Stand Your Ground

[The Night Rider]

One DA and one incident. I've posted here before about a couple of local incidences of private citizens using deadly force that was clearly illegal but they weren't charged. I certainly wouldn't want to count on getting the same consideration when making the decision to shoot. Every case is different.

One DA and one incident. The specific incident that we were talking about. The specific incident that @shafter was disagreeing on. The specific incident that Kleanbore referred to.

If you have a problem with it, take it up with Dan May he's no longer the DA but I'm sure he's still in politics and he shouldn't be too hard for you to find.

ETA Dan May's contact information

 

[Jeff White]

One DA and one incident. The specific incident that we were talking about. The specific incident that @shafter was disagreeing on.

If you have a problem with it, take it up with Dan May he's no longer the DA but I'm sure he's still in politics and you shouldn't be too hard for you to find

Do you really expect the same treatment if you should be unfortunate enough to shoot a heavily intoxicated intruder in your home? All Shafter is saying is that it's not a good thing to use deadly force. There are all kinds of other repercussions that you live with for the rest of your life even if the DA doesn't charge you. I don't see where he suggested the homeowner should have been charged. I posted here about the farm supply/trucking company owner who shot three people running away from his facility after stealing anhydrous ammonia. Nothing about that use of deadly force was legal under Illinois law. There were several factors that figured into the charging decision. 1. The business owner was a respected member of the local community. 2. The thieves he shot were not local they were from Kentucky and had no local family to make trouble at election time. 3. None of them died. 4. Theft of anhydrous was a huge problem in the county at the time, valves on tanks were being broken causing people down wind to be evacuated from their homes, citizens and officers being injured when encountering portable labs. The no charge decision was to send a message.

There are all kinds of factors that play into a charging decision. The public doesn't often get to see all the things that are in play. That's why it's not a good idea to think that just because someone wasn't charged it means that you could do the same thing and not be charged.

As for drunks entering the wrong house, there was a man in one of the small towns I worked in, Paul S. He had a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and sometimes slipped away from his caretaker in the middle of the night and wandered around town. He would walk into carports, garages, porches and sometimes unlocked houses. 6'3", 190, long hair and beard, he looked scary. He was completely harmless and fortunately everyone in town knew him, he was friendly to people he encountered. He had a childlike demeanor. I still worried about someone shooting him. It's easy to justify shooting the drunk or the mentally injured man in your mind when you read the story sitting behind the safety of your monitor. It's something else to live with taking an innocent life for trespass.

 

[Kleanbore]

I don't know what to tell you bro, the DA didn't charge the guy.

Might I have been charged had I shot the angry man who had pushed his way into the house behind a woman in 1968, knocked her down, threatened to kill my mother before knocking her down, and then advanced toward me with an improvise contact weapon while threatening to kill me?

I doubt it. But I am extremely grateful that he changed his mind just before I pulled the trigger.

Now, some six years earlier, when a man was actually fracturing the door to get in when I was home alone, I considered, for a moment, retreating from the house, with the idea of summoning help from someone else's house.

That would probably given him access to my guns, which included an M-1 Garand. I thought better of it, and as in the case of the fictional Mr. Valance, the point of a gun was the law that the man understood, and he departed.

As Jeff has noted, shooting someone, even when there is no alternative, is a terrible thing to have to do.

I am eternally thankful that I do not have to live with having done so.

 

[The Night Rider]

Do you really expect the same treatment if you should be unfortunate enough to shoot a heavily intoxicated intruder in your home?

Did I ever, at any point say that I did?

Did I ever say or implie that anybody else should expect the same treatment?

What I did was relay what actually happened in the incident that Kleanbore referencing.

He brought it up, I added more information.

 

[shafter]

I don't know what to tell you bro, the DA didn't charge the guy.

I have no argument that it wasn't legally justified. Clearly it was as the DA decided not to prosecute. I'm stating how I would react to a similar situation.

One thing to always remember about DAs is that they come and go all the time and ADAs turn over even faster. Ways of doing business can change quickly in a short time.

 

[Durango_Dave]

There is a TREMENDOUS amount of misinformation about Stand Your Ground Laws.

I read many news stories about people that would feel threatened and go after their attacker. They would chase down someone that was threatening them and kill them. Then they would not be prosecuted because of Stand Your Ground Laws.

This didn't make any sense to me. That's not what Stand Your Ground Laws are all about. So I did some research. Time and time again I found that people feeling threatened would chase down the person that seemed menacing and killed them. Because of Stand Your Ground Laws they were released.

After literally spending hours researching this I began to doubt my own logic. Police and prosecuting attorneys were letting people go free after chasing down suspicious people simply because there was a Stand Your Ground Law.

The most famous example is the Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman trail. Do a google search of "stand your ground law Trayvon Martin" and you will see countless reports of how George Zimmerman was found INNOCENT because of Stand Your Ground Laws. I read reports of the anonymous jurors that said they let George Zimmerman go free because of Stand Your Ground Laws.

I am very fact based. And after hours of research I found an article where George Zimmerman's lawyer, Mark O'Mara said "This is not a Stand Your Ground case, never was, it was traditional self defense" and "We never mentioned the words 'Stand Your Ground' in our defense presentation or in our arguments,"

That article is no longer on the internet but this archive is: https://archive.is/20140301045850/http:/www.wtsp.com/news/local/story.aspx#selection-1919.0-1919.99

Guns and the 2nd Amendment is one place I can easily PROVE that the liberal press F*CK#N lies time and time again. This one topic has far more lies than truth in the press.

