Marty and Gila Hayes run the Shooting Academy of Seattle. Marty is also the founder of the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network which provides help to those involved in a self-defense shooting.
In conjunction with this organization, they publish an e-journal which gives details of self-defense shootings and the legal aftermath. The September 2010 issue is about the case of Larry Hickey of Tucson, AZ.
Mr. Hickey was involved in a self-defense shooting when he was attacked by three neighbors in his own driveway. Due to sloppy police work, he ended up being charged with aggravated assault and spent 71 days in jail. His case ended in a hung jury the first time it was tried and an acquittal the second time around. Without the expert testimony of Massad Ayoob in the second trial, who knows what would have happened.
This was recommended to me by Gail Pepin who is part of the group putting on the ProArms Podcast. She thought it should be required reading for anyone with a CCW. Just because you are in the right doesn’t mean it will be easy to clear your name in case of a self-defense shooting.
Thanks for that link. I sent Mrs. Hickey $100 back then (before Yeager kicked me off GOtX when I suggested that his buddy John Willis should send people the gear they paid for years earlier before stocking Yeagers store). I always wondered how Larry Hickey’s case came out.
It’s the kind of case I’d expect an LA prosecutor to push, not one I expected to see in AZ.
Three points that stand out to me:
1 – in hindsight, he realized he should have been more aggressive earlier and ended the conflict before it escalated.
2- he might have had an easier time of it, if he had been forced to kill his attackers. Not only because they couldn’t have then lied to the police, but also because the police would have been more careful to collect exonerating evidence.
3 – if his wife had made the exact same shots instead of him, the cops and DA would have gone much easier on her.
How does one get your side of the story out to investigators early at the same time as not making statements without a lawyer? Did the wife talk to investigators? Did they just discount her?
Would the defense have been able to ask one of the policemen/detectives on the stand, “If two women were doing their best to restrain your arms while a man was wailing away at your head with his fists, whould you consider yourself to be justified to use deadly force in self-defense?”
The takeaway from this story for me is that I need a less-lethal option, and I need one quickly. And CCW insurance.
God bless Massad Ayoob