Jim Keenan said:
If I understand Werewolf correctly, if I shoot someone in OK I just tell the cops it was self defense and they pat me on the back, cart off the body, and I walk away whistling.
I never said that and it is quite disingenuous of you to say so.
If a shooting occurs in a home and the preponderance of immediately recognizable evidence points to the shooting meeting the requirements of OK's Make My Day Law the LEO is and it has happened (based on news reports) that the LEO does in fact not arrest the shooter. Of course the DA must make the final determination as to whether or not to bring charges or in some rare cases present the event to a grand jury. As I said before, in 19 years of living in OK I can personally only recall 2 cases where a home owner in OKC was indicted for shooting an intruder and in both cases the investigation pointed to the shooter setting up the intruder.
If a shooting occurs outside the home one may be arrested though I don't know the percentage of those that are if the preponderance of immediately visible evidence points to self defense. In any shooting outside the home every case I am familiar with the gun is indeed confiscated but not in every case is the shooter arrested though some are. NOTE: This applies only to cases where the preponderance of evidence on the scene readily visible to the responding officer points to self defense... i.e. eyewitnesses, the dead guy has a gun, knife or other weapon, shots fired by attacker if any etc, etc.
In any event if the DA and the LEO Investigators determine that the evidence is indicative of self defense as defined by OK statute then no (at least that I am aware of) charges are brought or if the shooter was initially charged and had to post bail then bail is returned. I don't know if the record of the incident is expunged or not (I'd imagine not).
So I say again - in OK self defense and one's right to it is recognized and strongly supported. A good shoot is a good shoot if you follow the rules set down in the law. A shooter involved in a good shoot may be inconvenienced some but it won't be to the extent described by so many living in less enlightened states where it seems one is automatically arrested, subject to jail time, exhorbitant legal fees and even if acquitted subject to civil action by the dead guy's family.
It may sound like I'm saying that every shooting in OK is a self defense one. If that is the impression let me clear it up now. We have our share of scum sucking evil beings here that commit crimes and kill people while doing it. Those guys are apprehended and arrested post haste. It is the every day law abiding citizen with no priors who shoots an intruder in his home or who defends himself on the street that gets the by if the evidence says he or she should.
Like I said I try to keep up with the news here. Shootings here are rare enough that they still make the evening news. It's not hard to keep up with them and though our media like most has a left leaning bias that lean compared to some places still puts them decidedly on the right of the national media so I pretty much trust them (mostly anyway).
I'm truly sorry for those of you who live in states where the right to self defense is so restricted by the potential consequences that it may not be even worth exercising it. I'm just glad I do not live in one of those states.