 

[jmorris]

Entirely different subject.

Should it be?

You are lawful in your actions or you are not lawful in them or when "justice" sees fit lawful actions become unlawful, is that OK? Makes it hard to follow a line at that point.

 

[Elkins45]

The most famous example is the Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman trail. Do a google search of "stand your ground law Trayvon Martin" and you will see countless reports of how George Zimmerman was found INNOCENT because of Stand Your Ground Laws. I read reports of the anonymous jurors that said they let George Zimmerman go free because of Stand Your Ground Laws.

I am very fact based. And after hours of research I found an article where George Zimmerman's lawyer, Mark O'Mara said "This is not a Stand Your Ground case, never was, it was traditional self defense" and "We never mentioned the words 'Stand Your Ground' in our defense presentation or in our arguments,"

Al Sharpton has repeatedly used the Martin/Zimmerman case as an example of how SYG laws are racist and must be repealed.

Of course, Reverend Al has never let facts get in the way of his agenda.

 

[Kleanbore]

Should it be?

You are lawful in your actions or you are not lawful in them or when "justice" sees fit lawful actions become unlawful, is that OK? Makes it hard to follow a line at that point.

The subject here is about laws involving a duty to retreat when people are attacked.

 

[The Night Rider]

The law in Colorado permits that, as long as any part of the person's body entered the house. I remember a case in the Springs where the man's arm had come in to unlock the door.

Thanks for explaining the law in my own state to me

 

[The Night Rider]

You forgot to part where Martin made it all the way to his father's home went inside and then had a phone call conversation with his girlfriend. She later testified in court that he was going back out to find that "creepy ass cracker" .

At which point Martin became the aggressor

 

[Kleanbore]

Thanks for explaining the law in my own state to me

And, of course, to others who may not know it.

 

[Durango_Dave]

The main reason I see that we should not have laws limiting your response to stand your grounds scenarios is this is a life and death situation where your reaction is a basic primordial fight or flight response. Your life is threatened and your only thoughts are how to survive. You are not thinking "now what does the local laws say I should be doing is this situation?"

 

[wayneinFL]

The main reason I see that we should not have laws limiting your response to stand your grounds scenarios is this is a life and death situation where your reaction is a basic primordial fight or flight response. Your life is threatened and your only thoughts are how to survive. You are not thinking "now what does the local laws say I should be doing is this situation?"

I walked into a gun shop with an open door, and open sign in the window, and the lights on about 9:40 in the morning and the employee pulled a gun on me. Dude was having a "basic primordial fight or flight response" moment.

Apparently it was 20 minutes before opening. This guy was ready to kill me for not telepathically knowing the store hours.

We have to have the laws.

And the laws aren't bad if you're not pushing the edge of the law. If you're that worried about getting caught up in a technicality of self defense law, just don't use lethal force against someone unless you absolutely have to.

If you find yourself taking time to parse legal definitions and case law in your head, then maybe just leave whatever situation you're in, or call the police, tell the drunk on your front lawn that he's at the wrong house, whatever else fits that situation.

 

[Durango_Dave]

I walked into a gun shop with an open door, and open sign in the window, and the lights on about 9:40 in the morning and the employee pulled a gun on me. Dude was having a "basic primordial fight or flight response" moment.

Apparently it was 20 minutes before opening. This guy was ready to kill me for not telepathically knowing the store hours.

We have to have the laws.

And the laws aren't bad if you're not pushing the edge of the law. If you're that worried about getting caught up in a technicality of self defense law, just don't use lethal force against someone unless you absolutely have to.

If you find yourself taking time to parse legal definitions and case law in your head, then maybe just leave whatever situation you're in, or call the police, tell the drunk on your front lawn that he's at the wrong house, whatever else fits that situation.

Of course we have to have laws.

The shop owner claims he was in fear for his life. He tells the police and later the court that someone walked into his shop 20 minutes before opening and he could find no other explanation other than this guy must be coming to kill him. So he drew his gun shot the man coming into the shop early.

The shop owner would have to convince the court that he was in fear for his life.

I don't even see your response to be any intelligent rebuttal to my post. Do you think I'm saying you don't even need to be in fear for your life? Do you think I'm saying we shouldn't have laws?

EDIT: my main point is in a life or death situation we are much less likely to think clearly and contemplate the laws.

 

[Kleanbore]

The shop owner would have to convince the court that he was in fear for his life.

Yes, and that a reasonable person would have been in such fear; that a reasonable person would have believed that deadly force had been immediately necessary; and that the defender had not initiated the confrontation.

 

[Kleanbore]

Not quite on topic, but a very valuable lesson.

The resident should have stayed indoors. And playing pranks on people in the dark can have tragic consequences.

 

[Kleanbore]

Leaving the safety of the home is foolish. We have seen cases here over the years in which people who did that were seriously injured.

It is unlawful to use deadly force to terminate trespass, and in all US jurisdictions but one, to use deadly force to protect moveablpropeertty.

I recall one case in which a man left his dwelling to speak to someone he suspected of trying to take property. He took his gun, and ended up shooting the person. He claimed self defense, and said he was in a stand your ground state.

Convicted. Advancing is not standing one's ground. And since he had not been in danger before heading out, and since he had only a property concern, it was not lawful self defense.