https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kd2d4gj08oA judge in the US state of Wisconsin has been found guilty of obstruction for trying to help a Mexican man evade immigration officials during an arrest attempt.Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested in April after ushering Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican national facing misdemeanour battery charges, out of her courtroom through a side door.An immigration judge had issued a warrant for his arrest.Her conviction marks a win for the Trump administration and its supporters, who have sought to portray the judge's actions as indicative of a politicised justice system.Dugan faces up to five years in prison for the obstruction charge, according to US media reports.
>>1467324Found guilty on obstruction but not guilty on concealing an undocumented immigrant. If she didn't do the latter, how could she be guilty on the former?This shit doesn't survive an appeal.
>>1467330>If she didn't do the latter, how could she be guilty on the former?She had a plan to help him escape. She knew if she sent him down Route A, he would run into ICE, so she sent him down Route B.
>>1467333But she was found not guilty in regards to concealing an undocumented immigrant. So if doing that wasn't concealing an undocumented immigrant, how was she obstructing?
>>1467324Democrats are literally all treasonist enemies of the country
>>1467335I dunno. But this was a jury trial, and this is what they determined.AFAIK 'concealment' doesn't mean hiding an immigrant under your skirt. It means seeing an illegal immigrant cross the road and failing to report their presence to ICE.
>>1467357It will get appealed. You cannot argue someone is guilty of obstruction but not guilty of what they apparently did to obstruct.
>>1467336*Papists
>>1467330Could be something like, she didn't "conceal" the guy they were trying to arrest because sending him out of her courtroom by the back way is within her official duties as a judge. But diverting the agents was not covered by that.
>>1467330>>1467571 mehttps://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-the-supreme-court-reinforces-the-10th-amendment>“The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program,” Scalia said. “Such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty.”The feds could not by the constitution make Judge Dugan turn over custody directly. I suspect that's why she was acquitted on that part but idk.
So apparently it didn't have to do with the tenth amendment and was more about some wonky shit surrounding the fact the agents never showed or told Dugan the name on the warrant they carried.https://www.allrisenews.com/p/judge-hannah-dugan-verdictShortly after, the jury asked a second question: “We desire clarity as to whether or not Judge Dugan needed to know the identity of [the subject of] the arrest warrant — for example, his specific name."Dugan’s attorney Nicole Masnica argued that the jury should be instructed that her client needed to know the identity of the subject for a conviction, noting that the indictment specifically alleged that she did."There was no warrant issued for anyone else," Masnica said.Over the prosecution’s objection, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman largely agreed, drafting an instruction incorporating the crux of the defense’s position. The final instruction read that the “defendant needed to know the identity of the subject of the warrant."Dugan stood up and smiled broadly after hearing Adelman’s ruling, but that question related only to the first misdemeanor count.The jury later sent a similar query about whether Dugan needed to know the identity of the subject of a “pending proceeding,” the statutory language of the felony obstruction charge. That instruction left far more uncertainty over whether Dugan needed to know the defendant’s identity to convict her of the crime charged.
