodlesUK 6y ago
  Yes, you’re right, they are (the solicitors) often defending people that are not well-liked. However, in a lot of cases, the government is losing the cases, as the govt is violating the law. Rather than attacking the process, the govt is in a position to change the law if it wants to. A side note. Barristers in the UK do not choose their clients. There’s what’s called the “cab-rank rule”, which says that if a barrister is instructed on a case they are sufficiently competent in, they must take the case without prejudice.
dane-pgp 6y ago
> “how can lawyers defend people who do such horrible things” It's perhaps worth noting that (in the UK at least), that should never happen, at least in the sense of a defence lawyer trying to get a "not guilty" verdict for a defendant they know is guilty: "It's obviously unethical and illegal for a lawyer to deceive a court knowingly. If my client tells me he's guilty, I can't say he's innocent in court. I cannot call him to give evidence that I know is false or I would be a party to his perjury."[0] Of course I'm sure it does happen all the time, but you don't need to justify a system where lawyers are lying for the benefit of their client, because that's not the system we are meant to have. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2006/jan/07/workandcareers.careers4 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2006/jan/07/workandcareers...

callesgg 6y ago

Being anonymous or more private make judges more safe but it might also make it easier for them to get away with stuff. How should one think?

lotsofpulp 6y ago
Gather data, analyze it, and see if a risks outweigh the loss of freedoms.
cortesoft 6y ago
You don't need to be anonymous to keep your address hidden

locusofself 6y ago

The thought of losing my only child (I have one daughter and probably won't have more) is absolutely agonizing to consider.

sp527 6y ago

It’s so odd to see a presumably very intelligent person believe that we can legislate a solution to this problem. Maybe mandated physical security for all judges (which is how it’s done in may other countries)? But Daniel’s Law just introduces a bit more friction that would almost certainly be surmounted by a highly motivated individual. The law is just window dressing.

mLuby 6y ago

> angered by the pace of a lawsuit he had filed in my court. > In my case, Roy Den Hollander, a New York lawyer who had filed a suit against the male-only military draft, harbored deadly grudges. On July 11, 2020, he killed a lawyer in California. Eight days later, he came to our door and killed Daniel. Too late, I learned that he had often described himself as “anti-feminist.” In a self-published memoir, he described me as “a lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama.” Aside from easy access to guns, we can add slow legal system and political radicalization to the compounding factors of this tragedy.

jeffbee 6y ago
Really seems like someone who made a vexatious litigant out of themselves on the back of "mens' rights" pet issues should probably have a full-time FBI tail.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tomcam 6y ago

That’s not the way the law works. I am surprised a federal judge is unable to understand this, but of course she has lived through the worst thing a parent could experience. And it is indirectly why we in the USA have a second amendment. Hear me out before downvoting me. The police, sadly, are not here to prevent crime. That’s why people who get restraining orders continue to live in fear. Our legal system simply has no concept of preventing crime except through statute. That’s why some of us, especially those living in rural areas where the police could be half an hour away or more, are afforded self protection through firearms.

titanomachy 6y ago
I don't understand what this comment has to do with the article. The author doesn't discuss reforming firearm laws. She is trying to get support for a new law that increases privacy guarantees for judges. What exactly is she unable to understand?
fmajid 6y ago
The Second Amendment is explicitly framed as resisting tyranny, not self-defense from criminals.
- tomcam 6y ago
  If you read it, you'll see that it is not explicitly framed in any way. Few items in the Bill of Rights are.

einpoklum 6y ago

Obligatory: This suggestion immediately reminded me of: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/JudgeDredd https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/JudgeDredd But let's leave that aside for a second. I would say that the order in which people should be better protected (w.r.t. the legal system) is: 1. Prisoners, from abuse by prison staff (and to some extent from inter-prisoner violence. 2. Detainees, from abuse by police and prison staff. 2.1 Your average joe. 2.2 Poor and minority detainees. Case in point: George Floyd. But there are lots and lots of deaths: https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/deaths-police-custody-united-states/ https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-... ... and I'm guessing a lot of non-lethal violence. 2.3 People of political significance. Major case in point: Jeffrey Epstein, whose extremely suspicious death has made many suspicious of foul play: https://heavy.com/entertainment/2020/05/who-killed-jeffrey-epstein-theories-death/ https://heavy.com/entertainment/2020/05/who-killed-jeffrey-e... 3. Judges and such. Why? Those people who attack, who hurt, who punish, who bind - at best, what they do is a necessary evil. But they are acting from positions of institutional power. The more you are considered out-of-order, abnormal, criminal, you are generally weaker, have less recourse, less able to protect yourself and more tempting to abuse. ---------------- I also disagree with the judge's conclusion on the question of means rather than ends. Instead of giving judges special protection, I would rather US society did something about its horrible gun culture. The number of killings in the US is spectacularly high. And always it seems that the solution they opt for is _more_ violence, militarization, retaliation through superior firepower, body and vehicle armor etc. US police is already heavily militarized, being fed a nearly-infinite supply of military surplus equipment. Now we'll have fortified compounds where judges are isolated from people? No. That actually does reminds me of Judge Dredd, even if not of the exact details.

