Posted on 04/05/2022 12:09:13 PM PDT by Red Badger
VIDEO at link................
Update — No charges will be filed…
YOUR THOUGHTS?
SELF DEFENSE?
2ND DEGREE MURDER?
1ST DEGREE?
Stand your ground?
Castle Doctrine?.......................
Yep. That's one of many reasons why people are flocking to Texas. We're all crazy.
Or, if the landowner is significantly older than the trespasser, or obviously less physically able.
Not if he wants to get re-elected in my county. For a short period of time, we had a somewhat liberal DA in my county that liked to try and twist Texas law against gun owners and property owners. The local judge and juries saw through his charades and he was never successful. He was soundly defeated on the next election cycle.
He could have shot the man’s leg or feet................
From the edited video that might have been the case - too hard to tell. But I remember seeing one that wasn’t edited for the squeamish and he didn’t seem like he got hit in the feet or legs when the shooter is supposed to have shot at the ground.
I dunno.... the case is now closed at the criminal level. The only option is for the guy’s (victim) heirs to sue in civil court for wrongful death or something.
The man in black, with the gun, was physically assaulted by a much larger person who attempted to takeaway his rifle.
The killing was self defense and justified
You will make a good left winger anti gun nut.
Ah, yes I am also a lowly meathead and totally wrong about everything. And yet I try. Oh how pathetically I try.
However back on just trying to understand how the law as written applies in this case. And trying, as pathetic and lowly a meathead as I am, to apply common sense:
Let us suppose that the homeowner was the size of Goliath and could have picked up the intruder easily and carried him off the property and set him down on the sidewalk. Now this was certainly not the case. As we both agree the homeowner probably could not force the big guy off his property by physical altercation. This is why you think deadly force was necessary. But I say no force was necessary. But then you seemed to think that the size mattered...you made a big point of it. Ok we agree size matters. IF the landowner could have done this it would have changed things right?
But wait. If the landowner had easily carried the intruder to the edge of his property easily...then what? If he put the intruder down the rascal may have just run back on unless he stayed on the outside of his property to guard it.
My brain is just tiny in comparison to yours, but so far this reasoning seems to my little tiny brain to be going somewhere so bear with me.
How is this different than the landowner using no force at all and saying and moving to the sidewalk to get the guy to follow? In both cases the price of evicting the guy is to be subject to the argument he was sick and tired of and wanted to end.
Now I have some sympathy for him wanting to use his property as a shield and a sanctuary to want to end the conversation. But the reality is he did not have to use force to remove the guy from his property.
The "meathead" showed no interest in the property and would not even have been near the property had the people he was arguing with were not. The meathead was not after the property but out to harass a person with his demands about a dispute. There was zero dispute over property or the right to be on the property outside of a convenient excuse to escalate the argument to deadly force by the land owner.
Might be interesting to see if it applies. Like I said my layman's reasoning is that the property angle does not of just what you supplied. But I am not any kind of expert...just following my own reading of it. I was not trying to make moral judgements in my analysis, was just trying to zero in on if the law technically applied.
Alas, I need to start concentrating on my day job now which is all about software and not about law.
had a right to fear for his life if he was disarmed.
***Not at the moment of the shots. He was several feet away.
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Yes the shooter was several feet away but had been forcibly removed from his own home (his porch) and forced into the front yard with the assailant occupying the house (porch) . Now we are in the Castle doctrine, there is almost no proscription of shooting someone once they forcibly enter your house.
I suspect the dead guy didn’t realize he would actually be shot, his temper got the better of him but that does not take away the shooters right to protect himself and his home. it’s a sad story. Had the dead guy gotten a little anger management perhaps he would still be alive.
I am not making a moral view only what is legal. Had it been me I likely would have simply gathered my family into the house and locked the door. I hate to see someone killed even someone who deserves it.
He tried to take the gun away AFTER the moron shot at the ground near his feet... the shooter is a murderer, period.
DA’s dirty in whatever town this was.
The shooter is the one who escalated every once of this situation.. hopefully one this mans kids will slit this cowards throat in the middle of the night years from now, and he will get the justice he deserves.
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I have to disagree:
The shooter was on his own property. The shooter shot his gun in his own home at the floor which should have been an adequate warning to the dead man. Instead of being warned he just got even madder. If the shooter loses the gun he might get shot. Once you try to disarm a guy with a gun he rightly fears for his life.
What idiot attacks a man with a gun in his own house?
The shooter had every legal right to protect his home and family from the intruder. Yes it was a domestic matter but the dead guy was an intruder once he entered the mans house (his porch) and forcibly removed the legal occupant (shooter) of the house.
DA’s are supposed to follow the law. It is very hard to get a conviction of someone who followed the law, the shooter followed the law. The dead man broke the law when he forcibly removed the shooter from his own home.
This was a sad shooting but perfectly justified and legal.
The moral of a story, tempers and guns don’t mix well.
“accepted”, but you deduced that, right? ;)
Auto correct on= AI induced SWAGs, off = well, need for thorough review and editing....
Good one.
Correction...just realized you were not the one who quoted the property part of the law I was trying to analyze.
Never fire warning shots!
had a right to fear for his life if he was disarmed.
***Not at the moment of the shots. He was several feet away.
There’s another case where a guy’s car got stolen, several guns [including a fully automatic machine gun] inside the car. The car owner shot the guy apparently on the side of the vehicle rather than head-on, and he’s up for murder charges. Different state, different outcome.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4052770/posts
The way I read title 4 chapter 24 of the Texas property code the decedent was guilty of forcible entry whether or not he went on the porch. He had no legal right to be on the lawn and he was asked to leave the property and refused. However I am not convinced the deadly force was legally justified in light since it seemed obvious that no force was necessary to remove the man. Rather the shooter and his girlfriend could have crossed the street and the decedent would have have followed since he was obviously more interested in the argument than in occupying property.
In that case the car was being stolen. In the current case the land was incidental to the conflict. The shooter and his girlfriend could have left their property and the decedent would have harassed them about the child custody stuff on sidewalk instead of on their lawn and porch. He wasn’t there to steal their stuff but to argue.
He tried to take the gun away. That’s a little bit past arguing.
The homeowner left the scene and then came back with the gun. I saw nothing in those few moments where the victim was a threat. But once the gun was brandished, that’s what the situation was about, the gun.
Wanting to argue when the guy has a gun pointed at you and told you to leave, that turned out to be a death sentence. And no charges filed against the person who killed you. Surprising, but that’s Texas for you.
Did not seem to me the shooter was ever at serious risk of harm even when the bigger guy grabbed for the gun though. The bigger guy did not need a gun to seriously harm the smaller guy and could have greatly harmed him before the gun came into the picture but I saw no indication that he wanted to harm anyone physically. Rather it seemed that in his own mind he had be greatly wronged and he was demanding to be heard. Now I have no idea if he was right about being wronged, maybe he was, maybe he was not maybe it was somewhere in between. But at no point, even grabbing the gun did he appear ready to do violence.
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