Posted on 04/05/2022 12:09:13 PM PDT by Red Badger
God hates divorce, and also hates fornication and living together resulting in an ill-formed marriage, where the kids are a bargaining chip and a football.
The so-called Sexual Revolution, like most marxist ideas, has been a colossal failure.
People sleep together before marriage and complain afterward because they have built an incompletely committed frame of mind into a relationship that they backed into and got used to. Sometimes, like here, there is a struggle for custody, jerking around, bitterness, revenge, and violence.
The details get a little tricky, but the best case for the defendant seems to be under Title 2, Chapter 9, Subchapter C, Section 9.31. Specificaly whether (1)(A) applies and the decedent:
unlawfully and with force entered, or was attempting to enter unlawfully and with force, the actor's occupied habitation, vehicle, or place of business or employment;
Looking up "habitation" it seems to apply to the porch in that it structurally part of the house per Title 7 Chapter 30 Sec 30.01 (1) (B).
As far as the decedent entering the porch unlawfully, I think that is obvious as he was told to leave by the land owner.
Which leaves one crucial question, was the entry "with force". Now I have not yet looked this up do to needing to end my lunch break, but it does not seem in the ordinary layman sense of the word to me he used force to enter the porch.
So I am still not entirely sure the self defense works.
Yup. I’ve said it was a bad shoot. But it is not a prosecutable one. Apparently. Should at least be some misdemeanor charge. Things are different in Texas.
Simple assault qualifies as force. Those chest bumps qualify as simple assault, and at the end of the video, he was forcing the homeowner back with them.
Game over, he loses. But the key in this incident is the fact that no charges were filed. The 9.3* series tends to be couched as “it is a defense to prosecution” whereas 9.4* declares things flat out legal, barring charges from being filed. Self defense incidents often results in charges laid before the grand jury, for the grand jury to decide if self defense applies. Property defense incidents where actions are clear result in the DA not filing charges as the declarations of legality in 9.4* mean they can’t.
The homeowner is covered by both, but the lack of charges at all probably means that the DA agrees that this is covered by o.QRS and 9.42.
Do not trespass in Texas. If the landowner tells you to leave, leave immediately. This is the basis of the law.
Yup.
BS........ thousand cross the border from Mexico and tresspass on Texas private land.
The federal government encourages the act and in fact goes after any land owener who tries to stop the trespassers.
That’s the Feds, though. The state doesn’t go after people defending their homes from illegal invaders.
"It was self defense...he bumped me, so of course I had to kill him!"
It wasn’t just once and he kept advancing. Sorry, but you don’t get to intimidate a homeowner on their own property after you’ve been told to leave in the state of Texas.
Never fire warning shots. That escalated the situation.
However, once the other person tries to take the gun away, all bets are off.
This could have been handled peacefully, IMHO.
Supposing you take your child to someone's house to visit. They lock your child in the closet and announce they intend to abuse them and have fun doing so. They tell you to leave. You say that you will leave as soon as your child comes with you. They say, NO LEAVE NOW OR I WIL SHOOT YOU. You are angry and it shows on your face. The guy wanting to have fun abusing your child feels intimidated by your expression or anger and shoots you dead.
Remember you don't get to intimidated a homeowner on their own property. We need to keep that myopically in mind under all circumstances universally above all else.
Nice hypothetical. Defense of persons takes precedent over defense of property, and neither applies when the homeowner is engaged in a crime against someone who was formerly allowed on the property.
Technically, one should then leave the property and call the cops.
Now obviously my hypothetical is an extreme case. But as far as I know maybe the "meathead" was irrationally angry because their child was being abused by the landowner and the child was in the property. Or maybe none of that is true and he was angry because he is a belligerent jerk. Still seems flakey to me to call this shooting self defense...a crime against language if not against Texas law.
You seem obsessed with the “intimidation” or “anger” facet. Under the law, it doesn’t matter if the trespasser is angry, sad, high as a kite or whatever. If they’ve been told to leave, don’t, and there’s reasonable cause (as defined by case law) to believe that accosting the trespasser would likely result in the homeowner sustaining serious bodily injury or death, the homeowner has the right to bring deadly force to bear. The emotional state of the trespasser is irrelevant.
In a prior post, I believe you postulated that the homeowner would have shot the meathead if the meathead had turned to leave. That’s actually *not* legal in Texas. If you tell someone to leave and they do, you are *not* allowed to shoot them while they are in the process of leaving.
I do not think I postulated that the guy would get shot in the back. But as far as intimidation by trespasser we have come full circle, I was responding to your comment that you don’t get to intimidate a homeowner on his own property as a way to sum up that the belly bumps on the porch qualified the unlawful entry of the porch as being “with force”. I am still not sure if that qualifies as force from my own reading. As far as risk of serious bodily harm it seems obvious to me that there was no such risk even though a technicality might le the defendant presume there was one automatically. Arguing that there was one seems ludicrous to me.
9.31 (2)did not provoke the person against whom the force was used; and
This was an additional requirement to use (1) that would be met if we considered the entry to the porch and subsequent belly bumping to be "with force".
It seems hard sell to me to argue that the defendant did not provoke the decedent when he decided that to end an argument he was going to threaten to use deadly force.
I find this restores some faith in the reasonableness of the self defense law. It seemed ridiculous to me that one can bait a person into being enraged and then shoot them dead because they were bumped on their porch after provoking the reaction...and claiming they were just defending their home.
I am all for shooting real home invaders that smash their way in to steal rob or destroy. Just not so fond of people abusing such a law as a trap to murder a rival in a bitter dispute.
Telling someone to leave the property is de facto not provoking the person.
I’ve been involved in a shooting case like this - I got an education in this from my attorney, came out just fine. If you live in Texas and you think this about the self defense/property defense laws, I strongly suggest you go ask a defense attorney to clarify the law for you.
It is certainly possible to tell somebody to leave one's property in a manner which does not provoke them. However the defendant did not choose one of those ways.
But obviously in this case the defendant was angry and meant to bully the decedent and that certainly caused the decedent to be provoked.
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