Posted on 06/15/2022 4:13:45 AM PDT by Jim Noble
Family members of murder defendant Isaiah Rivera-Perez and shooting victim Jaiden Connor filled nearly every seat in a Hillsborough County Superior Court hearing room Tuesday morning as a trial opened that will hinge on the state’s self-defense law.
Homicide prosecutor Nicholas Chong Yen showed the jury a home security video that captures Connor, 17, running down Central Street and collapsing, where police found him with a bullet hole in his back.
“He shot Jaden Connor in the back. He shot Jaden Connor while Jaden was running away from him,” said Chong Yen, an assistant New Hampshire attorney general. “That is not self-defense, that is murder.”
Rivera-Perez, 25, faces charges of second-degree murder and reckless conduct in the July 2020 killing. Connor was one of four home invaders who attacked Rivera-Perez, who sold marijuana for a living from inside his home.
They repeatedly pistol whipped him while trying to find his marijuana and cash. Rivera-Perez then shot them as they fled his home.
Defense attorney Charles Keefe showed pictures of a beaten and bloody Rivera-Perez to the jury.
Keefe said the shooting took place just seconds after the four beat Rivera-Perez and threatened him, his wife and two young children. Connor also aimed a gun at Rivera-Perez’s wife.
“Make no mistake about it, they attacked him and his family. They brought war against him and his family,” Keefe said. The attorney also contended that the bullet had entered Connor’s body from the side, not through his back.
The state’s self-defense law allows use of deadly force if someone reasonably believes another person is about to use deadly force against them. New Hampshire law does not require a person to retreat if he is inside his home or surrounding property.
Keefe said Rivera-Perez turned to selling marijuana after getting laid off from his job as a waiter during the early days of the pandemic. His employment benefits were delayed and he needed to do something to support his family.
Authorities found 19 ounces of marijuana, two handguns and $18,000 when they searched his home after the shooting.
The trial is being held in one of the smaller courtrooms at the Manchester courthouse, and relatives and friends of both Connor and Rivera-Perez filled the three benches in the courtroom. During a break, bailiffs worked to keep the two sides separated.
At one point, words were exchanged in the hallway as the Connor family departed.
A jury view of the shooting scene was scheduled for late morning.
Maybe the dead perp was doing the hokey pokey, turning themselves around, You don’t know what an assailant will do next, it’s best to end the fight in your favor.
There were five home invaders.
Chong Yen, assistant New Hampshire attorney general, was one of them.
He's just taking care of business for the rest of the gang - just like the two "prosecutors" in Kenosha were trying to finish off Kyle Rittenhouse for their Antifa co-conspirators.
Many prosecutors are now just "embeds" for the lawless Left .
Plan accordingly.
This will be a long trial.
That being said….if an interloper in my house was heading away from me and any of my family were in the house I would put said person down, center mass, in the back. My family is too precious to shoot the interloper, Matt Dillon style.
Because there’s s gun involved? I recently sat on a jury. Felon in possession of a firearm. The State’s (Oregon) case came down to whether or not the accused knew a handgun was in a “borrowed” car. Pretty sure it was just Kate Brown and Ellen Rosenblum trying to prosecute a gun. We acquitted. Six weeks later, the defendant is accused of second degree murder.
The home invader who have never been shot at all ...
Ah,forget it.
Even in states where pot is legal, growers and dealers are not allowed to use the banking system. The cash was not "lying around" it was the entire cash supply for his business, even if the business was illegal.
I don't run a pot business, but I run a small business -- sort of a sideline in retirement. If have $18,000 in sales, somewhere around 10% of that filters into my pocket as spendable income. But even if he is in a more lucrative business, he would be lucky to have $4000 wind up as spendable income. Is that really enough to support a family of 4 for a month these days?
This is just the way small business works. Not every dollar of sales is a dollar of profit.
Of course my business is legal, so I don't have more than pocket change "lying around" and this guy would not have either if he had been allowed to use a bank.
I would be voting "not guilty". If they got away clean those guys would be back. And, there is no guarantee that if they leave they do not turn around and shoot back into the house.
I sat on a case in Oregon. Two prosecutors. Both female. One middle aged, no make-up, sensible shoes. The other, twenty-something, 400 pounds, tatts and a nose ring. Kate Brown’s foot soldiers
Inside my house equals dead.
