Story of .25acp (and our Judicial System)

Chaz88 wrote:

Can not belive they even considerd charging him on that one.
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I agree--I live in a 'Castle Doctrine' State so that should render any potential prosecution unlikely.

-Cheers
 
I agree--I live in a 'Castle Doctrine' State so that should render any potential prosecution unlikely.
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"Castle Doctrine" laws generally only protect you at home, not in the workplace. In cases where they apply in the workplace, they often only protect the business owner and people legally authorized to act on the owner's behalf, i.e. corporate officers- NOT necessarily employees.

Always check your local laws before assuming you are "protected" by the Castle Doctrine.

PT-92: I am not trying to single you out if you already know this; I am posting this for the benefit of subsequent readers.
 
I'm in MO. and my interpretation is that it does protect 'personal property' which includes your auto, business (owner and not where you work) as well as, of course, residence).

But your point is indeed a good one.

-Cheers
 
Can not belive they even considerd charging him on that one
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No kidding, last I checked a sword has been a lethal and deadly weapon for a heck of lot longer than pistols have been around.

This may end up in L&CR, but had this happened on the street, would they even have considered charging him?
 
The story is an object lesson in keeping your handgun on you. It is an incident where having a gun laying within arms reach was not good enough.
 
Have had two officer's killed with swords in the last 10 years. NOBODY has to tell us they are deadly weapons and we react as such.
 
The Florida Castle Doctrine laws (no retreat) protect you anywhere, even in the street.
In Florida, you are not required to retreat from and are permitted to use deadly force to prevent death or grievous bodily injury to yourself or another anywhere.
We have the very influential retirement community in Florida to thank for this.
 
In Florida, you are not required to retreat from and are permitted to use deadly force to prevent death or grievous bodily injury to yourself or another anywhere.
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True, but the post the OP cited was dated 2003, Florida Castle doctrine did not pass until 2005.
 
I actually corresponded with the pawnbroker a few weeks after the event. The text in the OP is a pretty close match for what I remember, except the digestive system comments were not discussed. At the time, he had not been told about the number of hits on the perp either, as I recall.

Interesting comment about how the bad guy dropped like a brick given that 4 out of 5 bullets entered his head through the left eye, scrambling the brains. Obviously, the guy didn't drop like a brick or he would not have been present in the line of fire for that many shots. Most people don't remain upright with 1 shot that enters the brain, even less rarely with two, and 3 is virtually unheard of, but this guy did. He lasted long enough to be shot at least 5 times of which he didn't go down until AFTER the fourth round enter the brain. Is that not a little strange? If you were the DA, would you not not be questioning how it was that a guy stabbed multiple times managed to put four shots through the left eye of the perp during battle?

As for the issue of being charged or not, things are not always as clear cut as they seem to be in an after-the-fact description by a person cleared of wrong-doing. The DA did his/her job in reviewing thoroughly a homicide case for which there were no good witnesses other than the survivor and no security footage. It would be a bit odd to have a person shot that many times through the eye and the shooting not be with a full auto weapon or the shooting not be an execution as in the case with the OK pharmacist, Ersland who executed his robber. That case went quicker, in part, because the video showed the execution. So this sort of thing does happen. If you read the original thread on the case here on TFL, people were talking about Ersland being a hero. He turned out to be a cold blooded murderer. http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=359176&highlight=ersland&page=2

So, the DA has to determine whether or not the situation of the case is as described. Was the pawnbroker really acting in self defense when he shot the other guy or was the other guy acting in self defense against the pawnbroker and lost? When the only witness is the survivor, he is the only one who gets to tell his side of the story and so it becomes a matter of a lot of investigatory and forensics work to determine if the story is valid or not.

Don't fault the DA for being thorough. We should be so lucky that other DAs would be that thorough, but sadly they are not. If they were, then maybe fewer folks would be wrongly convicted.

That was "Flimflam" from THR, right? Seemed like a decent guy.
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No "flimflam" on THR. I did find this reference...
It was a guy who posted as "flimflam' on rec.guns
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http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=162568&highlight=flimflam
 
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Thanks for the link.

The whole thread was good. Its possible that gunkid is one of the unregistered guests.

It was too bad that, after all he went through with the sword, that he died of tropical infection in Brazil a few years later...weird.
 
It's not necessarily weird. The wounds to the abdomen could very well have had ill effects on his immune system. Also, depending on the injuries he took to his digestive system... a friend died, years ago, as a result of malpractice that had occurred about thirteen years prior. Doctor had severed her renal artery and her large intestine in a botched C-section. (Same doctor died of an aneurysm the following week - go figure - they think he may have had some vessels already give prior to or during the botched surgery.)

Anyway, one of the complications that killed my friend is that the intestines can be sutured together again, but scar tissue forms around the sutured area, and eventually closes off the intestine, so that another surgery has to be performed to remove the closure. A couple years later, another surgery, to repair that new set of suture scarring... Eventually, one starts running out of intestine.

Don't know that this happened to the victim here; just saying that surviving the initial encounter is no guarantee of long-term survival, and that abdomenal wounds can be very nasty things.
 
DNS, in reading the article, the attacker didn't die until later, in the hospital, so obviously none of the .25 rounds that entered his head turned off the CNS, or he'd have been dead on the spot.

So, he may not have instantly crumpled.
 
No, people survive CNS shots with some regularly. He would not have had to have died on the spot just because he had ballistic CNS damage. The CNS system can be turned off via shock or initial damage without the wound being fatal. He could be brain dead without being biologically dead. That is a very real thing that happens with various CNS injuries including gunshots.

http://neurosurgery.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=134
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2005-11-01/news/18314366_1_young-guns-mott-haven-weapons-charge
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2263394/

So you can be severely CNS damaged and in a coma or even brain dead and still be biologically alive, taken to the hospital and given treatment and so not being "dead on the spot" due to the trauma.

How many people survive multiple shots to the head that penentrate through from the eye, exit, and don't suffer CNS damage resulting in incapacitation? It could happen. I don't doubt that at all. The medical world is full of bizzare occurrences including all sorts of large foreign objects that penetrate the brain and do CNS damage without killing the victim, but the odds are against it happening with multiple penetrating GSWs.
 
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