Preparedness for a home invasion

[Kramodlog]

Why has no-one hired a medium to speak with him so he can give his testimony?

Am I the only one using my brain here?

Someone sawRashomon. Or should.

[video=youtube;3YLil2iBIcc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YLil2iBIcc[/video]

 

[Janx]

...or severe bodily injury. That means looking at the totality of the situation: time, place, words said, number & character of people involved, who raised a fist to whom.

One of my professors talked about one of his old cases- a bench trial regarding an athlete got shot by a guy during a dispute in a parking lot. The athlete was over 6'5", the shooter was a foot shorter. The athlete described cocking his fist to swing...and the judge's hammer came down, " Self-defense!"

Yup. Sounds about right.

Any cries of "he didn't have a weapon" or "you could have shot him in the knee" are pretty much bullcrap and irrelevant.

A dude can be killed in a single punch to the head. It's happened.

Shooting at someone's knee is a much harder shot, and in a crisis (like when you claim you were in when you drew), your best chance is center of mass.

Assuming the conditions for legal shooting are met, expect a dead person and be grateful for anything less.
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/SOTWDocs/PE/htm/PE.9.htm

What I find important though is making sure those legal conditions are truly met. Folks with a gun have a much higher standard they should hold to in order to pretty much stay out of trouble and make sure they are absolutely in the right in a situation.

Nowadays, cops advise that Neighborhood Watches do Patrols. They recommend NOT carrying any weapon if you do any kind of patrol/dog walk watch. Take a pic slyly and keep on walking. Somebody carrying a weapon starts thinking, "maybe I can stop this" and before you know it, ego and escalation occurs and bam, trayvon is dead.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

I assume both parties would make that claim. And potentially both parties may be correct.

Zimmerman was scared of Trayvon, Trayvon was scared of Zimmerman. Both entered the situation on legal ground. Then things got squishy. And at some point, Trayvon appears to have been on top of a prone Zimmerman, hitting him. And later, Zimmerman shoots Trayvon. I don't think it was a proud day for either one.

Ultimately, the guy with the gun won the fight.

The guy with the gun, who was also on the phone the cops won the legal challenge. In Texas, he may have been flagged as the instigator as he got out of his vehicle, instead of actually Standing His Ground in his car. It seemed implied that he started the verbal contact with Trayvon, which might further constitute escalating the conflict. For a CHL holder, these were all red flags for increased legal risk in a self defense situation.

That's interesting. Wasn't Texas where the old white guy shot two people who were burglarizing his neighbor's home after he called 911 and the dispatcher told him to stay inside?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Shooting at someone's knee is a much harder shot, and in a crisis (like when you claim you were in when you drew), your best chance is center of mass.

A Secret Service agent told my HS pretty much the same thing on career day, in the context of a Senator criticizing his agency for excessive use of force, saying something along he lines of, "We can't carry a golf bag of weapons and match the perps' weapon's caliber to make sure we don't use too much force. And when we shoot, we shoot to kill- shooting to maim is Hollywood stuff."

Nowadays, cops advise that Neighborhood Watches do Patrols. They recommend NOT carrying any weapon if you do any kind of patrol/dog walk watch. Take a pic slyly and keep on walking. Somebody carrying a weapon starts thinking, "maybe I can stop this" and before you know it, ego and escalation occurs and bam, trayvon is dead.

Guns also seem to support the seductive call of our inner cowboy, and that is dangerous. Not only are you less likely to be trained in threat assessment and IDing friends & foes, it makes it harder for first responders to make those same assessments.

It also muddies the subsequent investigation when there are multiple shooters...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Except zimmerman wasn't breaking the law. He had a right to be in his car. He had a right to exit his car. He had a right to walk through the neighborhood in the same direction as somebody else. He had a right to talk to somebody he met.

Not quite. Rights at never absolute, and carry with them corresponding duties...and consequences when those limits are not respected.

Zim had a right to be in the car or exit it. However, that right was somewhat curtailed by a legitimate & lawful request from a law-enforcement representative to not follow TM.

They asked him not to follow or engage, but he did anyway. That right there- had cops been present at that moment- could have gotten him arrested for failure to obey a lawful command and interference with the duties of an officer of the law. But no witnesses, no charges.

So it isn't entirely true to say Zim wasn't breaking the law. It is more accurate to say that he didn't get charged with the small stuff because there wouldn't be sufficient evidence to convict.

 

[Janx]

That's interesting. Wasn't Texas where the old white guy shot two people who were burglarizing his neighbor's home after he called 911 and the dispatcher told him to stay inside?

yup. the Joe Horn case.

From CHL class, there's basically degrees of separation from you to why you pull your gun out. Each degree raises your legal risk (as in you will have a harder time avoiding jail if your defense fails):
I might get the order a little wrong, it's been a year...

1 defense of your self from harm.
2 defense of your immediate property from theft/damage (aka wallet)
3 defense of your family from harm (wife, kids)
4 defense of your home/property from theft/damage (ex car, TV, etc)
5 defense of another person from harm (neighbor, that lady screaming for help over there)
6 defense of another person's property from theft/damage

Joe Horn was at 6, trying to stop 2 dudes from taking some stuff out of his neighbor's window.

Technically legit, but as it required advancing toward trouble (because Joe was at his house, they were over there), his lawyers had to work extra hard to frame it correctly.

The point of those degrees of separation, and advancing towards trouble is that in any self defense case, there are two sides. Yours, and the other guy who wants you to pay for what you done.

The other side is going to make you look like a vengeance crazed racist, even if you were totally justified. Quannel X showed up for this case and argued just that in the court of public opinion.

