Posted on 04/29/2014 1:57:58 PM PDT by TurboZamboni
LITTLE FALLS, Minn. (AP/WCCO) — The Little Falls, Minn. man who shot and killed two teenagers after they broke into his home has been found guilty of all four counts of premeditated murder. After roughly three hours of deliberation, the jury found 65-year-old Byron Smith guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder for the shooting deaths of 18-year-old Haile Kifer and 17-year-old Nick Brady.
(Excerpt) Read more at minnesota.cbslocal.com ...
I hope you get robbed a few times. It will wipe that holier-than-thou smirk right of your face.
I was implying that it is often easier to find a jury that is sympathetic to the prosecutor’s case.
I wrote that based on the article headline. I had thought it was a case of a person truly being in fear of imminent death or injury. Having read the full article I see that was not what happened but instead was murder.
OK, let's logically put down what happened:
Bible says don't steal. Law says do not burgle.
Two guys burgled another guys house.
Guy shot and killed them.
Lesson to the rest is there are bad consequences of bad behavior.
Those are the facts. That is what happened. Are you OK with that? NOooo, you don't like the way it was done.
Here is an analogy for you: In some places you kill a pig with a knife, in others with a bullet, and in still others, an air-hammer. The end result of all of these is a dead pig. You seem more concerned with what the killer of the pig was thinking than about the actual killing of the pig. I don't care if the guy was gloating when he did it, the end result is the same, and to obscure and obfuscate that by focusing on the killers feelings is, well, being ... You can figure out where is is going. Grow up.
The facts of the case show that everything he did was carefully planned.
The deliberate taking of the life of a wounded and helpless human being is murder under every possible interpretation.
Soldiers in combat are court-martialed for behaving this way to people who have tried to kill them.
"What the killer is thinking" is the only difference between murder and self defense.
Sadly, I did not use the robbery as a pretext for torture and murder.
Of course, the two murder victims did not actually rob him. They broke and entered. The girl apparently just stood around waiting for the boy to come up from the basement - he was the one who actually wanted to do the robbing part.
I should clarify: there is video from upstairs, but not from the basement.
Also they were not pigs, but sinful human beings like yourself and myself.
Byron Smith was the one who deliberately renounced his humanity.
That’s really a profound and logical statement ya made there sandwicheguy.
With your keen logic I’m sure that jury which took 3 hours to find him guilty, would have been convinced he was reasonable, rational and not guilty~
Trash is trash regardless of skin color.
They made the decision that ended their lives.
I don’t care if it was Ed Gein’s house they were breaking in to.
And four murder counts for two dead? Idiotic...
Please.
Byron Smith deliberately went out of his way to make it look like he wasn't home, because he was sure that the thieves only targeted houses where no one was home.
Their M.O. was to avoid any violent encounter, which makes sense because they were both completely unarmed and totally unprepared for an armed homeowner.
Then he planned on getting convicted. Because if he knew the law and wanted to get away with it, he never would have set up a recording device.
On the other hand, what's his medical situation? What's his prognosis under Obamacare given his age? What if he planned on going to prison in order to get medical care he needs? In that case, he would want to protect himself by having a badass reputation. Cold-blooded murder is a good start for that. On the other hand, if he considered himself moral, he would want the murders to be against people he figured "deserved it." And, he could believe he was helping society as well, because they were preying on the neighborhood.
Theory's got to fit ALL of the facts. You can't have a smart guy who was cool, collected and sane, running a tape recorder he knew would convict him. He's either insane, or he's sane with an agenda that includes going to prison.
First, Byron Smith clearly believed that he was smarter than any criminal and also any police officer.
He thought that his voluntary statement to the police would satisfy the investigation - that they would probably never listen to his trophy - the little unlabeled audiotape.
He was mistaken.
They won’t be doing that anymore.
There are a lot o people of your persuasion, apparently enough to fill the jury box. There are a lot of Obama supporters... Are they right also?. Numbers don’t tell the whole story. I know this is again logic, but try and think about it. Logic is your friend.
Sincerely, you believe this? Join the Taliban.
What??? You mean you didn't know??? He is retired from the State Department -- 32 years.
He has one of those gold plated federal government pensions with full medical care -- the finest taxpayers can buy.
Way too simplistic of an analysis. Nobody makes an audiotape of themselves murding someone, and leaves it in the place of the murder, thinking it won't be found. If he actually hid the tape, maybe. But not leaving it out in the open. He was in security in the State Department - you think he didn't know the cops wouldn't scour the entire crime scene? You think he believed that if they found an audiotape they wouldn't listen to it? Nonsense - of course he knew that would happen.
That leaves knowing it will be found, and designing it to ensure that when it is found, it will achieve his goals. And, since such a tape virtually ensures the exact convictions he received, then they're what he wanted from the beginning. But - they also ensure his "reason" for doing it would be given a tremendous amount of scrutiny. And that gets his story out more than a typical trial. He wanted that extra amount of knowledge of what he did out there. So how does that serve him? Well, what does it show, other than that he's a cold-blooded killer? And where would that rep serve him best except in exactly the place he ensured he'd end up - prison.
It wasn’t just the tape recorder — it was the tape recorder together with the forensic evidence, and the crime scene, and his statements to police, and the coup de gra behind the girl’s ear.
If he is insane then he should have pled insanity instead of self defense.
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