I have some advice for people charged with a crime. If your attorney is a graduate of CUNY law school, then you have two choices. Get another attorney or resign yourself to the fact that your are going to prison. CUNY is a little shaky on legal theory. The story from Volokh Conspiracy.
Here is the set up. A liberal bigot threatens to set a black man’s sweatshirt on fire, while he is wearing it. She is standing next to him. She has a lighter. She “flics her Bic” showing that the lighter works. She moves closer to the man. All of this because he is wearing a sweatshirt supporting the Israeli Defense Forces.
CUNY law student Nerdeen Kiswani posted on Instagram a short video (embedded in this link) of her standing next to an African-American man wearing an Israeli Defense Forces shirt. In the video, she pulls out a lighter, lights it, and says to the man, “I hate your shirt.” She moves a bit closer with the lit lighter and says, “I’m gonna set it on fire.” The man responds with something brief and inaudible, and then Kiswani responds, “Nah, I’m serious,” still holding the lit lighter.
Nerdeen Kiswani
She tagged her post “I almost set this guy’s shirt on fire” and “Fuck Israel. Free Palestine.”
The Dean of the law school Maru Lou Bilek at first condemned the act as being anti-Semitic. However, the goat fucker crowd became upset and protested. The Dean changed her stance and decided that Nerdeen Kiswani, the bigot was exercising her first Amendment right to free speech.
As David Bernstein, writing for Volokh points out: “But in legal parlance, what she did was an assault, generally defined as “intentionally putting another person in reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact.” This is a criminal act, and is not protected by the First Amendment.“
What if: The guy feared for his safety and had a justifiable fear that Kiswani was about to commit a deadly assault? Would Dean Bilek have been as supportive if he produced a gun and blew the silly bitch away? Sounds like an argument for the Second Amendment.
Welcome to the liberal twilight zone where assault, arson and robbery are legal, but self defense is a crime.
