It was interesting to learn both "victims" were illegal immigrants as well, not that they really changes anything. Thats more to do with another problem entirely.

Anyways I think there are two arguments and some of us are debating the opposite arguments. What I mean is that there is a moral and a legal debate to be had here.

Morally Speaking:

As I cited in my first post I don't think there is a shred of ambiguity here on the question of whether he should have acted. Morally I believe any person is justified (if not compelled) in defending his friends, family, and neighbors. Each person should decide for themselves if they have the courage and capability to do so effectively, and if they do choose to act they are certainly not unbound from moral responsibility either, that point should be made clear up front.

Which is why the real question to me is whether he should have aimed for non-lethals. The problem here is that its never really that clear cut, because when you've already decided to shoot you're mostly trying to hit the guy and center mass is the best place to do that. Whats more, accuracy with a shotgun depends largely on the ammo used, was it slugs or shot? Were they running for fear or for cover? Did they have guns? What kind of guns? Did they pull out the guns if they had them? Did he even know they had guns? Were they running to a vehicle where a weapon may have been stored? The answer to these questions and a lot more like them are pretty important to me for determining whether he should have aimed non-lethal or not.

Just curious, has anyone in this thread ever had their home burglarized? Because I can tell similar to what rape victims report it really truly is a violation that is never fully healed. You rely on your home as a safe place to sleep and live and once that illusion is shattered it doesn't mend. Rape is certainly far more personal, but they both have that violation factor in common. This isn't just theft, and it isn't just belongings that are taken away, don't assume that it is.

Legally Speaking:

Based only on what we know from this news report the guy didn't know his neighbors and defended their house without prior authorization or request, I'm pretty sure about that much despite what he says. Under that scenario he is afforded no protection from the Castle Law but he may still have a case of self defense. Either way if they let him off based on the castle law it was legally incorrect.

But there is still self defense, and the thing is that as far as I know there is no law against confronting a burglar, even when a 911 operator is advising you not to (if it was an actual cop it would be different). And in that confrontation there are a number of ways it could play out that he would be justified in killing them...again, without the details we don't know if thats the case or not, and we don't even know how long the pauses were in the phone log Rubang posted. It looks horrible when you read them one right after the other but if he goes out yells for them to stop and there is a long 40 second pause it tells a different story...its easy to get an entirely different conclusion from a transcript versus a recording because all of that nuance is lost in a transcript.

I keep thinking of the commercial where the cat knocks the spaghetti sauce off the stove spilling it everywhere while the guy is chopping up veggies, he bends down with the knife in hand to pick up the cat and his girlfriend walks in seeing him holding the cat by the scruff in one hand, a knife in the other hand, and a red splotch on the floor below. People like to run with their first impressions, its natural, my first impression on hearing a case like this is to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who wasn't committing a felony at the outset of the story...but hey thats just me.

They were shot in the back.  This means they couldn't see him.  They weren't running backwards at him and shooting behind their backs.

You can't murder people based on maybes and fear.

I don't see why you'd fear somebody when their back is turned either.

This man wasn't afraid.  He was psychotic and wanted to kill them.  He told the cops this several times on the phone.

He basically said "It's legal to kill them so I'm gonna go do it."  Which means this law is not only bullshit and allowing murders, but encouraging psychos to do so 'cuz they know they'll get away with it.

You are making several assumptions to make your point to Steven. For example:

-You don't know if he knew they had guns, you assumed he didn't know but he very well may have seen them holding them when breaking in initially. You can't hold a gun and a TV at the same time after all.

-You don't know if they were running for cover, for a weapon, or for their lives, you assume they were running for their lives.

In any case, the castle law is perfectly fine, the application of it here may have been dubious but that doesn't mean the law is flawed. It means the grand jury failed in its legal duties.

This guy sounds look a nutjob, maybe some time in jail would have served him good. You crazy Texans, gotta love it.

Sqrl,

I'm assuming they weren't armed, because the article constantly refers to it as "burglary" and not "armed burglary" or "armed robbery" and never mentions any weapons. I think the killer or the cops or anybody interviewed in that 3 page article would have definitely mentioned a weapon if there was one, because that would completely get us off this murderer's case.

Legally speaking, not in Texas.

As far as whether it should be legal or not, well that is up for the decision of the inhabitants of those cournties/states.

Every country has laws that can be considered ridiculous by some of it's inhabitants.

New Zealand has some issues with divorce and custody if I remember correctly, as well as some pretty strict drug imprisonments.  What about the "communization" of NZ's rails? Nobody's upset about that?

Again, criminals should know the risks involved when they go on a job.

These men weren't standing still. This wasn't an execution.

The fact that they were shot in the back looks nice as an anti-killing talking point, but these men started the felony, the civilian simply ended it.

Now, know this, if you are a prisoner, and you run away, the police can shoot you, in the back of the head if they do it while running.

