My Son Was Killed Because I’m a Federal Judge
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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?
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.
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.
I’m sure judges and politicians are at higher risk of retribution, no doubt about it. I only argue we’re not immune as engineers and tech founders. Someone who’s deeply disturbed can direct their blame on anyone remotely involved in their life.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10101469
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6946909
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160505/00383034349/fbi-h...
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.
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.!
All data should be equally protected, lest we fall into the all animals are equal except some are more equal fallacy.
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.
That should not extend to people's private homes. You want to protest a public official, go protest at their office.
Why drag their family, the neighborhood into it?
Or is that somehow different? If they're politically influential - why, exactly?
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_...
Equal protection under the law and freedom of speech.
It's a terrible story being told here and I am saddened by her loss but this judge and you, and I, and everyone else are peers.
Judges may be interesting and special for brief periods of time while they adjudicate on their bench but out in the world they are normal people just like everyone else. If privacy laws are inadequate for them then they are inadequate for all of us.
I can't imagine a situation where I would know, much less disseminate, the address of a judge but that is without any question speech protected by the first amendment.
That said, I agree with you. As Judge Salas says herself in this article, this is about the foundations of democracy. Peerage is certainly that too.
Also, since prosecutors and police are covered by this law, we need to think of this as mostly relating to law enforcement. They are the vast majority of this population.
Meanwhile, privacy is obviously an area that needs 21st century attention. We should at least get a reason why we don't get these protections too. Extending their rights to privacy separately from everyone else doesn't sit right with me.
The reality is that certain types of people are in fact more important than others. POTUS gets secret service protection -- something that most citizens won't get.
Does a federal judge deserve extra protection under the law than an average citizen? Probably. It's just a question of how much -- precisely for the reasons given in the article.
Now whether or not we should all have that right may be a question worth asking, but it seems pretty certain that federal judges are worthy of this kind of protection.
I'm not talking about that - and I have no problem if judges (or anyone else) have extra bodyguards or special limousines.
I can say anything I like about the president. The same is true for these judges. The equal protection I am speaking of is not what kind of armor their car has, but what I am, and am not, allowed to say to or about them.
There's little reason to say that "X judge lives at Y address" is equivalently deserving of protection. We might choose to protect your saying so out of an abundance of caution, to avoid a slippery slope whereby we restrict too much speech. But the idea they're equivalently valuable things to protect in their own right needs a serious defense.
Investigative journalism revealing corruption.
It might not be the address per se but it will be similarly identifying and revealing information about a persons day to day life. This information would be communicated both while reporting the story, between reporters and other sources, etc., as well as exposed in the journalistic product itself.
Or, given five seconds of thought, that was the first, obvious thing that came to mind.
Their life is more important to protect from particular threats than everyone else's, because they're in a position where we expect them to make rulings based on their expertise and judgment rather than their fear or concern for popularity, and because they are more frequently in a position to garner someone's resentment or hatred than most of us are.
Just because we're all equal in the eyes of God doesn't mean our society should pretend the world isn't complex.
And yea, if a Dr is so scared of contracting a disease in a profession specifically putting them in this situation, they should also quit their job. Certain jobs require a strong stomach for risk. Don’t take it if you can’t handle it.
Also let’s not forget she not only didn’t teach her son to check who’s at the door before opening it, she can also very easily defend herself using her second amendment rights. Just like the rest of us.
Are you saying that a judge's address is not free speech" in this post-Enlightenment (unenlightened?) period.
I do not think it is clear that publishing a judge's address is the kind of speech that is necessarily protected by the 1st Amendment, and certainly not the kind that would have been considered inherently worthy of protection around when the 1st Amendment was written. And I suspect the claim that it is "without question" is a naive one.
So it's hard to say "first class citizens" isn't the right term. Maybe "rulers"?
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.
[0]https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/16921-judges-face-threats-w...
It's so far away from being risky, in fact, that having people in the field intentionally lying means I think they are lying for a specific reason and I think people should be concerned about that.
I used the term first class citizens because people in power tend to grant themselves more of it over time or have privileges (official or unofficial) which benefit them, and not just to protect them. For example, how often do you hear about police being given a ticket? Many laws explicitly except the people in Congress as well.
For their protection, and the stability and security of our society.
"The federal government has a responsibility to protect all federal judges because our safety is foundational to our great democracy"
Indeed it is. It's not just about likelihood of an attack occurring. It's about potential consequences. Killing judges is destabilizing... both directly and via reaction. They are an actually weakening to the governing system as a whole.
We do actually have totally separate ways of protecting elected officials, including unique laws. They are, essentially, "first class citizens." It's because attacks are likely and because the consequences of such attacks are dangerous.
That said, I sympathize with the OP. Separate laws for the specific protection of certain classes of citizens is well... also relevant to the foundations of democracies. Why can't these protections^ be extended to everyone?
"“Daniel’s Law,” which prohibits the distribution of personal information, including home addresses and phone numbers, for judges, prosecutors and law enforcement personnel."
For example, pass a law making the distribution of PII unlawful if the intent of the distribution is to cause violence or unrest. The law itself would cover everyone evenly.
