The original post:
It's often posted here and in threads in General and Legal that Castle Doctrine Laws are an automatic free pass if you should shoot someone in your residence.
As we can see things have digressed. For a moment, let me play Devil’s advocate as situations such as these can play out in many ways.
No one participating in these forums not a lawyer, a law enforcement officer or anyone else for that matter can legitimately tell anyone what action is going to be taken by the police or the prosecutor’s office in a hypothetical situation as every incident is different.
Notwithstanding some sort of okie dokie situation, I can say with confidence that any incident involving a shooting will be fully investigated. Until done so, it is impossible to say how any official involved in such a case will decide how to proceed with that case.
That is the part that i find interesting. If there is no evidence that a crime was committed how does it go to a grand jury?
As far as a grand jury, we need to be sure that we understand the purpose and control thereof. For the most part a grand jury INVESTIGATION is the district attorney’s dog and pony show. It is convened and controlled to a large degree by the district attorney. Though a grand jury can direct an investigation that is usually the way it is done. All evidence presented is for the most part controlled by the district attorney.
The quote below is excerpted from the Unites States Handbook for Gran Jurors. Keep in mind however; this only applies to Gran Juries impaneled in Federal matters. Each state will have their own version of how a grand jury proceeds.
The grand jury normally hears only that evidence presented by a government attorney which tends to show the commission of a crime. The government attorney usually is the United States Attorney or and Assistant United States Attorney in the federal district. The grand jury must determine from this evidence, and usually without hearing evidence for the defense, whether the person being investigated by the government should be tried for a serious federal crime, referred to in the Bill of Rights as an “infamous crime.”
An infamous crime is one which may be punished by imprisonment for more than one year. As a general rule, no one can be prosecuted for a serious crime unless the grand jury decides that the evidence it has heard so requires. In this way, the grand jury operates both as a “sword,” authorizing the government’s prosecution of suspected criminals, and also as a “shield,” protecting citizens from unwarranted or inappropriate prosecutions.
The person being investigated by the government may, however, waive grand jury proceedings and agree to be prosecuted by a written charge of crime called an information.
The grand jury is not completely free to compel a trial of anyone it chooses. The government attorney must sign the indictment before one may be prosecuted. Thus, the government and the grand jury act as checks upon each other. This assures that neither may arbitrarily wield the awesome power to indict a person of a crime.
(1) The Grand Jury’s Tasks As stated above, the federal grand jury’s function is to determine whether the person being investigated by the government shall be tried for a serious federal crime alleged to have been committed within the district where it sits. Matters may be brought to its attention in three ways:
(1) by the government attorney;
(2) by the court that impaneled it; and
(3) from the personal knowledge of a member of the grand jury or from matters properly brought to a member’s personal attention. In all these cases, the grand jury must hear evidence before taking action.
For further reading, the entire handbook quoted above can be found here.
http://www.uscourts.gov/Viewer.aspx?doc=/uscourts/FederalCourts/Jury/grandhandbook2007.pdf
Long-term, yes I would expect to be cleared in that circumstance, but in the short term it's still quite possible to be run through the legal ringer by an over-zealous or anti-gun DA.
Just because a DA takes his job seriously, I would not say he is over-zealous. As a general rule, most DA’s are not going to attempt to prosecute an un-winnable case. Most DA’s I deal with have ridiculous case loads. In fact, for most of the cases in which I have been subpoenaed as an investigating officer, the DA is getting with me in the back of the courtroom (not so of course in homocides, but for the most part homocide cases make up a very very small percentage of a DA's case load) to review the case file as they are so overloaded that they have yet had a chance to do so.
In terms of judges, most of them have clogged dockets as well. So the last thing they are going to do is allocate their courtroom for a BS trial regardless of what a DA wants. Before a trial can start, there will be days of jury picking and other housekeeping matters. Then you have the trial itself. I have seen set back thirty or forty cases to clear thier docket to have a trial. So those sorts of decisions are not taken lightly.
Unfortunately, this is the case in most jurisdictions because most people, myself included, hate paying taxes and do not generally want to give the government anymore money to add to the number of ADA’s, judges or to build more courtrooms or otherwise waste.
In Denver last year a homeowner shot & killed a home invader (I think it was a group of 4 or 5 teenagers doing the invading) & ended up dumping $5000 while the prosecutor decided if he should be charged. It seemed like a pretty clear case from the news reports, but this guy still had to expend a fair bit of money, time & emotion thanks to this event.
Years ago, a homeowner in our jurisdiction shot and killed an unarmed teenager under his carport. Though he was found innocent at trial, he had to sell his home to pay off his lawyer. IIRC, he spent about $60,000 on his defense.
That is the part that i find interesting. If there is no evidence that a crime was committed how does it go to a grand jury?
See above
The wise and prudent citizen will understand the law in any jurisdiction in which he happens to be before threatening or using deadly force, and he will always try to avoid it rather than look for ways to justify it.
Well Said!!!