These men weren't standing still, they bolted.

In the heat of the real moment, you can't aim when you shoot. This isn't the movies, you can't slow down time. You have a split second to react. If this was manslaughter(you can't "murder" criminals during the act of a felony), then shooting at them at all would be attempted manslaughter. You can't have it both ways.

The bad guys were about to get away. A civilian with a gun intervened with their escape. They darted. Due to this dart, he felt for a moment that his life was in danger. He shot them. Where the actual entry wounds are wouldn't make a difference in this case.

Is it morally right? Only the guy can say if he was really scared for his life. If he was, he did the right thing. If he wasn't, he probably just felt they deserved to die. We can't know what was in his head. However, with the way it went down, I can see it.

First thing I learned about guns. You never point a gun at anyone unless you're going to shoot them.

Here is my ideology. If people couldn't get shot robbing homes, then more people would do it.

If we go around putting people in jail for shooting them, then we screw up the whole risk/reward system. Not to say that these people died for an ideology, but if their deaths serve to keep other people from robbing homes, at least something good came out of it. Robbing homes is bad. You might get shot and killed during it, by the resident or the police, because the usual people who rob homes would also probably murder or rape the inhabitants if they were home.

Anyway, it cost these guys their lives. Do I care? No, lol. Call me evil. They're felons who belong in prison, in another country. I have a lot of other innocent people to mourn over in this world. What I do care about is making sure the guy who shot the criminals who were desperate, trying to escape, and possibly a danger to his life, is free.

He didn't cause this. They did.

Sure, he shouldn't have got involved, but you guys are trying to send the guy up for murder, just for being stupid, and making a mistake. Criminally negligant manslaughter possibly, but honestly, he's got my vote to go scott free, cause I don't think he did anything wrong.

Zen,

Belonging in prison and deserving to die are completely different things. However guilty these people were does not justify their murder. I could walk down this street right now and shoot some gang members and make the world a better place, but I would still go to jail for murder. Those fuckers scare the shit out of me, but that doesn't make it okay to kill them. This isn't Taxi Driver here. If this guy was afraid, that doesn't make it okay for him to shoot people.

The actual law in question here doesn't even cover the neighbor's house. The guy didn't even know the neighbors. He broke the law, and they bent the rules for him. He should be charged with manslaughter and the people who found him innocent should lose their jobs.

Yes, people risk death when they break into somebody's house. But nobody should ever be shot in the back when they're running away.

BTW, any crime that's not premeditated, and doesn't have the words driving under the influence, are very hard to prosecute.

Usually, because it's an accident that prosecutors are trying to exploit to up their conviction rate.

In a case like this, there is no motive, the defendant is legally sane, and according to his recount and the physical evidence, everything he did in the case was within plausable legal limits, if skirting the edge of them, admittedly.

Honestly, the law isn't set up to prosecute vigilanties. Courts never assume they really exist. I mean, someone who would take the law into his own hands to protect his fellow citizens? Surely you jest.

Fortunately for vigilanties, however, the law doesn't account for the motive of "These people deserve to die because they are dangerous felons causing harm on my friend or neighbor."

If he had a motive that would be it. I'd just be hard to argue in court, and trust me when I tell you, the only places in the country your gonna get a conviction on a case like this is California or New York.

Texas and the rest of the south would probably hold a parade for this guy. Those states are a lot more pro-death.


Has anyone ever seen the show "I Survived" which often recounts tales from the actual survivors of horrible acts by criminals or nature? I've often watch wishing I could have been there when a perpetrator was raping an old woman or beating her, or cutting her throat, or stabbing her with a dagger.

Why, you might ask yourself, Zen, would you want to be there?

Easy. Because I would kill that criminal. I wouldn't simply kill them. I would mangle them with my bare hands, and murder them with their own tool of murder, no matter how much they screamed or begged for their life.

...and you know what? No jury in the country would convict me of their murder. Even if it was on videotape. Because sometimes, people do things so vile, and wreched, and evil, that they deserve to have those same sins visited upon them.

Of course, that has nothing to do with this case, but if you think I'm the only man in america who would still stand up to protect the weak and innocent from the vile and wicked, and not set down afterwards and have a big long sulk about how sad it is they got killed, then you're kidding yourself.


Even in the Internet age, the abuse of the innocent is still the worst crime we can commit.

I just wanted to point out tha this is false legally speaking. If you fear for your life, even if you act based on incomplete information, as long as your fears are justifiable after the fact you will go free. You can debate the morals of that but that is how the system works, and it works because there is a high standard for justification.

So a person who is in the heat of an intense situation isn't allowed to act on "fears and maybes" to potentially defend his life but its perfectly ok for you to assume he is a murderer based on an assumption? Not following that logic...at all....especially since he is from Texas =P