I am immune to RO and I am usually one of the resistors to rush to judgement, but it seems very clear that he was behind a locked door, there was no signs of attempted forced entry and she was shot in the face through the door. Sorry if I’m not seeing much of a defense. And in Michigan you do not have a duty to retreat but you need to show that there was a reasonable imminent threat.
The careless disregard for the lives of others the woman displayed by driving intoxicated. The OP contention was more philosophical than legalistic IMHO.
:rolleyes:
The plot thickens:
The crash occurred at 1:30AM and the shooting at 3:40AM.
I think I might be a little alarmed by someone stumbling around on my porch at 3:30 in the morning. What was she doing for the last 2 hours? Getting drunker?
She probably wandered away from the accident and passed out someplace. This isn’t new information, by the way. The article you’ve linked to is a week old.
Apparently (according to a HuffPo article), Wafer had a couple of drunk driving charges on his record from 20 years ago. Perhaps he just wanted to save McBride from becoming the type of person he knew himself to be. A mercy killing, as it were.
Didn’t he shoot her through a screen door, not a typical front door? Further, I had thought from one of the accounts that she had tried to get in both the front door and the side door of his house? Doesn’t mean that he didn’t shoot her entirely accidentally, and therefore wholly negligently, but it’s a lot easier for me to imagine a drunk being able to wrench open a typical screen door than a solid front door.
Also, for some of the call 911 crowd, I wouldn’t place a great deal of faith in Dearborn Heights’s response time. One of the articles on the case said the cops blew off the first 911 call about the wreck, only showing up after a second call, finding the wrecked car, but no driver. I don’t know how the newspaper could have come to that conclusion, but that’s what IIRC they wrote. Nothing says though that he couldn’t have buttoned up the house, and ignored her after he called 911. As long as she isn’t getting into the house, there’s nothing she’s going to do that’ll be worse than going through a shooting investigation would be.
My guess is that he opened the front door, taking a gun because I’ve read it’s supposedly a bad neighborhood, it’s o-dark thirty and he’d no idea whether she’s actually in distress or bait to get him to open the door. After calling 911, and once he opened the door and started talking to her, he stupidly covered her with the muzzle while his finger was on the trigger. She, in the nature of many people drunk off her ass, took umbrage at something or other, startled him and he jerked the trigger. Or he sneezed, who knows? An accidental shooting, that he admitted to according to the news, which to my, not-a-lawyer and not-a-Michigan-criminal-lawyer, eyes means he’s at least guilty of Michigan Penal Code (section) 750.329: Discharging firearm pointed or aimed at another person resulting in death; manslaughter; exception; “peace officer” defined: Sec. 329:
Which is manslaughter, penalty:
Murder in the second degree sounds excessive, but I haven’t read his interviews with police. He sounds guilty as hell of the Section 329 charge, helped in no small amount by his telling the cops it was an accident. Bad move. Hey, maybe he tripped carrying the shotgun as he tried to open the door? It’d take something like that for me to think he didn’t intentionally point the thing at her.
No doubt we’ll learn more, because I’m sure this case isn’t going away any time soon.
As opposed to the guy who shot a woman in the face?
He opened the front door and shot her from behind a locked screen door.
I have not read that anywhere. I have read that there were no signs of forced entry and that she was at least a little distance from him when she was shot.
The homeowner originally told police the gun went off by accident, but his lawyers are saying the shooting was self-defense. From a certain point of view they’re not mutually exclusive.
He called 911 after he shot her, not before. His lawyers have no asserted that they spoke before the shooting.
IANAL but I think the DA would have a hard time making the case that he shouldn’t have been armed - he was in his own home. More likely they’ll go with the issue of his actions while he was armed: was he reckless in how he handled the gun and did he recklessly point it at McBride?
He’s not going to say the gun went off by accident. He’s going to say he believed his life was in danger, in which case it doesn’t matter if the gun went off by accident or not.
There is no law to say that.
But so what if there was, Even if the prosecution show the written word on paper to the jury, and the judge says “He can’t say he was wreckless in self defense” iits all a bit moot as the guy gets to tell the jury HIS defense… which was is that he had a loaded and ready to fire (cocked, safety off ,etc, whatever) weapon aimed at the victim, as he is allowed to do in self defense, and he’s accidentally triggered it.
I wish I could find an official police report - I’ve read at least four different times for the shooting: 2:30am, 3:30am, 3:40am, and now I’ve seen this in two places:
Which would be 3.5 hours after the approx. 1am crash. Assuming alcohol is metabolized at a rate of 0.15 bac every hour, her bac at 1am would have had to have been over 0.27, which is well over the 0.25 limit at which SlackerInc noted ‘All mental, physical and sensory functions are severely impaired’. Yet she was making phone calls, was able to walk, and was apparently able to talk sufficiently well that none of the witnesses I’ve seen have said anything about her looking sloppy drunk. I guess we’ll find out more what she was doing in the interim 2-3 hours when they go through her phone.