spaetzleesser 6y ago

It certainly wouldn’t hurt if our political leaders wouldn’t immediately bash judges if a decision doesn’t go their way. With the current election fraud outrage I see this even get worse.

dukeofdoom 6y ago

Only in movies do judges get every ruling right. There is an error rate, but thats the best case scenario. In reality many judges are political hacks, and cowards that will rule in line with their political backers when it matters. This has been true for as long as humans have lived in civilization. Laws like this just give them more cover.

nobody9999 6y ago
>In reality many judges are political hacks, and cowards that will rule in line with their political backers when it matters. This has been true for as long as humans have lived in civilization. Laws like this just give them more cover. The law in question[0], in part, requires: "The bill amends the Open Public Records Act (“OPRA”) to exclude from the definition of a government (i.e., public) record the portion of any document which discloses the home address of any active or retired 1) judge, 2) prosecutor or 3) law enforcement officer. Further, the bill prohibits government agencies, individuals and businesses from knowingly publishing on the internet, or otherwise making available, the home address or unpublished home telephone number of any active or retired judge or any active or retired prosecutor." Now there's certainly an argument to be made that such restrictions, if we are to have them, should be much, much, broader, given the harassment (including SWATting[1]) of other folks outside the specific job functions mentioned in the law. I'm trying to view your comment in the best possible light, but I keep coming back to the last sentence: "Laws like this just give them more cover." How, exactly, do you mean that restricting access to the home addresses of such folks "gives them more cover?" Is it your assertion that judges and other folks should have their home addresses available as some sort of extra-legal check on their authority? What purpose does that serve? So that those who disagree with such people can go over to their house with a fruit basket and calmly discuss how their decision was incorrect and caused harm? That seems pretty unlikely. As such, I'm forced to interpret your statement as: "We should publish the home addresses of these people so they can be harassed, threatened, assaulted or killed if they make decisions I disagree with." If I misunderstand you, please explain and accept my apologies. If not, I hope I don't live anywhere near you. [0] https://nj.gov/governor/news/news/562020/approved/20201120b.shtml https://nj.gov/governor/news/news/562020/approved/20201120b.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

> In my house, the only way to see who has come to the front door is to peek through a bay window. In mid-July, after four months of Covid-19 restrictions, home deliveries occurred almost daily. Daniel’s killer took advantage of this familiar routine, coming to our door posing as a Fed-Ex delivery courier. This to me is the most incongruous thing about this story. Why bother with a disguise if your intent is just to shoot everybody? He ended up just going home and killing himself, so it's not like he planned a big escape. Salas was also coincidentally(?) overseeing a class action lawsuit against Deutsche Bank in connection with Jeffrey Epstein, leading to much speculation. The NY Times piece does a good job placing the motive solely on the FedEx hitman.

wvenable 6y ago
> Why bother with a disguise if your intent is just to shoot everybody? To get access.

lihaciudaniel 6y ago

Man Trump is a clown

zapdrive 6y ago

https://www.nj.com/news/2020/07/roy-den-hollanders-crusade-to-get-women-drafted-may-have-fueled-deadly-attacks.html https://www.nj.com/news/2020/07/roy-den-hollanders-crusade-t... Reason behind the attack. Good read. Basically the attacker, a lawyer, had sued the army to allow women to register for draft, and felt that the female judge was delaying the case. He was fighting for the women's right to be treated equally when it comes to drafting.

dalbasal 6y ago
I've been online for 25 years. There were always trolls, devil's advocates, provocateurs, apologists... But something has changed in the last 5 years. It's like all those roles have been rolled up into a uniformed propaganda department.
- shard972 6y ago
  they grew up
_underfl0w_ 6y ago
Oh wow, this is a very isolated take, seemingly based solely off on snippet from TFA. I initially thought the same because I was genuinely surprised women couldn't already register, but a quick internet search of the assailant's name gave me whiplash. If outspoken misogyny isn't your bag, you may want to look into him further before getting behind him.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zapdrive 6y ago
  Nobody is born an outspoken misogynist. I wonder what kind of life experiences he had.

asab 6y ago

I want judges to be safe. I also want to understand the motivations of this attacker. Their actions weren't justified, but having a long-running court case that can decide the course of your life can cause many new problems. What level of desperation would cause someone to lash out like this? There will always be unreasonable people, but I wonder if this outcome would have been different if courts did indeed process cases in a timely way. We know it is especially cruel to people who have nothing to defend themselves with.

