Man kills 2 People While 911 Is Telling Him Not To

[Howard Treesong]

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Property rights matter. This guy did the right thing by calling the police. It's certainly much more controversial, but I also think he did the right thing by trying to stop the thieves when it became clear that the police would not arrive in time to stop the crime. The only real question here is whether he should have pulled the trigger.

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Howard,

I agree with many of your points but don't quite understand where you are coming from with this. Are you saying that anybody/everybody should try to stop illegal actions they see taking place?

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I don't think I'd arrogate to myself the judgment you suggest. What I do think is that our society generally should permit citizenry to stop serious crime when it can. Mrs. Treesong and I got in a discussion on this point over dinner: she articulated that she'd be absolutely furious with me if I pulled out a shotgun to defend our neighbors' house from a burglary. She had a different answer, however, when I asked about the situation where I saw two evildoers break into the house next door if I knew that only the wife were alone at home. And it's a no-brainer to defend Chez Treesong and the Little Treesongs with deadly force in the awful event that's necessary.

My own personal limits aside, I see at least some justification in what the shooter did. Enough to let him walk? I think likely yes, but I'm clearly troubled by what he did -- as we all should be.

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Especially in this situation the 911 dispatcher explicitly tells him to remain inside and says that it is alright if they get away before the police arrive.

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I don't give a rat's ass what the dispatcher tells me to do if I'm in the shooter's position. It's a judgment call based on what I'm seeing.

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As others have pointed out if people feel they have such an obligation it seems to be a very quick and slippery slope into shooting of pranksters/neighbors checking up on neighbor's houses on vacations etc...

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Yes, it does. Here, though, I think the shooter knew damn well that the guys breaking his neighbor's window with a crowbar and coming out five minutes later with a full bag of stuff aren't pranksters or caretakers. If they are pranksters who know the guys who own the house, then they of course aren't guilty of either burglary or robbery, in which case the shooter's actions pretty clearly aren't justified. So the shooter takes a risk of a homicide prosecution if he gets it wrong -- which I think is exactly the right result.


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I'm not a lawyer but wondering if that statement also impacts the applicability of the statutes?

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I don't think so. I read this statement to mean that the neighbors aren't his friends -- but that he could identify who it is that his neighbors are, and that he clearly knows the guys busting into the house aren't actually the people that live there.

[Howard Treesong]

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Intent means that you intend the act. Whether the actor thinks it is lawfull doesn't matter.

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Yes I know, but as it's discussed here [ QUOTE ]
In criminal law, for a given actus reus ("guilty act"), the requirement to prove intent consists of showing mens rea (mental state, "guilty mind").

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My recollection is that murder one requires specific intent, i.e. an intention to kill. There are also crimes of so-called "general intent," where all you have to do is intend the action itself and not the outcome. Thus, if I intend to fire a bullet up into the air and it comes down on someone's head, I'm surely guilty of manslaughter (a general intent crime) but not murder one (because I did not specifically intend to harm anyone).

The line is of course not always so clean. If I fire a bullet towards a crowd, a jury could infer specific intent from that action.

Here, there's no doubt that the shooter intended to kill the guys when he pulled the trigger. The question here is whether he's justified in so doing.

[burningyen]

All,

The most reasonable reading of the "at night" element of Section 9.42 is that it applies to all of the victim's offenses, not just the criminal mischief and theft offenses. That's why I didn't include 9.42 in my statutory excerpts. I don't see how the guy can claim justification under that section.

Still, I agree with Howard that it's unlikely that this guy gets convicted, although I'm inclined to take him up on his 10:1 prop bet. IMHO a lot will depend on what the forensic evidence shows in terms of where exactly the victims were when they were shot and why the guy shot that delayed 3rd shot. If he was legitimately taken by surprise that the burglars were closer to him than he expected, then I think it's more likely he will get off, especially given his obviously heightened emotional state. But I count a good 5 or 6 seconds between the 2nd shot and the 3rd, and he says that the 2nd burglar was "down the street," not in his yard. Also, his statements to the 911 dispatcher that he had a right to defend himself when he was clearly not in any imminent danger are somewhat damning. It seems to me that yes, he wanted to defend his neighbors' property, but that he had already made up his mind about shooting and was even already in cover-your-ass mode.

