Posted on 06/29/2009 6:05:05 PM PDT by Red in Blue PA
ROSEBURG, Ore. -- A Sutherlin man who shot and killed a man his wife found asleep on their couch last year will serve 19 months in prison as part of a plea deal.
Keith Cramer, 35, pleaded no contest to criminally negligent homicide with a firearm. In exchange, the district attorney dropped a charge of second degree manslaughter.
The charges stem from a shooting inside Cramer's home in Sutherlin, where Cramer's wife discovered a man sleeping on their couch last June.
She told police she went to a local tavern to get her husband, and the intruder, Michael Shane Smith, 35, of Alaska, was shot in the chest.
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'He beat me up, so I shot him. This is my house. He's an intruder'
According to police accounts, Cramer's wife found the stranger passed out on the family's couch and summoned her husband from a bar.
Cramer said that what happened next was self-defense. According to a search warrant affidavit, he told officers: "He beat me up, so I shot him. This is my house. He's an intruder."
(Excerpt) Read more at kval.com ...
Did he beat him up? Shooting a sleeping man doesn’t sound like self-defense.
W/o knowing all the details of this case; If I found a sleeping adult male (or female) on my couch when i came home, I'd probably be more than a little interested in WHY he was there.
I also would stick to the mantra of “of course, officer, I'll be glad to discuss this event with you once I have had the opportunity to speak to my attorney”.
MO is a Castle State, so I think it may be somewhat easier to deal with the after-the-fact folks (LEOs) than a non-castle state.
Weird things happen, I guess.
Something doesn’t add up and it sure seems like someone didn’t have to die that night.
It depends on the circumstances. If he shot the guy while he was sleeping it was an unnecessary use of deadly force, if he woke up the intruder who then proceeded to attack him (not unlikely since the guy was probably mentally unstable, stoned or high ... perhaps all three) than it was appropriate. However, it doesn’t seem like there were any witnesses to the event other than the guy and his wife; not really certain how the DA made the case.
Okay - why weren’t the cops called first off, then wifey either 1) stands watch over the sleeping guy with a shotgun or 2) go call hubby at the bar to tell him “Get your butt home. I’ll be waiting outside.”
Uh...huh? the wife goes to the bar to get her husband? Not calling 911 or calling the police?
Alcohol and sex involved here...not sure who or how, but its there.
From the article;
Two Sutherlin police officers entered the home after the June 19 shooting and found the 35-year-old Smith. He was “lying on his side with his feet propped up on the couch, facing the center of the living room,” the affidavit states.
Investigators said Smith appeared to have been shot in the chest with a high-powered hunting rifle.
Smith lived in Alaska, but had been in Sutherlin for several weeks mourning the May 29 death of his mother. A friend said Smith had been drinking heavily on the night of the shooting and might have become disoriented while walking back to his stepfather’s house.
Smith had been at the same bar as Cramer, but it does not appear the men knew each other.
in a sane world, a 'grown-up' would bear ALL the responsibility for putting themselves in a position to be shot...ie...enterin another persons home w/o permission...
too bad we simply know too little info about the facts...
Lesson here
Find someone asleep in house, wake them up first before
shooting
Unless is 3 bears and little blond girl in story....
"I Got The Dead Couch Blues", etc.
Whatever happened or didn't happen, looks like the homeowner didn't want to take his chances with a jury.
Don't know who's at fault here but I do believe that bad things tend to happen to people who drink too much more often than they happen to people who don't. It's a hard lesson to learn.
I doubt he shot him while he was sleeping. That’s a great way to ruin a couch.
Movies have a terrible effect on people, I think that a lot of little men want to “whack” someone in a cold blooded “some men just need killing” sort of way like their Hollywood heroes sometimes do in their favorite action films.
I’m pretty sure that there’s a whole buncha’ facts not in evidence here. I’m thinkin’.
If I stumbled home from the bar to find a guy “sleeping” on the sofa, Mrs. Lucky would probably be the focus of my anger.
Wow. This guy shot a sleeping person. Definitely not self defense. Call the police would have been appropriate. If you want to stand by with the gun (just in case he wakes up) that is appropriate, but to shoot a sleeping man seems ridiculous. He deserves to go to jail. 18 months is about right.
Judge, "He didn't deserve a chance."
I’m not sure there are many lessons for most of us here. One lesson is don’t go sleeping on couches in other peoples’ houses unless you are pretty sure they are agreeable to it. Another is wake the intruder up before you shoot him, preferably after you have set up a video camera to record the awakening and whatever might emanate therefrom.
I think there were a bunch of dumb s.o.b.’s involved in this, and now one is a dead s.o.b., another is an imprisoned s.o.b. and the broad is probably puzzled because she’s no better off than before, and maybe worse.
If the intruder was indeed too drunk to know he’d gone into the wrong home, then was wakened up, he no doubt thought that the homeowners were the intruders. Who knows, but they blew it by not calling the law while he was asleep.
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