It is in Tennessee.
I agree with your comment...in fact what is the definition of facing an immediate threat. To me, someone who has demonstrated complete disregard for my life and is leaving is a potential threat into the future.
One thing for sure, there will be no recidivism by the dead POS.
As a potential juror, I would be inclined to take a very broad view of what constitutes ‘self defense’.
A violent criminal dies violently. I’m okay with this because he’ll never do it again.
We are one of the whitest states in the nation (though in the past 10 years we’ve dropped from 94% to 88% due to imports), and have the second lowest violent crime rate in the nation. But “low” does not mean “non-existent”, there will always be something for the news to report.
Chong Yen, the Communist POS assistant New Hampshire attorney general, is the one who should be on trial or at least disbarred.
You are precisely correct. The bad guy if within pistol range was still a deadly threat. He was armed and had already done violence and threatened to kill. When that bullet hit his back, the world became a little bit better place.
Accused killer wins bail; judge not convinced jury would convict him of second-degree murder
MANCHESTER, NH – Accused killer Isaiah Rivera-Perez will be freed from jail, pending trial, if he can find $10,000 cash to post for bail after a Superior Court judge ruled last week that the state did not show he fired his gun out of revenge and not to protect himself or his family.
Isaiah Rivera-Perez, 24, is charged with second-degree murder and reckless conduct in the killing of Jaden Connor, 17, on July 14, 2020, outside Rivera-Perez’ then home at 276 Central St. Rivera-Perez, who police said sold marijuana out of his home, was bleeding from a head wound when he told investigators that night he was the victim of a home invasion and had fired two shots at two fleeing armed men because they were on his property and he could “stand his ground.”
Connor died in the street, about 150 feet away from Rivera-Perez’s home, from a bullet wound to his left upper torso, according to an autopsy performed by Associate Medical Examiner Christine James.
Judge N. William Delker, presiding in Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District, issued an order on March 26, 2021, in which he said the state did not show “through clear and convincing evidence, that the defendant did not face an imminent, deadly threat from his assailants even as they ran from the house. In other words, the Court is not convinced that ‘the proof is evident or the presumption great’ that a jury will convict the defendant of Second Degree Murder.”
Delker, in his 16-page order, summarized what happened that night.
About 11 p.m., a man Rivera-Perez knew by the nickname “OTB” came to his home to buy marijuana. The two chatted while finalizing the sale and OTB asked to use his bathroom.
Rivera-Perez went to his game room to wait for OTB so they could finish the transaction when he heard the side door to his house open.
Three masked men, all armed with guns, entered the home and attacked Rivera-Perez, pistol-whipping him at least 20 times. The men told him not to look at them as they kept hitting him in the face. Rivera-Perez fought back and broke the handle off one man’s revolver.
At some point, the men left through the front door. Rivera-Perez grabbed his gun off his desk and chased after them. He tried to fire his gun in his home, but was unable to, because the gun was not cocked and/or because the safety was on.
He started shooting from the threshold as the men ran out the door. He said they were at his fence, about three feet in front of his porch, when he fired.
As the men fled, they dropped a bag of marijuana near the fence and Rivera-Perez walked over to get it. He told police he heard two gunshots coming from the direction the men fled and fired his remaining four rounds in their direction
. He didn’t see if he hit any of the men. He estimated about 20 seconds had passed between when he fired his first two shots from his porch and when he heard return fire.
Officer Alexander April testified to video surveillance footage recovered from the area. The video depicted two people running outside the Rivera-Perez’s house. Connor ran up a sidewalk and in between two cars before he stumbled and fell into the street. The other man continued out of the frame but returned to Connor with his arm held out as if pointing a gun in the direction of Rivera-Perez. The man bent down to pick up something which police surmised was a firearm because no gun was found by Connor’s body, even though witnesses said all the intruders at the defendant’s house had firearms.
April testified that about five seconds had passed from the time the men ran out of the defendant’s home to when Connor collapsed in the street.
Rivera-Perez went back into his house, hid the bag of marijuana, put down his gun and called 911. When police arrived, he was sitting on the sidewalk, bloodied and with visible injuries to his head and face. He told police what happened and said he fired the shots. Several times, he told officers he had a splitting headache from the attack and asked for medical treatment.