[burningyen]

Hmm, on second thought, I may have been too hasty on the "at night" point. 9.42 may be applicable after all.

[Howard Treesong]

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All,

The most reasonable reading of the "at night" element of Section 9.42 is that it applies to all of the victim's offenses, not just the criminal mischief and theft offenses. That's why I didn't include 9.42 in my statutory excerpts. I don't see how the guy can claim justification under that section.

Still, I agree with Howard that it's unlikely that this guy gets convicted, although I'm inclined to take him up on his 10:1 prop bet. IMHO a lot will depend on what the forensic evidence shows in terms of where exactly the victims were when they were shot and why the guy shot that delayed 3rd shot. If he was legitimately taken by surprise that the burglars were closer to him than he expected, then I think it's more likely he will get off, especially given his obviously heightened emotional state. But I count a good 5 or 6 seconds between the 2nd shot and the 3rd, and he says that the 2nd burglar was "down the street," not in his yard. Also, his statements to the 911 dispatcher that he had a right to defend himself when he was clearly not in any imminent danger are somewhat damning. It seems to me that yes, he wanted to defend his neighbors' property, but that he had already made up his mind about shooting and was even already in cover-your-ass mode.

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Wow. 9.43 wasn't in the original post quoting 9.41 and 9.42, and it's really broad -- it wraps in all of 9.41. I think the "at night" requirement is an artifact of old common law, where burglary had to be of a dwelling house and at night. Most modern statutory schemes write that requirement out, but Texas would appear to be stuck in the 1600s.

Action is still live, yen. I'm happy to ship $1K to El D if you want an escrow. Gotta cover a couple of details, but I'm pretty confident this guy doesn't get convicted of homicide of any kind.

[Colonel Kataffy]

One of the problems I have with this statute is that as a practical matter, the vast majority of people aren't going to understand all the legal nuances of it.

Even if this guy was within his rights under the law, he probably didn't know precisely what those rights were. I would imagine that the same people who would attempt to excercise their rights under this statute would also be the same people that would tend to have an overly broad interpretation of what the statute allows them to do.

[hime]

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also, wow that the texas law says you can use deadly force to 'protect property'.

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Hello Castle Doctrine. A person I know is now dead and his death will most likely result in no action because of it.

[hime]

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Some of the posts here actually scare me. "possessions aren't worth life",

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You're right, possessions are way more important than life.

[xorbie]

I can see that there is some difficulty in determining whether or not this is legally murder, but ethically this is pretty clear cut. This man states his intentions to go out and kill two people rather than let them get away with a relatively worthless possession that isn't even his. Who is he to decide that his neighbor values this possession enough to kill over it?

He doesn't, at any point, make it clear that he believes they are armed or pose a danger to anyone. He goes out wielding a shotgun, which makes it quite clear that he poses a danger to these two guys. He then shoots these people. He is a murderer.

All I'm hearing is ad hoc rationalizations, based on "these guys might have hurt someone in the future" and "these guys might have been armed" and "these guys might have lunged at him". Well, there's no "might" in his case. He definitely was armed, definitely posed physical threat to two people and definitely went out there with the intention to kill.

People supporting the action ask "where do you draw the line"... well, I'll ask the same. These thiefs are scumbags, yes. So killing them is alright? Am I allowed to kill the UPS guy if he bones my wife? If you see a bully picking on some kids, you just gun him down? There seems to be some sort of fascination with "property" as if stealing someone's VCR is the utmost violation one could possibly commit. So I ask, where do you draw the line? At what point is killing someone over something completely meaningless just not alright?

To say that killing them is justifiable in any way makes you (let alone the man who kills them himself) makes you far worse than these thieves.

[xorbie]

Just to add, this guy is making a call from a CELL PHONE. If he believes the cops can't get there in time, how hard is it to follow these guys, shotgun in hand, from a very safe distance? You can stay on the line and lead the cops to them. This guy's first words are "I have a shotgun, do you want me to stop them?" This guy calls 911 to get them to tell him it's OK, and goes through with this plan despite the operator explaining numerous times that it isn't. This is murder.