Category: Crime

Obama doesn’t.

There’s been a lot of hubbub about the case of Marissa Alexander, a woman who pulled a gun on her abusive husband and has now been found guilty of three counts of Aggravated Assault on a Florida court, after being denied immunity under the SYG law. A superficial reading of the case in the media, and you might be readily inclined to believe this is a double standard. After looking through as many sources on the case as I could find, including original sources, I don’t believe it’s as conclusive.

There is absolutely no doubt, reading the initial deposition from her husband, that he’s pretty much scum. If she had aided his departure from the realm of the living, I wouldn’t shed a tear for him. But that’s a different matter from whether she’s legally entitled to a SYG defense. Alexander’s husband recanted much of the testimony that appears in that link, and if you read the denial of immunity, you will note that the evidence in the case comports with her having pointed the gun in his direction, and not into the air as both he and she had stated in the beginning.

Furthermore, the sequence of events in the case (click through to public access) lines up with a lot of the more detailed media reports I came across. She was originally granted bail, and told not to have contact with any of the victims. She violated that, and made contact with them, assaulted the husband, was rearrested and charged with domestic battery. Her bond on the original charge was revoked. Her attorney, at this point, motioned to withdraw as counsel and it was granted.

In any case of self-defense, your credibility is really going to be key to winning your case. Alexander, through her own actions, destroyed her own credibility. In that case, it’s going to come down to evidence, and agreed upon facts, in determining whether she acted reasonably in threatening her husband and his two children with a gun. In this case, those facts seem to point to Alexander not having a reasonable fear of grave bodily injury or death at the time she employed a firearm. When being judged by a reasonable person standard, it is very important for a jury to believe you are a reasonable person. Otherwise, as the Alexander case shows, you won’t be given benefit of doubt when testimony and facts dispute your accounting of things.

That said, Florida imposes a mandatory minimum for aggravated assault with a firearm of 20 years. This seems excessive to me for an act that ultimately did not harm anyone. It’s worth noting that the prosecution offered a plea deal that was ultimately rejected, but regardless, 20 years with no possibility of parole seems harsh. You won’t do that for armed robbery in Pennsylvania.

This is just a little reminder that it’s a good idea to actually check your target before you pull the trigger. The drugged up drunk with the red mohawk passed out on your property isn’t really a bird.

Derrill Rockwell told police he grabbed his rifle, the .22-caliber he kept handy to kill rodents around the house, about 5 a.m. Oct. 5 and walked outside to confront it.

The bird. …

It was red, sitting at the top of a hill about 90 feet away from Rockwell.

“His intent was to spook it away,” Deputy District Attorney Jason Conley told District Judge Richard Gurley on Friday.

Rockwell shot once but said he didn’t see the bird fly away. Soon after, he heard a woman’s voice, moaning in pain. Rockwell discovered a 23-year-old woman, with a large red mohawk, with a gunshot wound to the head.

The woman lived. In fact, he drove her to the hospital where he left his name and information with the staff. However, he was not a lawful gun owner since he was a prohibited person for a 1995 attempted burglary. While he did try to cover up his involvement at first, he actually confessed against the advice of counsel who pointed out that the police wouldn’t have otherwise known based on the evidence the woman left behind. For his cooperation, and the fact that the drunk druggie with the mohawk took off after the incident, the prosecutor appears to have cut a deal for a guilty plea on being in possession of the firearm. (h/t Wyatt)

Looks like the feds didn’t have much of a case. Now that they have the most serious charges dismissed, they really need to find a better name for their militia group. Huttarees make me think of intergalactic criminals who zip around the desert on giant sail barges and feed their enemies to the Sarlacc.

The judge seems to have ruled that talking big doesn’t amount to a seditious conspiracy. Seems there’s a fine line between free speech and seditious conspiracy, and the judge thought this fell on the other side of the line.

Mass stabbing in Ohio. Note I don’t hear about this from the media. Clearly if we just had universal background checks on all knives, and required them to be locked in a safe when not in use, things like this just wouldn’t happen.

Sometimes, you can just tell, before you even read the article.