Watertown attorney: ICE agents are not empowered to act as officer, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner
A few thoughts: The supposed justification for ICE approaching Renee Nicole Good is that she was “obstructing” them in their work. A group of former Department of Justice officials disagree, calling the shooting “inexcusable.” Even assuming the ICE agents were working (e.g, as opposed to headed somewhere for a coffee break), she clearly was not obstructing them.
The shooter himself already had driven PAST HER, so by definition she had not obstructed him. He just chose to stop and go back to where she was. The pickup truck driven by the man who approached her so angrily also could have passed her easily. She was not obstructing federal agents in their work.
Second, the order for Good to get out of the car (even if not contrary to other orders she allegedly had been given) therefore does not appear to have been a lawful order. Under the circumstances, I also doubt it is one I would have followed, given the unprofessional, seemingly out-of-control state of the masked man at her door. But even assuming it was a lawful order, the rule is not, “comply or be shot and killed.”
The rule is, “comply or suffer the legal consequences.” Civil disobedience is a respected form of protest in a democracy. (It’s why, for instance, we historically have seen people put in handcuffs and carried away from “sit-ins.”) If she indeed was disobeying a lawful order, they had the right to arrest her and ask the U.S. attorney to charge her. She then was entitled to various criminal rights, including trial by jury.
The ICE agents were not entitled to act as arresting officer, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. If they couldn’t arrest her because she drove away, she could be arrested later.
Finally, it appears she was approached and ultimately killed not because of what she allegedly was preventing them from doing in the immediate future, but as punishment for what she had done (or they thought she had done) in the past. I strongly suspect from several factors that the agents involved already had communicated about her (or “people like her”) before they came upon her at that precise moment.
Those factors include the facts that: (1) one agent drove by her, then stopped, got out, and recorded her; (2) the driver of the pickup was already enraged when he got out of the vehicle and approached her; (3) the pickup driver did not calmly approach her to talk, see what she had to say, or politely ask her to do anything, but instead yelled at her profanely to demand she get out, and immediately started grabbing her door handle; (4) the shooter positioned himself near the front of her car and prepared to draw his weapon; and (5) Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed shortly after the killing that she had talked to the agents and Good supposedly had been “stalking” them “all day.”
If we ever learn all the facts, I am quite sure we will learn there was some history here — however innocent from the standpoint of Good and her rights — and the agents had decided they had had enough and were going to punish her for it. Given that one of them got his cell phone out and apparently tried to continue recording even as he shot her, it appears they also were going to make an example of her.
This is fascism in the truest sense of the word.
Nancy J. Turbak Berry, a Watertown attorney, has practiced law for 45 years. She is a former magistrate of the South Dakota Unified Judicial System and a former state senator.
Photo: Renee Good shortly before she was shot, public domain, wikimedia commons
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