With a few sentence enhancement clauses, the same statute that protects everyone equally can add additional terms of incarceration or mandatory minimums for judges and law enforcement.
The key flaw of this theory is the dependance on law enforcement practice.
Such law abridges what somebody says, and thus cannot be made.
"Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment include obscenity (as determined by the Miller test), fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
These exceptions are given. What’s your point?
You mean like grocery delivery drivers and cashiers?
What about virologists? Or what about all of the PhD students in Field X, where X is not virology but some other thing that will be at the focal point of the next crisis but which everyone today thinks is unnecessary and figures we should stop over-produce PhDs for? 12 months ago you could probably come to a place like HN, complain that you can't find a good paying job with your phd in coronaviruses, and be told that academia is a pyramid scheme, that no one owes you anything and you should just learn to code and go work on a labor law arbitrage product at the center of an even bigger pyramid scheme.
Since we're on a technology forum, what about the engineers who implement the software/hardware that's used to manufacture PPE, or run simulations to help design mRNA vaccines, or write firmware for the machinery and devices used to mass produce vaccines? Or even more mundane but none-the-less useful stuff like designing and implementing intuitive UX for no-contact payment methods?
Anyways, what's the point of drawing this line between "useful resource" and "everyone else"? What if the role of government were to treat humans citizens with natural rights that should be protected by law, instead of as economic resources to be deployed?
Also, have you asked any essential workers how they feel about being treated as a useful resource? Instead of, you know, a human with natural and legal rights?
Perhaps judges don't need special treatment. Maybe, perhaps, personal privacy is incredibly important component of human dignity.
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
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.
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.
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, ...
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.
I’m probably more likely to choke on a pretzel.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
> 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.
What won't be popular: the second amendment was crafted specifically so that functionaries of State power can't abuse their position without the risk of extrajudicial reprisal.
Not at all saying that this specific case is a matter of positional abuse ( definitely appears to be a tragic lone mental health case, which is a whole other problem in our society entirely ) - merely stating that the right to bear arms is intended to be a check against it.
The Second Amendment absolutely protects the ability of citizens to declare their government invalid, set up their own, and defend themselves. It does so because citizens already have that right - as argued in the Declaration of Independence ("it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government"), and later codified in things like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The task of the Second Amendment is not to codify that right; it is to codify a right to a mechanism by which the citizens may protect the right to self-determination of government, which is more fundamental but only theoretical if an unwanted government comes at you with guns.
There is no right to extrajudicial reprisals against individual members of the government. The Second Amendment does not recognize one, nor does anything else in the Constitution, nor does any other well-accepted document about rights. There is a right to invoke the structures of the government to redress grievances and to hold judges and other officials responsible for abuse of their office, and there is a right to oppose the government wholesale if they refuse. But that is still a defensive right. If a corrupt judge wants to take your land, and corrupt police try to make it happen, you need a means to defend yourself, sure.
But I cannot find any reason to believe that the authors of the Constitution would have said that an appropriate check on government power is the risk that members of the government would have their family members killed in reprisal - the risk that people would be deprived of life (or even liberty or property) without due process of law.
In the modern era, any effective resistance to tyranny is - UNFORTUNATELY - going to be asymmetric, guerrilla, and dirty. Which - again, UNFORTUNATELY - is going to involve morally ambiguous activity.
But, I don't think that e.g. the guerrillas of Vietnam were morally ambiguous simply because they engaged in asymmetric warfare against the US military. They were fighting against identified soldiers in a declared war; they had the right to engage by the international rules / norms of war. They killed people who had taken up arms against them. (Yes, most of their opponents were forced to take up arms; that doesn't make the opposing force morally ambiguous in its opposition.)
They're very different from various terrorists (domestic and foreign) who have attacked the US in recent years, who also reached the conclusion that only asymmetric warfare would work against the US, but chose to attack non-combatants - office workers, children, etc. And they weren't merely casualties of a morally-ambiguous operation; they were direct targets. (As it happens, these terrorists were not particularly effective, either.)
So even if we want to grant modern interpretation to the Second Amendment and read in the right to do whatever is effective against the government of the US (instead of talking about what it was crafted to do), it still seems to me like it should be about making sure you have the arms and the training to defend yourself against an illegitimate government and establish your own, perhaps through asymmetric warfare if needed - which is still very different from randomly attacking individual officials whom you have declared corrupt in an otherwise-legitimate government (let alone their family members).
But they can and sometimes do
Weapons don't stop that.
Encryption could be part of a check against that
(I think Daniels law is good and that it should be for everyone)
What makes you say that? I'm not disagreeing, necessarily, but is there any writing to support this reasoning? Who held this position?
Now you have a society based on mutual assured destruction at a civilian level devoid of trust and community.
I assure you, this has nothing to do with being armed. This should be pretty clear from a number of observations:
A) The most heavily armed communities in the US are highly community-oriented and trustworthy towards their respective in-groups
B) Lack of social cohesion seems to be just as prevalent in western nations with full disarmament
The actual proximate causes of social decoherence are things that HN is probably mostly in support of, on net; urbanization, multiculturalism, etc.