I heard that Joe Horn was cleared, but it cost him a lot of money, losing him his home (I think Danny said so in some other thread).

On the Zimmerman vs. Trayvon case, it's not always clear how I stand.

Zimmerman should have stayed in the car. Not because dispatch told him to, but because he was armed and it was a really bad idea to confront a suspect, and the cops were on the way, and nobody was in active danger. He was off the radar of those 6 degrees I listed. Thus, his legal risk was much higher.

But legally, he had a right to be there in that neighborhood. He had a right to talk to anybody he wanted. So he didn't break any law up to that point.

It's likely he initiated contact. Nobody knows what he said or how he handled it.

It's not implausible that Trayvon's response didn't make things better. Trayvon said some racist stuff on the phone, allegedly. Black vs. hispanic is a problem in schools. Where Zimmerman was accused of being racist, is that really likely in an adult of MIXED race compared to a black teen in high school? If Trayvon had been an Urkel with clean record, I'd buy that he was squeaky clean in that fight. A football player, with some issues at school, likely added some fuel to that situation. This is likely how Zimmerman's lawyers presented it, and it is not implausible.

Result is, mystery verbal contact, Trayvon getting some good hits in, gun shot. Tragedy.

I don't think either one made good choices that night.
Making bad choices can get you killed. The other guy could have a gun, so if you fight him, he could shoot you. Turns out this was true.
Zimmerman was the adult (with a gun), he had a greater duty to exercise caution because of that

Ultimately, like all self defense cases, it came down to a jury. Do I trust in the judicial system or not? If not, then like an election where my guy loses, I have to accept that I don't get my way every time.

At this point, one of the sad things I see from that case, is Zimmerman keeps getting into trouble. I think many folks see this as confirmation that he was a bad guy the whole time. But I think another possibility is that he's got some kind of PTSD/survivor's guilt thing going on. Meaning that the whole deal could have gone down like zimmerman said, and he's become unstable from it, causing him to act badly now.

There are many ways this stuff isn't always what it looks like.

 

[Janx]

Not quite. Rights at never absolute, and carry with them corresponding duties...and consequences when those limits are not respected.

Zim had a right to be in the car or exit it. However, that right was somewhat curtailed by a legitimate & lawful request from a law-enforcement representative to not follow TM.

They asked him not to follow or engage, but he did anyway. That right there- had cops been present at that moment- could have gotten him arrested for failure to obey a lawful command and interference with the duties of an officer of the law. But no witnesses, no charges.

So it isn't entirely true to say Zim wasn't breaking the law. It is more accurate to say that he didn't get charged with the small stuff because there wouldn't be sufficient evidence to convict.

Part of that was the directive was from a 911 dispatcher. They did not have 'lawful authority" to issue him an order, and thus "stay in the car" wasn't binding.

A loophole, though really it was Zimmerman's chance for simple advice and best practice to be heard and listened to.

he failed his wisdom check. In hindsight, should have stayed in the car.

I'm thinking that Zimmerman's defense painted everything up to the confrontation as "not a good idea, but not illegal or bad"

They then must have framed the first contact as going south quickly and aggressively by Trayvon. Given that evidence was that Trayvon was on top in MMA style beating Zimmerman up, that's quite possible.

Since all we'd get from either side was he said/she said stuff, they likely relied on the witness who saw Trayvon on top and the physical injuries (I don't know what trayvon got, besides shot, but zimmerman took some hits).

Sadly, both could have said, "hey, let's call the cops and they'll settle who's supposed to be here and who's not supposed to be stopping me" and been done with it.

When that whole case come up, there were far worse atrocities under the SYG law in Florida that started getting new press. One where a kid in an alley gets pulled up on by a security team and shot. No weapons, no crime, no talking, just bullets.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

yup. the Joe Horn case.

From CHL class, there's basically degrees of separation from you to why you pull your gun out. Each degree raises your legal risk (as in you will have a harder time avoiding jail if your defense fails):
I might get the order a little wrong, it's been a year...

1 defense of your self from harm.
2 defense of your immediate property from theft/damage (aka wallet)
3 defense of your family from harm (wife, kids)
4 defense of your home/property from theft/damage (ex car, TV, etc)
5 defense of another person from harm (neighbor, that lady screaming for help over there)
6 defense of another person's property from theft/damage

Joe Horn was at 6, trying to stop 2 dudes from taking some stuff out of his neighbor's window.

Technically legit, but as it required advancing toward trouble (because Joe was at his house, they were over there), his lawyers had to work extra hard to frame it correctly.

The point of those degrees of separation, and advancing towards trouble is that in any self defense case, there are two sides. Yours, and the other guy who wants you to pay for what you done.

The other side is going to make you look like a vengeance crazed racist, even if you were totally justified. Quannel X showed up for this case and argued just that in the court of public opinion.

I heard that Joe Horn was cleared, but it cost him a lot of money, losing him his home .

According to the wiki page, he was cleared by a grand jury, so he didn't even have to go to trial. If he did lose his house, it doesn't seem like a bad trade-off. Kill two people, pay some money and walk away? Not bad... not bad at all.

 

[Ryujin]

That's interesting. Wasn't Texas where the old white guy shot two people who were burglarizing his neighbor's home after he called 911 and the dispatcher told him to stay inside?

It's also where the old white guy shot the exchange student who was trying to find a Hallowe'en party and turned up at the wrong address.

 

[Joker]

Someone sawRashomon. Or should.

[video=youtube;3YLil2iBIcc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YLil2iBIcc[/video]

I have. Akira has a special place on my shelf.