The next day, as I walked up the court house steps to report again, I noticed the prosecutor in front of me talking to another lawyer. The following is an exact quote, as near as I can remember it.
“...they're not supposed to do that. I can tell you one thing. If I wanted to kill someone, I'd crawl a thousand miles on my hands and knees to do it in Etowah County.” (That's in Alabama.)
In other words, he was not at all happy. But he didn't prove to us that it was murder. The only thing we even debated was whether to find him guilty of manslaughter (there wasn't any doubt that he had done it, he admitted it). We didn't think a man should be punished for defending his family. Which is what he had done.
Stabbed the guy in the neck, and he bled out.