I worked for a large defence contractor in the US for a number of years and got to see the contrast in professional and personal relations between their European and American employees. It’s scary when you see.
100% disagree. The saying "armed society is polite society" is absolutely true, at least when it comes to the interaction between arms and western social ethics. Obviously your results may vary in the Congo or Chicago or whatever.
Even if we accept the (most likely contextually false) premise that reducing firearms access for non-criminals also meaningfully reduces firearms access for criminals, I do not have any preference (ceteris paribus) between getting shot, stabbed, or having my head bashed in. In fact, I might prefer getting shot.
In the more realistic case where criminal firearm attainability is less than perfectly correlated with non-criminal firearm attainability, it makes sense for non-criminals to be armed as well.
There's also the MAD dynamic; people are less likely to physically escalate if there is a possibility of a high-severity response.
> it’s a cheap solution
A murder charge for an unjustified shooting is hardly "cheap".
For example, I don't think the recent decriminalization of weed in various US states probably hasn't caused very many people to start using it. But in the same way, the laws against it didn't do much to limit its use.
Don't they vote, pay taxes, run their own affairs just like everyone else?
Are morons a separate well defined class of citizens?
maybe. the article describes the crime in a way that suggests stabbing would have worked as well, and the criminal was angry/motivated enough to kill by any means.
I mean, just visit any country where ordinary citizens don't carry guns.
Seems like British criminals do have a really hard time finding guns.
I wake up knowing I’m probably not going to be shot by some prick in Asda car park.
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
US is arming the average Joe with no gun training, or psychological evaluation, the guy that is selling weed at the corner of SF, Karen that is angry at the customer service and the full of hormones schoolchildren.
Now given that all of these people have access to highly lethal guns, law enforcement has to be more pro-active than other countries, thus all of the expenses to buy war machines for neighborhood police depts.
What could possibly go wrong?
You can see when it stops working right here http://blackfridaydeathcount.com/
The idea that the US can somehow turn back the clock with hundreds of millions of legal guns already purchased is laughable. Almost every attempt at the state or city level has completely backfired. That train passed long ago. And the denial of this has only ever worsened the problem. I'd go as far as saying it's an anti-science position in 2020.
There is no substitute for privacy.
Empathy and awareness can go a long way.
Above a certain minimal level of education, demographic outcomes like crime rate seem to be 70-80% predicted by entirely heritable characteristics, with very little environmental interaction.
This is just racism in a language that's palatable to HN.
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.
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.
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....
Having secret judges, secret tribunals, or anonymous judges, would only make oppression easier. This is what dictatorships do.
And your logic would equally fit any politician, as most have received death threats. And some have been harassed at their homes.
Oh right, so what you are saying is that once the killin starts, you hope it ramps up fast!
Like the other commenter said, I hope I don't live near you.
>Having secret judges, secret tribunals, or anonymous judges, would only make oppression easier. This is what dictatorships do.
But I don't really get what you mean by this. We don't have secret or anonymous judges. And anyone who wants to address any particular judge knows exactly where to find them -- at the relevant courthouse.
In fairness, we do have the FISA court, whose proceedings are secret (and I don't like that one bit), but the judges who sit on the FISA court aren't anonymous or "secret." And again, if someone has an issue with any of those judges, they can just go to the relevant court and do so.
Going to people's homes to intimidate or harm them or their families is repugnant to me personally and to a free society in general.
You said that "Laws like this just give them more cover."
Are you advocating that people go to people's homes to intimidate, threaten and harm people and/or their families as a check on how they deal with others?
That sounds a lot like the vigilantism you appear to decry.
Or are you claiming that we live in a failed state, so any actions taken against public figures is not only acceptable, but encouraged?
I guess the tl;dr is that you didn't answer my question. Will you do so now?
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-hollande...
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.”
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.
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.
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.
To get access.
How should one think?
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-...
... 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-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.
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?
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?
Realistically, I don't believe Judges will ever face real consequences and what's more probable is the system adapting towards lesser punishing modals. Also providing the ability to expunge records completely and universal income for criminals unable to obtain a job after their release. The punishment for a crime shouldn't be unemployment/homelessness for life.
There are other professions such as in the medical field that can really damage a persons life as well. Not everyone has the money to sue or even win a malpractice case and lawyers won't always take a victim's case as pro bono. Persons severely wronged, deeply need a way to feel some remedy and or we will continue to see vengeance outbursts. Especially from persons that see others being remedied for what they believe was much lesser in comparison to what happened in their own situation and where they constantly think the only reason they're not obtaining a remedy is from grossly unfairer situations they're in because of the wrong that happened in the past.
I think the foregoing is similar to why there are so many school shooters in USA. People need a remedy from being wronged and sadly all we have is a remedy system for the fairly well off. That also caters once in a while to someone that isn't so well off.
People who kill others in situations like these rarely come to their decision based on fact and rationality. As much as we need more accountability, putting government officials - or anyone else - in a potentially life-threatening situation at a time where armed terrorists regularly make death threats based on baseless conspiracies is not a good way to do that.
Judicial elections are an option for accountability, setting up judges to be gunned down is not.