Detective April, at a bail hearing, agreed that the attack on Rivera-Perez in his own home while his wife and children were present was “brutal” and “savage.”
Rivera-Perez subsequently moved out of Manchester to an undisclosed location in Massachusetts because he was in fear of the men who attacked him.
Welker said in his order that Rivera-Perez, charged with a crime punishable by a sentence of up to life in prison, can be held without bail if the state can show that “the proof is evident or the presumption great’ that the defendant will be convicted.”
He said Rivera-Perez has asserted various defenses including self-defense.
“At this juncture, there is no question that the defendant caused Connor’s death,” Welker wrote. “There is some significant question in the Court’s view about whether the State can establish the mens rea [ criminal intent] of the second-degree murder charge, i.e., whether the defendant caused Connor’s death recklessly and with an extreme indifference to the value of human life.”
The issue for the court, he said, is whether the state can disprove the defendant “reasonably believed” that his assailants were about to use unlawful, deadly force against him or another person.
In three police interviews, Rivera-Perez maintained he was reacting to an immediate, deadly threat and out of a desire to protect himself and his family. The judge cited some of Rivera-Perez’ statements to police:
“[A]ll I could think of was my kids, first—cause I thought they were about to run upstairs,” he told police. He said he shot to get them away from his house.
He repeatedly pointed to the brutal assault he suffered. “This person ran into my crib, sir, violated me and my family…Sir, he put a gun to my face.”
“I felt like they were still a threat because they were still in the area, so I shot, yes, I shot because they were still in the area, [to] defend my family.”
At least once, Rivera-Perez said he wanted revenge, suggesting his response to the intruders was not motivated by a desire to protect himself or his family but an “affirmative, aggressive stance…”
The judge, citing case law, said “the right of self-defense does not justify an act of retaliation or revenge. The self-defense concept is to protect person, not pride.”
Still, Welker said “accepting that less than five seconds had passed between when the men fled the defendant’s home and when Connor collapsed –a period of time so short that the defendant hardly had time for reflective thought—the overwhelming evidence established that the defendant’s actions were not motivated by revenge. Rather, the defendant was reacting instinctively and on impulse against the men who broke into his home and attacked him.”
In a police interview, Rivera-Perez said that he thought at one point that he had been shot because his wife was screaming at him like he had.
“I had blood all over me and believed they had guns all over. I didn’t know what was going on. I was, I got hit so many times my ears were ringing. My vision’s dazed.”
He said whether it was his life or theirs, he had to make that decision. “These gentlemen violated me, stole everything from me. I could have been shot at the time and I had so much adrenaline rushing through my body I didn’t know.”
The judge said even Officer April agreed at the bail hearing that the attack on the defendant in his own home while his wife and children were present was “brutal” and “savage.”
As a result, Welker said “at this stage” he cannot conclude that retaliation was Rivera-Perez’ primary motive.
The judge also said that Rivera-Perez stressed his fear of the assailants who he was familiar with and knew were gang-related. He told police that OTB is “known for taking, for hitting licks on people all the time, and there’s a lot of people that want his head…and that’s why I don’t want to be mean to say names for me to…give any type of information on his side because I know the type of people he fucks with.”)
Welker said it is clear from the police interviews that his fear of retaliation by gang members – particularly if he misidentifies one of the men who attacked him, thereby blaming another, unrelated gang member– prevented him from providing the names of his assailants to officers.
“The defendant’s fear of future retaliation continues and is still so great that he has left his home to live out-of-state,” Welker wrote.
Should Rivera-Perez post bail, he is to have no contact with the victim’s family, live at a “sealed address provided to the court,” abide by a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew and be subject to 24/7 GPS monitoring through National Pretrial Services and shall be responsible for the cost of the monitoring services.
The next court hearing is Dec. 9, 2021. Jury selection is slated for Jan. 24, 2022.
then he said i got a friend with a gun and we’re gonna kill you.
that’s when i shot him.
Not guilty. Defending self and family from probably being murdered is natural right even for illegal activity.
If he was shot in the house, absolutely self defense. Outside and moving away, it becomes a question. Can’t tell from the article where the actual shooting happened.
Jury trial? NOT GUILTY
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