Posted on 05/29/2009 9:49:37 AM PDT by Mind Freed
OKLAHOMA CITY — A pharmacist accused of pumping six bullets into a teenager during a robbery attempt was released on bail Thursday in a case that is stoking debate about self-defense rights.
Jerome Ersland, 57, was released from Oklahoma County Jail on $100,000 bond. A condition of his release is that he have no access to guns.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Hysteria is not legitimizing. His calmness, with which you are so impressed, could actually be interpreted as fear so intense that he was rigid with it. Also, did you know that many Asian cultures traditionally express what we would call smiles when they are afraid? No? Still want to assess behavior? And as for turning his back to get the gun, how about the idea that that's how he had to get the gun? Hmmm?
Maybe you should publish a blog on behavior portrayals for people under murderous attack, so that everyone will know how to properly express themselves to convince the twittered focus groups considerations that you obviously think should be the subject of jury deliberations.
This isn’t American Idol. He does not need to pose for the cameas numbnuts.
And you say he went “from self defender to vigilante”. Please show me the video which shows the perp on the floor. You cannot see the perp on the floor and whether he is making a move.
Good point, and the DA makes it as well. He specifically states he will listen to the Defense. All in all this was a bad situation, I have tried to play out in my mind what I would have done in the shoes of the defendant. Honestly, I have no idea. I hope I am trained enough to not let adrenalin overcome rational thought.....would I have pistol whipped the kid?......uncork a .45 long Colt into him?.....none of us know until faced with it.
Regardless, the lesson is still the same.....SHUT UP....and get a lawyer.
As a practicality of... absolute... importance, shutting up and getting a lawyer is obviously correct. But even if you "let adrenalin overcome rational thought," unless you can show that under normal conditions you would have thought nothing of enraged murder, you could not be charged with enraged murder if the perp tried specifically to frighten you so badly that you would murder him in a rage if you got the opportunity.
That's what no one is seeing here - armed robbery is a deliberate assault on the victim's state of mind. It's punished so severely because such an assault works. So in such a situation, if the perp loses control and the state of mind he created in his victim gets unleashed back on him, the normal standards of behavioral expectation cannot apply. Because if they do, then you can't add an aggravated charge for armed robbery over unarmed robbery if no one is shot. You can't have your cake and eat it, too - it's either terrorism, with resultant loss of normal rationality and responsibility, or it's not. And if it is, then whatever injury the perp gets, he fully deserved.
Am I not a good freeper now because I think he went too far? Look, in my heart, I don't want to see this individual get in trouble because he protected himself. But when he went back into the store he wasn't protecting himself anymore. It took at least 15-20 seconds to go back into the store get his other gun and walk up to the kid and shoot him. If he was in such distress and the kid was getting back up, why did he take his time getting his other gun? Why did he walk up to the kid instead of run up to him?
If it makes you feel better than keep attacking me for what I feel. I thought only democrats attacked people for not thinking the way they do. I thought conservatives and republicans could actually discuss things. There were a few people who didn't agree with me in this thread that calmly said their peace and I gave them the same respect. What the hell is your problem?
You have any legal statutes or case law that back up your contention that "fear" releases one legally from "normal standards of hehavioral expection"?
It's going to be up to the jury to decide whether this was a righteous shoot or vigilantism.
Don't worry about it. Part of being a FReeper is having thick skin. I myself have been guilty, from time to time, of attacking others when I feel strongly on an issue.....:)
I think the linked videos speak for themselves, we'll see what a jury decides soon.
I understand your point and I’ve been guilty of getting on people too. I did try to explain myself peacefully, but most of the people on this thread just wanted to throw insults, that’s mainly what annoyed me.
Thanks for posting the video, that video didn’t leave the DA any choice, he had to file murder charges.
Do you have any that say it doesn't? You don't want to go there, and you know it. Besides, if you don't already know that fear (with or without your contemptuous quotation marks), which has been deliberately caused by armed criminal terrorism, is an indisputable, unavoidable legal determinant of an involuntarily victimized state of mind, then you have grounds to be in this discussion.
