That’s a good point. For someone in your specific circumstance, and probably for women generally, there’s little risk in reporting it. I was not thinking from a woman’s perspective.
This is the basic flaw in the OP - if you haven’t committed a crime, your best course of action to keep yourself out of trouble probably involves not committing crimes.
On a related note, I wonder if a lawyer or legal expert can chime in on the assumption postulated in this thread that even if no crime was committed in killing the guy, it would be a crime in tampering with the evidence.
Gray Ghost posted some text of Texas law in post #7, and I’m not sure if it fits the bill, since there is no investigation pending or in progress at the time of the body disposal. And to the extent that you can argue self-defense (which will admittedly be compromised by your cover-up) you could argue in parallel that a reasonable person would not assume a crime was committed (I’m not sure you even need to go that far, if the reasonable person standard means a “reasonable person who knows what you know”, in which case your self-defense argument clearly covers both bases).
In Japan, improper disposal of a body is crime in and of itself. If your Aunt Ellie kicks the bucket from natural causes and you decide to save a few bucks by tossing her into a dumpster, then you have committed a crime.
I think the worries in the OP are generally not warranted. In stories of people getting prosecuted unjustly for these sort of things, it usually winds up that there is more to the story. The case of the woman who claimed the shot a warning shot in the ceiling, but it turns out that the bullet hole was at the head level of her husband.
The fatal flaw (poor pun intended) in the OP’s plan is that if something goes wrong in disposing of the body, you would be SOL. Claims for self defense are going to be looked at much more suspiciously. And I think for good cause. Most people would not dispose the body themselves.
Also, whether the shooter is required to do anything. Is just leaving the body where it lays and not reporting it a (legal) option?
I suppose you did in passing, in some trivial sense. :rolleyes:
Oh, c’mon. If one person shoots and kills another, there will be an investigation. You don’t need to watch crime shows on TV to know that.
It’s not one available in the scenario of the OP question: The citizen has killed a home intruder. Can’t just leave a corpse to moulder in the hallway.
I’m not a lawyer, not that you should be relying on this web board for legal advice.
For Texas, knowing that an offense has been committed, and then altering the evidence, also counts as a violation of the statute, as subsection (D)(1) states. You don’t need to know of a pending investigation, but you do need to know that an offense was committed. Maybe you could argue that you didn’t think you had committed an offense?
Anyway, have a look at Hall v. State, 283 S.W. 3d. 137 (Tex. App.—Austin, 2009, pet ref’d). This was the first appeal of Laura Ashley Hall, who was convicted of tampering with evidence related to the murder of Jennifer Cave—her corpse—by Colton Pitonyak in Austin in 2005. The opinion goes into the grisly details. Basically, Pitonyak shot Cave, and Hall helped chop up the body. Then they ran off to Mexico the next day. Her first sentence was overturned, but not the conviction, on the grounds that her sentencing hearing was faulty. When she was resentenced, the second jury ended up giving her more jail time than the first had. Oops.
Again, this is a poor idea, unless you’re doing something else (grow lab, slavery ring, etc…) that you’d rather not have the cops investigating.
As to the worries about ordinary people not having to worry about an overzealous state’s attorney prosecuting unjustly, consider the case of Harold Fish. I’m sure other people can come up with additional cases. It happens, though the teaching moment from the Fish case may be that it’s a bad idea to kill anyone popular. I think the D.A. was going to put Fish through the wringer whether Fish used a 10mm, an elephant gun, or a slingshot.
You are taking a big chance whenever you get into an armed confrontation. It may be however, that all of your other choices are worse. For the vast majority of people though, IMHO, your chances of a reasonable outcome are better if you don’t exacerbate things by destroying evidence.
[Quote=Gray Ghost]
You are taking a big chance whenever you get into an armed confrontation. It may be however, that all of your other choices are worse. For the vast majority of people though, IMHO, your chances of a reasonable outcome are better if you don’t exacerbate things by destroying evidence.
[/quote]
Exactly. Why make things worse. Every step that you take to make it so the incident cannot be investigated or resolved will itself be seen as indicative that you are NOT acting innocently. “If it was clean self defense, why were you destroying evidence?”
From the earlier quoted statute:
(emphasis added)
“A reasonable person”, looking upon someone dead in your property with evidence of said death having come from violent assault, would believe an offense has been committed.
IMO, on this one, the societal benefit not only trumps the individual, but IS what is better (as opposed to easier) for the individual.
What if you are getting mugged out in the street and you somehow managed to kill the guy? What will be the scenario?
I addressed this earlier, though perhaps a bit too briefly.
