Talk:Killing of Jonny Gammage

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Requested move 16 December 2016[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. (non-admin closure) JudgeRM (talk to me) 16:49, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]


Jonny GammageDeath of Jonny Gammage – Totally about the death of the person. Also, the article needs some rewriting and more sourcing, though it's irrelevant to the title. George Ho (talk) 05:22, 16 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Requested move 2 June 2020[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) Mdaniels5757 (talk) 19:57, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]



Death of Jonny GammageKilling of Jonny Gammage – In the recently concluded discussion on the renaming of the earlier page titled Death of George Floyd to Killing of George Floyd, many of those against the move cited previous instances like this page and Death of Eric Garner as precedence. However, the motion has passed with a general consensus, with around 250 editors participating in the discussion, and one of the deciding arguments was that the autopsy reports have ruled the death of George Floyd it as a homicide. Since this is also the case for Jonny Gammage, for the sake of consistency we should also rename this page. Bubka42 (talk) 18:10, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Judges ruled against yet activists insist on rewriting history to fit their personal narrative. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. 2601:602:9200:1310:93B:1B27:C783:41DD (talk) 20:44, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: Stop implying he was killed, every suspect has been acquitted of all charges, after two different trials. "Death" is the name that has been used for 25 years—the justice system has concluded all the officers were innocent. Every time a black person dies, some people already know the truth, notwithstanding the actual reality. Stop always dividing between whites and blacks. --Foghe (talk) 23:24, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The detailed discussion under the George Floyd move is applicable here as well. Moreover, the opening sentence of the article has used "killed" since 2005. There is no reason for the title to differ. The two ought to be made consistent, and recent discussions prevail in favour of "killed". Althunyon (talk) 23:42, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No, Floyd is not applicable here, this is a different situation: the Courts ruled two times that the suspects are not killers—we need to regard Justice steadily, not only when we get advange from it, and ignore it otherwise. --Foghe (talk) 00:14, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
U.S. courts simply do not determine whether or not a person is killed. That is what the coroner is for. Courts say whether or not a killing is a murder or not a murder, more specifically whether or not a person is guilty of a crime when they killed him. The fact that he was killed was determined by the medical expert who recommended homicide charges. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 18:32, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. As the officers were never convicted, there are significant BLP concerns here, as "killing" often implies a deliberate killing rather than an unintentional or accidental one: "killing--an act in which someone is deliberately killed"[1]. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:43, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nomination. Since there was sufficient evidence for a coroner's jury to recommend homicide charges and for the district attorney to file the charge of involuntary manslaughter, then obviously the victim was officially declared to have been killed. The fact that the accused were not convicted does not change the fact that the victim was killed. It simply means that the juries did not assign to the accused the responsibility for the victim being killed. —Roman Spinner (talkcontribs) 03:49, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - This article is poorly sourced, so I have no idea if "killing" is verifiable. If someone can show a few sources to convince me that killing is commonly used by sources that have written about this death, I will gladly reconsider. - MrX 🖋 11:21, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Murder or death would be more neutral. Games of the world (talk) 18:33, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per the well-argued points by Roman Spinner a little above here. The coroners detemined that it was a killing. It is as simple as that. This has nothing to do with guilt or innocence. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 18:35, 5 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This is a difficult one. Filing of homicide charges does not incriminate the officers involved any more than failure to convict exonerates them. The article does not mention the fact that throughout the episode Gammage was fighting viciously with the officers and that he bit one of them on the thumb right to the bone. Police were simply trying to restrain the vigorously resisting Gammage. On the other hand, the first use of force was by Officer John Vojtas, and although that force was minor (knocking the cell phone out of Gammage's hand), it may well have been the trigger that evoked Gammage's uncontrolled violence. The extent to which Gammage's own actions contributed to his death cannot positively be assessed, but they were almost certainly a factor. On the other hand, the knocking away of the cell phone by Vojtas could be regarded as reckless misuse of force without due regard to the possible outcome of that force. The most accurate way to describe the outcome would be "Death while in custody of police." This is the least prejudicial regarding who was responsible for the death. "Death of Jonny Gammage" comes closer to that description than "Killing of Jonny Gammage" and so I will opt for that heading. Brazzit (talk) 00:57, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. "Death" is more neutral. As noted by Bagumba at Talk:Shooting of David McAtee, dictionaries typically define killing as being an intentional act to cause death, as found at this link. It is not completely clear (or at least was apparently not clear to a jury) that Mr Gammage's death was intentional. Wikipedia should not appear to express an opinionated judgment about people's actions. —BarrelProof (talk) 02:20, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 13 September 2020[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Consensus to move, in line with similar articles. (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 00:42, 4 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]



Death of Jonny GammageKilling of Jonny Gammage – Per consistency with Killing of George Floyd, Killing of Eric Garner, and Killing of Daniel Prude. I have cleaned up this article and added better references. Similar to Floyd, Garner, and Prude, Gammage was suffocated. He was killed. His death was ruled a homicide. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 01:09, 13 September 2020 (UTC)Relisting. Megan☺️ Talk to the monster 06:53, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support per nomination. I stand by my reasoning in the "Requested move 2 June 2020" above: "Since there was sufficient evidence for a coroner's jury to recommend homicide charges and for the district attorney to file the charge of involuntary manslaughter, then obviously the victim was officially declared to have been killed. The fact that the accused were not convicted does not change the fact that the victim was killed. It simply means that the juries did not assign to the accused the responsibility for the victim being killed". —Roman Spinner (talkcontribs) 16:12, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The coroner decided it was a killing. It is not a murder, as no one was convicted for it, but Gammage did not spontaneously die.--Eostrix  (🦉 hoot hoot🦉) 09:26, 14 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose and procedural close: We just had this discussion for this article a few months ago. "Death" is more neutral; "Killing" has undesirable connotations. Same as last time. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:28, 14 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as above. Nobody knows exactly how he died. "Death" is therefore the neutral term. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:01, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Did you read Death of Jonny Gammage#Autopsy? We know exactly "how he died". --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 17:05, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    No, we know the medical cause of death. We do not know how it happened. We know he died during a fracas with the police, but the loaded word "killing" implies some sort of wrongdoing on their behalf, and that has not been proved, whatever people may believe. A death in police custody does not automatically amount to a killing unless you happen to have a particular POV. -- Necrothesp (talk) 22:36, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Necrothesp, re: "killing" implies some sort of wrongdoing, then why killing of Harambe? Why list of killings by law enforcement officers by country? Why does list of killings by law enforcement officers in the United Kingdom include many instances of "Lawful killings"
    And "death in police custody does not automatically amount to a killing" is a POV. An assumption that police did not kill him when faced with clear evidence that he died because of the intentional and not accidental actions of the police.
    A coroner's jury ruled the death a homicide. The court is meant to decide whether it is a "justifiable killing" or an "unjustifiable killing". In either case, it is a killing. Maybe Gammage forced them to kill him. That is not for us to decide. But we have the reliable sources to say the police killed him. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 01:33, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, AmEng "killing" works in this case. —valereee (talk) 18:27, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • There's not really an AmEng/BrEng difference, IMHO. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:03, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      Actually it seems like there is. The British dictionaries and American dictionaries differ. BrEng considers 'killing' to indicate an intentional act, the AmEng dictionaries don't. —valereee (talk) 11:45, 18 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      That is not true. Several dictionaries have been identified that say that the gerund 'killing' in American English involves intent. —BarrelProof (talk) 15:54, 18 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 13:29, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.