A jury won’t (or at least, shouldn’t) be allowed to find someone guilty if the facts don’t support that verdict, and if they are, then the conviction should be overturned at appeal.
That doesn’t happen with a finding of not guilty, because that’s pretty much final, barring things like paying off the judge. There could conceivably be an argument that, if every juror chose to nullify, then the defendant was never in jeopardy, but no juror should admit to nullifying anyway, as it’s usually illegal.
Experience with the type of people who refuse to use warning shots, my own morality that I don’t want to kill someone, and what I know of the issue which seems to support that no warning shot was given. Basically, its because of what I would do in the situation. I would fire a warning shot and I wouldn’t shoot them unless they tried to attack me. If that makes me slightly less safe, so be it
The guy should have taken a chance that those trespassers would back off. Try the lesser of two evils first.
So you fired a warning shot? Why didn’t you shoot to kill?
I avoided a trial and solved a larger problem in the process.
A few moments earlier I could have shot to kill and probably would have been legally and morally justified (though at THAT time my risk to myself and others was much higher).
So, I traded an increased risk for a possible trial where I was less legally (but IMO still morally) justified but had a low chance of hurting or killing the perp (or others including myself) for the alternate situation where the perp most very likely would have been shot and hit and in addition an increased risk to myself and others (close quarters and there would be no warning shot). And in second case there would have most likely at least been a major trial (which usually means even when you win you still loose unless your rich as shit).
So option one:
Much less chance of trial. Innocents not at risk. More chance of being found guilty though. Less chance being convicted of more serious charge. IMO less likely to get the big stick from judge or jury due to circumstances and the “no harm, no foul, no intended evil” social dynamic even if found guilty.
Option two:
Perp gets shot with good chance of killed. High risk to myself and others. Most very likely trial (again where even if I win I loose). Lower chance of being found guilty, but if I am I am likely screwed. Plus increased risk for lower charges as well.
Now I am not going to claim pre/during said event I had the moral, legal, and risk analysis of Spock and Data during my decision making process.
I did avoid option two due to some rather prudent decision making on my part.
I could have avoided option one if perp wasn’t such a clueless dick that they didn’t realize that a pulled gun means its over and the situation that required option 2 better not ever happen again. At which point option one was invoked to prevent 2 from ever coming up again. And it didn’t.
Would it surprise you to learn that, apart from Hollywood, the “warning shot” concept is not recommend by any legitimate firearms training course or protocol?
I ask about your training and experience because, from the invocation of your idea of using a “warning shot,” you appear to have developed your ideas about firearm use from television or movies.
If you are going to fire a warning shot… like in the movies, you also need some cool dialogue or turn of phrase… like in the movies. If you can’t think of one on your own, I like Deapool’s “I wore my red shirt so you can’t see me bleed. I hope you wore your brown pants.”
If the jury were to find that the facts did not support self-defense, is that a finding of fact that an appeals court could overturn? I thought the appeals courts only dealt with the law, and the jury was the ultimate finder of fact.
This is why I said, “A jury verdict of guilty that is unsupported by the evidence is vulnerable to being set aside…”
A jury’s verdict must have some support in the record. In other words, the record must affirmatively reflect some piece of evidence that the jury could have relied upon to reach their finding of fact.
But isn’t self-defense claim almost inherently going to come down to whether or not the jury believed the shooter? What piece of evidence do they have to be able to point to to say “No, we believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was full of shit when he said he feared for his life?”
The bigger problem seems to me to be that the jury doesn’t have to point to any piece of evidence that a judge or appeals court can contest. Their verdict as far as I know includes no reasoning or evidence.
Actually your question clarified things (I think).
The accused claims self-defense. The defense presents some evidence, even minor stuff like “I thought he pointed a gun at me” and there is a black flashlight that might be mistaken for a gun at the scene, that backs up self-defense. Under the presumption of innocence, the prosecution has to show that it wasn’t self-defense. They show, instead, that the accused fired from ambush, or chased the victim out of a bar yelling “I’m going to get you!” or doing the myriad other clever things that crooks do.
That’s why the objection against SYG of “every murderer will just claim self-defense and get away with murder” doesn’t work very well - because most of the time, prosecutors can prove it wasn’t self-defense along with proving that the accused did it. Or at least can convince the accused to plead out to manslaughter or something.
Bricker will, I hope, correct me to the extent I am wrong.
Remember that the prosecution has the burden to prove an absence of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. So the record has to reflect evidence that shows the shooter was not in fear for his life.
So usually that boils down the jury’s inferences. The jury is allowed to infer, from the events in the record and using their ordinary human experience, that actions taken or words spoken imply certain feelings or intentions. The usual shorthand for this is that the jury is permitted to infer that people ordinarily intend the reasonable consequences of their actions, and their actions may be used to infer their state of mind.
In this case, for example, the jury viewed the videotaped interview the accused gave to a police detective following the shooting. They could have decided, based on that, that his demeanor and affect during the interview didn’t sound like someone who had been fearful of losing his own life.
You’re right, but I took muldoonthief’s question to be more along the lines of, “…but what if the prosecution doesn’t have directly contradictory evidence?”
I’m not sure how one can prove away such a vague notion as “I thought he pointed a gun at me”. Especially if you consider that the presence of any item that might conceivably be mistaken for a gun on the scene is confirmation of the validity of such mistaken assumption.
In the other thread, **Steophan **posited an even narrower version of this (“If there’s a gun in the vicinity of the corpse, it’s self-defence”), but even that standard is trivially easy to abuse. And if you don’t agree, Imma procure a crateful of guns to murder all of y’alls in self-defence.
It’s more that there being a gun in the vicinity of the corpse backs up, to some extent, the statement “I thought he pointed a gun at me”, and if the jury think it’s even slightly possible that the killer did, in fact, think that then they should acquit.
But the gun isn’t necessary - one can legally shoot in self defence if mistaken about the threat, if it was reasonable to make that mistake. To convict, the jury needs to believe beyond reasonable doubt either that the shooter was not in fear of imminent death or serious injury, or that said fear wasn’t reasonable.
For example, if someone were to say to me “I have a gun”, and I believed them, I would not be able to shoot them as it’s not reasonable to be in fear of imminent death or serious injury, and if that’s all the evidence I offered they would be entitled to convict.
Whilst yes, this leaves the prosecution with the difficult task of proving they were not in reasonable fear, it also means the defendant has admitted to shooting and killing, so meaning that the prosecution simply has to refer to that admission to prove those elements, rather than having to do any work to prove them. It’s for that reason I don’t find it too credible that all murderers will simply claim self defence when it wasn’t, when the other elements could be challenged if they’re prepared to lie about their actions.
So as long as the record shows that the jury knew the shooter claimed it was self-defense, that’s enough to back up the verdict that it wasn’t self defense? I’m still missing something here.
ETA: Or are you saying that because they watched a video of the interview, that’s the evidence on record that they used to convict? They can say - “Yes, we watched that video, and we all thought he was lying, because he blinked too much and kept contradicting himself, etc. etc.”
In which case it sounds like if you’re claiming self-defense, the best thing to do is not provide any evidence that it was self-defense?
And of course if you miss some piece of evidence that’s discovered, like etching solution raising the serial number when you thought it was obliterated, then your credibility is – no pun intended – shot.
But even if you don’t, what normative message is this example intended to advance? Even before SYG laws became the topic du jour, you were entitled to defend yourself with deadly force against a gun wielding assailant. If you can, without discovery, procure a gun and plant it in your victim’s hand, you have a strong claim for self-defense, and always have.