If I had to guess I would think that the “reasonable person” test is a test of what a reasonable person would think who knows what you know about the situation. In which case it’s irrelevant to this case. You are postulating that it’s a test of what a “reasonable person” would think if they had incomplete knowledge - they saw the dead body but knew nothing else of the situation. I don’t know why that would be the test, and it’s hard to imagine the intent of the law was to require witnesses to imagine to themselves all sorts of scenarios where another onlooker who might be missing this or that crucial information might make a mistake.
But even if you’re right, it’s not completely clear that a reasonable person finding a dead body in someone’s house and knowing nothing else would “believe that a crime had been committed”. It might be one possibility, but the cited law doesn’t say “would believe that a crime might have been committed”.
A quick google search, brings up a few hits (no pun intended) on disposing of bodies.
Also, as god and the Dope are my witnesses, gooling “is it illegal to dispose of a body” was done on my laptop specifically for this post.
IANAL, but it seems likely that moving the body would be tampering with evidence for the illegal disposal of the body, if nothing else.
OP, I’m not seeing the fear of being investigated. There’s a dead body in your parlor, you have gunpowder residue on your hands, and your pistol has at least one discharged shell casing in it (wheelgun) or on your floor. (Or your cutlass has blood on it; however you dispatched the intruder doesn’t matter.) Those facts are not in doubt. But also not in doubt is the broken window/hasp/door on your house. Or the dirty boot scrapes on the window you inadvertently left open. Indisputable too is your non-relationship to the deceased – he isn’t your brother-in-law, isn’t the neighbor you had words with last week, isn’t the guy you had drinks with in the bar last Thursday, he is a total stranger. And he probably has a criminal record. He also may have on his person a weapon, or burglary tools, or other evidence suggesting he isn’t an invited guest.
You call the police, say “There was an intruder in my house. I feared for my life, so I stopped him. I’m a bit upset right now, but I’ll give full cooperation and a statement as soon as I’ve consulted an attorney.” The initial investigation will reveal the facts outlined above. Your eventual statement, should your attorney advise making one, will comport with the facts at hand. So unless you really did shoot your brother-in-law, or your drunken neighbor who mistook your door for his, (or you already have some serious unresolved issues with the local constabulary from previous encounters), the investigation will be brief and you will never be charged.
There is frequently considerable uncertainty as to whether there was or was not a forced entry, and it could have been a “drug deal gone bad”.
But more to the point, I’m pretty sure the “Castle Doctrine” doesn’t allow you to kill any uninvited guests to your house, and pretty much just amounts to a SYG for states which don’t have such laws outside the house. If the shooting wasn’t necessary based on a reasonable person’s fear of imminent serious bodily harm or death then the Castle Docrine won’t help you even if the guy has a criminal record and whatever else you mention.
[This is besides for issues of legal costs, civil liability and possible revenge that I’ve also raised.]
“Drug deal gone bad” presupposes some drugs for the cops to find. Is this a problem at your house? Are there several other people involved/present at the shooting? Do you often entertain groups of total strangers then shoot one of them dead?
Otherwise the default assumption for “guy found shot to death in your house at 3 AM” where you claim fear of imminent bodily harm and the corpse is a total stranger to you will be “justifiable homicide”. Unless there are some clear reasons for suspecting something nefarious in the first place, the very fact that you’re the homeowner and the other person is (apparently at least) a stranger makes your position quite solid.
If the shooting wasn’t really necessary, then you deserve prosecution. But that applies only in cases where the intruder is actually a 4 foot 6 inch ballerina in tutu lost from her troupe, or an apologetic blundering tourist who you shot as he was trying to run back out your door, or some other silly non-criminal scenario we might make up. “Some guy” carrying a gunny sack suitable for gathering your jewelry, and with a pry-bar stuck in his jeans, who you shot in the dim light of your clock radio as he entered your bedroom doesn’t fit the profile of an unnecessary (and therefore illegal) shooting. So while you will surely need to consult with a lawyer, and that won’t be free, your engagement should be brief and relatively inexpensive – at least not to the tune of bankruptcy by retainer 
.
As for civil liabilities, these will follow pretty closely behind the criminal liabilities. If yours is found to be a “good” shooting by the prosecutor, a civil trial is not likely to hold you responsible for monetary damages either. Unlikely a civil attorney will take the case against you, so you shouldn’t need a defense here either. And revenge – well, if that is really a concern, then you should just let the intruder have his way with you. No sense in possibly pissing off his long lost relatives, is there?
I got
Ensure that it is safe to do so, and then:
- Enter Name - Search For Free. 2) Get Arrest Records Instantly!
Yeah, but we need an rmdb (real-life database), not the imdb.
And there’s this: Thomas W. Druce - Wikipedia