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Wondering if a “crime of passion” defense would be applicable here.
You’d be surprised how many juries DO follow the instructions to the letter. Jury instructions are very step by step: “the crime requires that the accused be inside his dwelling. Do you find that the accused was inside his dwelling, Yes or No?..”
The juries I am familiar with and have served on try their very best to listen with an open mind to all the facts as they are presented and then apply the law as instructed in their written and oral instructions.
As was said, the court MAY be able to impose a sentence of probation and no jail time, even if the defendant is found guilty of the assault he’s been charged with.
The news article I read indicates that the defendant’s wife was beaten repeatedly, as was the sister and that the wife called the husband screaming.
History has shown that juries do indeed vote with their hearts even when it seems to conflict with the law and/or jury instructions. It only takes ONE juror to dig in his heels and prevent a conviction. Prosecutors don’t automatically retry cases every time there is a mistrial.
He should have a parade, not a trial.
Where are all the BLM folks?
Justice and the law are not always synonymous. Isn’t that part of the reason have juries?
Sure it’s a squishy system, but inserting the human element into trials is probably a good thing. Well, good enough that we haven’t stopped doing it yet.
@romanigypsyeyes Jury nullification I mean. You said “Like others, I have a hard time believing a full jury would find him guilty even if what he did was technically illegal.”
Jury nullification in this case would be that a jury does believe that he is guilty of manslaughter or murder, but does not believe he should be punished for his crime.
“In a criminal trial, a jury nullifies by acquitting a defendant, even though the members of the jury may believe that the defendant did the illegal act, yet they don’t believe he or she should be punished for it.”
Some of this is going to come down to the idea of the ‘reasonable man’, as in this case, what would a reasonable man consider to be a valid reaction. One of the reasons we have trial by a jury of our peers, at least according to the history I have read, is because a jury would likely be more to look at someone accused and understand better why they did what they did, what their intent was. Yes, juries are supposed to uphold the law, but juries are routinely tasked with making judgements well beyond the written law (try being on a civil jury in NJ with damages, the law basically leaves it up to the jury to decide damages and such, there are no guidelines). Sure, the law says “if someone is outside your dwelling they are no longer considered a threat”, but that leaves out something, those who wrote the law assume that in that case, the person is safe inside the dwelling and the perp is now outside that home. In this case, though, what consitutes a dwelling? The wife fought off the rapist, yet he stayed in the hallway outside the apartment, and it is there that the husband found him…it isn’t like the perp ran out of the building and the guy chased and beat him to death, the perp was hanging around (yeah, I have heard he was waiting for the elevator, who the heck after committing a crime hangs around? You have to wonder what this guy may have been on, or why he hung around). Juries have the right to decide if the facts meet reasonableness to decide, for example, whether the guy should have been able to stop or if they feel he was or wasn’t justified in doing what he did. The problem is the law claims to be this logical thing, that covers all contingencies, but it doesn’t. Several posters have said that the guy should have stopped beating the guy, that he clearly had him down, and could have stopped without killing him…but there is another side to this, too, and that is the state of mind of the guy doing it. The law says deadly force can be used if the person has a reasonable expectation that he or his loved ones are threatened or truly believes they are threatened, so in this case the jury would have to decide whether the accused felt threatened.
It is all great and good when you haven’t been in that situation to say “he should have stopped” or ‘he obviously wasn’t threatened’, but you also don’t live where that guy lives, and you also don’t know what the now dead perp truly represented, a jury can understand that. Based on the way the law was written, the DA may not have had a choice, but a jury can decide if the guy might have had reasonable expectation of being threatened based on their own experiences. I suspect the defense will bring up that the perp had a felony rap sheet as long as my arm, and had convictions for violent crimes, and that may sway them
It is also a bit ironic to talk about a society of laws ans such when a perp with such an extensive rap sheet is out on the streets. Once upon a time there were laws that kept hardened criminals behind bars for life once they had a certain number of felony convictions, that seemed to have disappeared along with the Sullivan law that had a mandatory 5 year sentence for possession of an inlicensed weapon (people of my father’s generation laughed at the ads they had when they created a new law with a minimum one year sentence for possession of a firearm without a license). One of the other questions is why was the guy who was killed out on the streets in the first place, the same law that supposedly judges a guy trying to defend his family is the same one that let the other guy out on the street.
Actually, “three strike” laws were a relatively recent thing in the last few decades (when the crime wave that peaked in 1991 or so was causing everyone to fear crime). But, although they were well marketed politically, they tended to throw repeat criminals in prison for life at older ages, when their criminal activity has usually declined to lower level crimes, rather than the more serious crimes that they tend to commit when younger. I.e. the younger, more dangerous criminals still got the “revolving door” treatment (i.e. released from prison after shorter sentences so that they could commit more crimes), but then got locked up for life (at great expense to the taxpayer) later if they commit a smaller crime when older. I.e. they were examples of being “tough on crime” but not being very smart about it.
In Texas, at most he would probably get a $10 ticket from the fish & game authorities for attempting to shoo a house fly from another person’s forehead with an implement significantly exceeding the heft of a common fly swatter.
Did the wife and cousin call the police or just the husband? The story and time line as reported sound odd. First reports obviously have some holes in them, but something seems off about all of this. I’ll reserve speculation on how a jury would respond until more details are in.
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The news article I read indicates that the defendant’s wife was beaten repeatedly, as was the sister and that the wife called the husband screaming.
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If true and the rape is true, I can’t imagine any jury convicting him of something very serious no matter where he did it. The defense will put up big pics of the beaten-up sisters and provide evidence of rape (ripped clothes, medical evidence)…and outside the courtroom, there will be a parade.
The dead man is not a sympathetic victim. Can’t imagine the prosecution having much motivation. Is the DA elected?
What happened to that older gentleman who shot the intruders who were running away outside?
Joe Horn in Texas? He got a big “Huzzah” from the right wing and was cleared by a grand jury.
No, that’s not him.
the person I’m talking about shot a woman who claimed that she was pregnant…and If I remember correctly, people of all stripes supported him. (I don’t think she was pregnant)
I think it was in Calif
@anomander found the case…calif…no charges were filed…Tom Greer shot/killed her after she ran out of his home into the alley
[QUOTE=""]
No charges will be filed against an 80-year-old man who fatally shot a woman who was burglarizing his Long Beach home, prosecutors said Monday.
[/QUOTE]
On July 22, Thomas Greer fired two bullets into the back of Andrea Miller, 28, even after she begged him not to shoot and claimed she was pregnant.
Prosecutors say Miller and her suspected accomplice, 26-year-old Gus Adams, had assaulted Greer before prying open a safe and stealing $5,000.
Greer, who was robbed on two other occasions, “held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily injury,” wrote Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Janet Moore, explaining the office’s decision not to charge him.>>>> LATimes http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-no-charges-home-burglary-20150126-story.html
So, even in states that aren’t Texas…
Very different facts. [Sorry. I just couldn’t stay away.] There was also the fellow in Indiana who ended convicted of criminally negligent whatever-it-was for shooting a fleeing burglar – and then got sued by said “victim.”
I’m not sure that the facts are that “very different.” Sure, in the T Greer case, the shooter was the victim. But in both cases, the criminal was already out of the home when shot.
I was not clear. I meant very different from the original case that started this thread. Does that help?
Just the kind of cheery news to read on cc…