johnbcoughlin 6y ago
The murderer was a lawyer who had appeared in her court, not a defendant.
titanomachy 6y ago
The article explains his motivations. Apparently he was driven by his ideology rather than personal desperation. From the article: Roy Den Hollander, a New York lawyer who had filed a suit against the male-only military draft, harbored deadly grudges. On July 11, 2020, he killed a lawyer in California. Eight days later, he came to our door and killed Daniel. Too late, I learned that he had often described himself as “anti-feminist.” In a self-published memoir, he described me as “a lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama.”
ilamont 6y ago
An openly misogynistic lawyer who is believed to have killed the son of a female federal judge in New Jersey had a list of more than a dozen other possible targets, including three other judges and two doctors, three people with knowledge of the matter said. ... While his precise motive for making the list remains unclear, Mr. Den Hollander had received a terminal cancer diagnosis, and F.B.I. agents earlier this week were exploring whether that news set him off on a mission of revenge against those he believed were his enemies. ... Mr. Den Hollander described himself as an anti-feminist and had made a career out of filing lawsuits, some of them frivolous, alleging discrimination against men. He also published blog posts in 2006 arguing women were inferior to men and advocating physical violence against them. In one post, he said women should be strapped to missiles and dropped in the Middle East. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/nyregion/roy-den-hollander-esther-salas-list.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/nyregion/roy-den-hollande...

t0mbstone 6y ago

This going to be an unpopular opinion I'm sure, but maybe if you are a judge who holds the power to literally destroy lives on a whim with your judgements, you should be fully accountable for those actions. And yes, maybe this means having your personal information public for all to see. If you make a shitty judgement and destroy someone's life and you end up getting targeted as a result, then maybe you shouldn't have made an unjust judgment and destroyed someone's life. Your judgements should have weight, and shouldn't be made lightly. Maybe if there was more personal accountability in our justice system then the American judicial system would stop focusing so much on prison profitability and punishment, and would start focusing more on positive concepts like rehabilitation and social support structures?

titanomachy 6y ago
What if you make a fair judgment and still destroy someone's life? Should they still come to your house and kill your child, or is that only allowed if it was an unjust ruling? Who decides if the ruling was just or not?
a_t48 6y ago
> If you make a shitty judgement and destroy someone's life and you end up getting targeted as a result, then maybe you shouldn't have made an unjust judgment and destroyed someone's life. Your judgements should have weight, and shouldn't be made lightly. In regards to woman's son's death, this is entirely victim blaming. What judgement did she make that destroyed someone's life? What did she do that warranted her son being killed?
Meekro 6y ago
They have what you're advocating over in Mexico, where a judge that rules against the cartel can expect to be killed the same day. Judicial elections are an option for accountability, setting up judges to be gunned down is not.
- onyx_ 6y ago
  Judicial elections are also problematic - we've seen what lobbyists can do to Congress, and there's no reason to expect them to be more tame in a scenario where the Judiciary is also elected.

huffmsa 6y ago

Limiting it to just a select protected class is creating asymmetries that strike me as Un-American. Slipper slope to there being harsher penalties for even mentioning a judges name. LEO covering or removing their name tags and badge numbers for "safety". Fuck off with that.

coding123 6y ago

I definitely agree that there should be a law like this, but one that basically makes distributing EVERYONEs home address or phone number illegal. I've been asking for this for years.

mrtweetyhack 6y ago

what? judges pass laws in their own best interest? shocking. next you're going to tell me lawmakers pass laws that only benefit them.

stevehawk 6y ago

secret police behind the guise of "think of the children." nice

stevespang 6y ago

Don't forget that decades ago none of the local courthouses and Federal buildings had metal detectors and cops scanning you, but the separation of the high priests of justice and the "enforcers" from the regular citizenry has become so pronounced and citizens are becoming so enraged at how badly they feel they are getting screwed over it is no wonder we have come to this. It will only get worse if we continue down this path as a nation.

content_sesh 6y ago

I feel for her but this entire line of reasoning and Daniel's Law are hypocritical and self-serving. For our nation’s sake, judicial security is essential. Federal judges must be free to make their decisions, no matter how unpopular, without fear of harm. The federal government has a responsibility to protect all federal judges because our safety is foundational to our great democracy. Since Daniel’s death, I have vowed to do everything I can to make similar tragedies less likely. Last month New Jersey passed what is known as “Daniel’s Law,” which prohibits the distribution of personal information, including home addresses and phone numbers, for judges, prosecutors and law enforcement personnel. Where are protections for defense attorneys? Or private citizens who serve on juries - especially in unpopular cases? Surely their sense of safety must also be foundational to our great democracy. This "remedy" here is extremely inequitable, and I'd rather see protections extended to everyone, not just classes that have lawmakers' favor.

diebeforei485 6y ago

It's crazy how many places people's personal information is. DMV databases and voter files are semi-public, but there are also things like data from credit reports.

DlSGUSTING 6y ago

Remember this man, Seth Rich, Michael Hastings, and Harrison Deal.

underseacables 6y ago

Judges and prosecutors have way too many protections as it is, they can flat out lie, cheat, and railroad you into prison and you can’t do a thing about it.

dusted 6y ago

I don't think it should be any more illegal to kill ones another than anothers. It should be equally, maximally illegal to kill people and everyone should have the same guarantee to personal safety, no matter how much at risk they are. Here in DK we have some weird law that somehow, murders related to gang activity is punished harder (read: more illegal) than other murders, this is insane! It signals that gang members are more important, and killing them therefore punished harder.