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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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Don't take the plea bargain like they want. No jury is going to convict a felony for throwing a fucking sandwich.
By the statute, he's 100% guilty. And there's no particular guarantee that he'll get a jury of people who are willing to say "Yeah but fuck Trump at the end of the day" (or even that he won't get whisked away to some kind of ICE tribunal that are going to make him the test case for "deporting" citizens or something).
I'm 100% behind the guy, and honestly I would be cheering for him to fight the case because fuck Trump also, but I'm just saying that it's way way different when it's you in the seat start facing down "sacrifice the rest of your life" consequences.
What is the point of the statute though? I can get behind spitting as assault, because human saliva can spread diseases, but who could possibly be harmed by this?
As far as I know, it's basically "throwing anything at anyone in an unwanted / offensive manner" in pretty much every jurisdiction. It's normally not a big deal that it's so broad, because it's a misdemeanor, and the cops / prosecutor / jury will exercise a certain amount of common sense about whether or not it's a big deal that you threw a balled up business card at someone or something. But, as soon as you're throwing something at a cop, it becomes a very different situation...
I agree that that’s the law, but why? Why should we make throwing things that can’t harm someone assault? If you throw a pb & j at someone who’s allergic to peanuts, or throw a dense sandwich really hard at someone standing on a high precipice, that’s a different story (and those are each covered by other crimes), but no harm was intended or caused by this. Why should it be illegal?
Edit: I can get behind littering as a charge here, but that looks very different on a background report…
I don't actually really know the full answer to that. If I had to guess, I would say that there generally need to be pretty distinct objective lines for when something becomes a crime (you can't have like a weight limit or something to where "throwing a sandwich" isn't a crime but then transitions to a crime as the object gets more and more hazardous up to where throwing a rock is a crime.) I think it is generally that it winds up being a sensible system just because simple battery just really isn't all that serious a charge. You can get convicted, in theory, just because you swatted someone's arm away, or threw a cup of water at them, or whatever, and it really just won't impact you all that much. (But then, if it's a rock or if you injure the person, or something like that, then it's a different and more serious charge than simple battery.)
Again, the trouble comes in when you're dealing with the cops and do one of those "simple battery" things and all of a sudden it comes with life-changing consequences.
A person who should be working as a door greeter at Walmart.