“All he had to do was stay in the house and wait for the cops.”
Yeah. Good plan. I totally disagree. You want to be a thief, you get what’s coming to you.
Could I in good conscience live with that trade off?
Is the car worth defending yourself in some civil suit to claim damages?
Should it be the death penalty for the crime of stealing a car?
I don’t know the facts of this case, but I would hate to suffer the reality of the aftermath of shooting someone not placing me or another in fear of death or great bodily harm.
Having said that, is that was is going on here? If the shooter is to be believed, he in fact was reasonably in fear of death or great bodily harm, and probably did shoot to protect himself, not to stop the theft.
Therefore, the prosecutor is wrong in drawing the inference - it was not about defending the car, it was about defending himself.
For the prosecutor to conflate what are two separate issues is a good reason why the jury did not find him guilty, and why the prosecutor was maybe overagressive in prosecuting him in the first place.
I hope that the shooter finds peace with his decision, and continues to believe that it is all right for him to defend himself when threatened.