On the other hand, if you already know it, then you're just blowing smoke because your argument is in tatters and you've been put in your place by your betters.
You and your feelings are completely irrelevant to this discussion. Go take a valium and lay down for awhile, watch some American Idol, send some tweets.
One more point on your challenge - the presumption in this situation is the right to self-defense against murderous terrorism. No one doubts that's where any legal considerations start. The reason that starting point is so important, is because it determines who would have to provide what "legal statutes or case law." You think that because the pharmacist was charged, he'd have to provide the legal backing, but you're wrong. It is the State that would have to provide some requirement of limiting the right of self-defense, when the situation plainly effected the defendents mind in a negative manner, solely because of the deliberate, premeditated criminal intensions of the perp. And quite frankly, it can't be done. It doesn't matter how the pharmacist acted - no one can prove the perps own actions didn't temporarily derange him.
I realize it's not absolute even with an acquittal due to the difference in burden of proof, but an acquittal probably looks better than the DA declining to file, and even if that's not the case, it certainly immunizes him against future criminal prosecution.
LOL! Thank you, Doctor Ann Landers. Get back to us when you graduate from the University.
If I ever go back to a university, it will be to study how people like you can laugh dismissively at the psychological trauma caused by criminal terrorism against a disabled man being shot at point blank range.
He exercised his right to self defense with the head shot. The coup de grace gut shots were vigilantism, not self defence.
This guy lied about when he got the 2nd gun and lied about when he shot the perp. ME states the perp’s skull had been penetrated with a bullet fragment and rendered unconcious.
Shooting an unconscious person is NOT self defense.
The pharmacist says that the guy seemed to be trying to get up. Maybe he was - but maybe he just seemed to be, to someone who was severely psychologically traumatized by the attack on his life BY the perp. The problem with your interpretation is that it is completely dependent upon the pharmacist's state of mind, because the perception of the shooter is what determines volition.
HOWEVER, if that perception has been demonstrably damaged, driven to extreme levels of fear and/or rage or other non-normal state of consciousness, deliberately, by the perp, then the perp is responsible for the state of mind that pulls the trigger - NOT the pharmacist. Remember, the perp came to the pharmacist, not the other way around.
If you posit deliberate murder, you have to offer a motive - and if you claim rage against the attack as your reason, then you are admitting the attack damaged the state of mind of the pharmacist, who otherwise had no pre-existing motive. And WHO executed that attack, in part to DELIBERATELY damage the state of mind of the pharmacist? The perp.
So at worst, the pharmacist was not of sound mind, and thus not guilty, because of the specific actions and intentions of the perp himself.
Neither of those motives are fear based.
He should have kept his mouth shut and simply claimed to "not remember" anything after firing the first shot. Having lied about his actions undercuts the traumatizing fear defense while the tape demonstrates that the threat was not so imminent that he couldn't turn his back on it twice.
So now he gets to explain it all to a jury. If the jury goes for nullification, that's fine by me, but I do think the prosecutor has a duty to bring charges when a shooting has these iffy elements.
"Could have" isn't introduceable unless you demolish the pre-existing, presumable fact of the psychological trauma and it's possible results, which include a cold rage response from the previously induced extreme fear. And I see no evidence of lying - he does not have to defend against active fear when he turned his back, because he could have been in the cold rage response at that time. Or, you know, the sumbitch may have not been unconscious and twitched, too. In any event, "threat" doesn't exist in a void of legalisms. It must be matched to his mindset, and that mindset was deliberately traumatized by the perp. Once that is established, as loathsome as it might seem, the pharmacist could basically do anything to the perp, and it really can never be proven that his actions were separate from the perp induced psychological derangement.
He lied about the timeline of when he got the second gun and when he shot the perp the 2nd-6th shots. Perhaps you are unaware of his statements, but the prosecutor charged him specifically because his much publicized account to the press did not jibe with the tape regarding those two items.
He lied to cover up the fact that he shot a downed and unconscious man. Lying to cover up an action demonstrates mens rea. His mouth has given him a legal wedgie.
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