Our legal system doesn’t seem designed for thwarted attacks

Monday, August 22nd, 2022

Our legal system doesn’t seem designed for thwarted attacks:

The Grant County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release on Facebook deputies were called around 9 p.m. Friday when concertgoers at the Gorge Amphitheater witnessed the man, 31-year-old Jonathan R. Moody, inhale an intoxicant before loading two 9 mm pistols in the parking lot.

Police estimated upward of 25,000 people were at the amphitheater for an electronic dance music festival. Moody allegedly was asking concertgoers what time the event ended and where people would exit the venue.

Moody was arrested on suspicion of one count of possession of a dangerous weapon and one count of unlawful carrying or handling of a weapon. He never entered the amphitheater, police said, and nobody was injured.

Comments

  1. Goober says:

    This does bring up a pretty difficult question, really, which essentially boils down to:

    “Hey, we know that this guy intended to murder a bunch of people in a mass shooting, but we caught him before he did it, but technically, he didn’t really commit any crimes so… yeah. NOW WHAT?”

    No sane person would want this guy Moody to just be released. It’s a cinch that he’s got murder on the brain and he’ll likely end up succeeding next time, but he hasn’t committed a crime yet, so how, exactly, do we deal with this guy?

    Yeah, I know he technically committed a low level crime that he’ll be back on the streets again in short order. May as well have not committed one, for all the good it will do.

    So what do we do?

    You can’t incarcerate someone for suspicion, no matter how well-founded. Do we involuntarily commit him to a mental institution?

    What do we do?

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