I don’t get the self-defense claim - no signs of forced entry or attempted forced entry, she wasn’t shot at point-blank or close range, and he *opened his door *and shot shot her from behind a closed & locked screen door. How in the world is this even remotely close to ‘self defense’? Surely he’d be better off plea-bargaining to some sort of reckless endangerment charge?
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be subtle. What I meant was that I think for a person to hear about an unarmed woman being shot to death and feel compelled to make a posting on a message board that there was maybe a silver lining in that woman’s death, the poster would have to see the victim as inherently less valuable than what the poster sees a “standard” person. I don’t think it was overt racism, but rather the result of deeply ingrained cultural bias that sees black people as vaguely threatening and unhinged. I think the fact that she was black makes it easier for a certain type of person to write her off as already a lost cause at the age of 19 for what was unarguably incredibly stupid behavior.
But lots of 19 year olds get really, really drunk and do really, really stupid things. Often. When these 19 year olds are white adn in a frat or sorority, the whole thing gets written off, but if the person is black, then the margin of error is razor thin.
Unless you are arguing for across the board death penalty for drunk driving? If that were the case, you’d be consistent, if a bit on the extreme side of the issue.
The articles I’ve read have been consistent in saying she was shot around two hours after the crash. I’m not sure there is much to be gained in guessing the rate at which she was metabolizing alcohol earlier since it varies from person to person.
They’re nowhere near a trial right now. In theory the strongest bargaining position is that he did nothing wrong and deserves no punishment at all, so that’s where they are starting.
What I meant was that McBride’s actions may end up being somewhat relevant, becuase whether or not his actions in having the gun or pointing the gun were reckless might be informed by what he was responding to.
Everything I have read suggests that he claiming an accidental shooting and not self-defense, which obviously raise two very different standards and issues. Do you have reason to believe otherwise?
In an area where home invasion crimes are not unknown, answering the door (if you even bother to answer it) after midnight with a weapon is rather common. If the woman was incoherent or impaired (i.e., could be high on who knows what or delusional), I can easily understand fear motivating shooting through a screen door and asking questions later.
Right - very understandable. Because, oh, I don’t know - shutting & locking the door and calling 911 wouldn’t be understandable at all. No sir, shoot first and ask questions later is always SOP when a blackie is on your front porch. :rolleyes:
Here are the various scenarios that could have played out that night.
Scenario 1: Someone is on your front porch at 3-4am. You call 911 and get your gun just in case they try to break in.
Scenario 2: Someone is on your front porch at 3-4am. You go get your gun. Gun in hand, you go to the door, unlock and slightly open the front wooden door. Through the locked screen door, you see a loud belligerent possibly drunk or high female on your porch. You think she might be trying to get into the house, although she hasn’t yet tried to force entry through the screen door. You close the wooden door, lock it again and call 911.
Scenario 3: Someone is on your front porch at 3-4am. You go get your gun. Gun in hand, you go to the door, unlock and slightly open the front wooden door. Through the locked screen door, you see a loud belligerent possibly drunk or high female on your porch. You think she might be trying to get into the house, although she hasn’t yet tried to force entry through the screen door. You open the door wider, take aim with your the shotgun and shoot her in the face. Then you call 911.
I mean, come on - and how in hell do you ‘accidentally’ shoot someone in the face with a fucking shotgun? He was -aiming at her head- with a shotgun and he fired. There’s zero chance this was ‘my finger slipped’ accidental.
Have you ever been afraid for your life? Have you ever been attacked by someone delusional or high on drugs? I have and in situations like that people react before thinking. Furthermore, the man had no way of knowing if the women was alone or was part of home invasion team. For the record sending a young woman to the door to get it open is used by some robbers. I tell my nieces and nephews go to a well lite public places if they need help or call out for help from a very clear distance if a private home is the only alternative. Pounding on someone’s door in the middle of the night is dangerous.
Yes. Irrelevant unless you can explain why the home owner would be ‘afraid for his life’. There was a locked screen door between him and the scary black person on his porch, and another heavier door he could quickly re-close and lock again. If shooting someone in the face in this situation is justified and understandable to you…I am very very glad I live far far away from the paranoid, terrified little corner of the universe you reside in.
I have, yes. On the night in question, the home owner was not, unless by ‘standing on someone’s porch, no signs of attempted forced entry’ you actually mean ‘attacked’.
:smack:
It’s rather ironic that you don’t realize this argument doesn’t help your cause.
Oh, I see - you mean when the guy opened his door to take a peak at the scary black woman on his porch, he *preemptively *shot the woman in the face to scare off the rest of the Home Invasion Team?
OK, gotcha. Next time a sales woman shows up on my porch, since she might be part of an invasion team, I’m not going to just ignore the door while double-checking other doors/windows around the house. I’m not going to go get my gun just in case while calling 911. No, I ain’t doing any of that. I’m going to go *open one of the front doors *then shoot her in the face. That will show 'em!
‘Acting before thinking’ and ‘being scared because someone is on your porch’ is not, amazingly enough, a justifiable or remotely understandable reason to shoot someone in the face. What a sad, scared, pathetic little life you must lead to think otherwise.
With idiots like the home owner, apparently lacking in even the tiniest smidgin of common sense and elementary school-level intelligence…you’re right.