Well, some of my concerns have been answered while I was typing.
It does not matter what is reasonable to you. There is an excellent chance you are not reasonable by most standards. Nor does it matter what is reasonable to me personally. The reasonable person standard is based in common law. I did not use the word randomly and neither is it used randomly in statutes.
I’d add:
- She had gone to other houses.
- The man reportedly said he shot her by accident.
Does this mean there was no damage showing that she might have tried to break it down or pull it open, or no damage showing that the shot was fired thru the screen door?
Regards,
Shodan
You are in the wrong thread. The David Blaine thread is down the hall.
The accidental thing was what came out right after. Now his lawyer is saying it was self-defense. Can’t have it both ways so they’ll have to pick one defense before trial. Of course what the lawyer is saying to the press isn’t legally binding. And his statements to the police have not be released as far as I know so we don’t know exactly what his excuse was at the time.
Different defences can be raised at the same time, but the trick is to present facts that fit all of the defences, e.g. I raised my gun in self-defence, and then it went off accidentally because I was so nervous that I was shaking.
That is one defense. It was an accident.
The problem with the accident defense is that it leaves room for negligent homicide or some sort of manslaughter depending on how Michigan law is written.
That’s two defences. If the accident defence fails, the self-defence defence is the fallback, and vice versa.
It’s a shotgun approach, hoping that of whatever defences are mounted, at least one will work. More than one defence can be mounted at the same time, and the defences can contradict themselves, although obviously credibility can get shot to hell.
We are not talking about .12 here. At .25, you may as well drive around blindfolded. Did I call her a " maniac"? Or was it “menace”? If the former, I amend it to the latter and stand by that. Somehow I suspect you have not have my experiences; I also suspect you do not have small children, as I do. If I am wrong, then your non-reaction is something I find inexplicable.
I’m going to strongly suspect that the people you know were not as drunk as she was. I don’t think you can be that drunk and get very far without hitting something, as she did. I mean, take a look at the guidelines I posted.
And if someone were to manage to get from point A to point B with that level of blood alcohol, it would have to be a functional alcoholic with years of experience. Not a 19-year-old wasted girl.
Also, in the situation you describe, I would take away their keys or call the police, not just refuse to get into their car. IMHO “silence=complicity”.
Word. Thank you.
I don’t agree with you that ihs shooting her was reasonable under the circumstances (sic-ing a big dog on her or pepper spraying her, maybe), but the statement I quoted above is indisputable. The lawyer said on NPR that she was also banging on windows around different sides of the house. Maybe they need to teach teenagers in school that this is a good way to get yourself killed. Even if the person who kills you ends up going to prison, that doesn’t bring you back from the dead.
I have never believed that people suddenly become sweet angels once they are dead, either. Not when they are Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon, and not when it is this out-of-control 19-year-old. Best as I can tell, there were two bad people involved in this. One of them is dead, but that hardly redeems her from being a shitty person. And this is what has bothered me most: the signs with her picture on them like she is some kidnap victim or something.
I’m not arguing for anything legally speaking, as noted repeatedly upthread by me and others. But if all the drunk driving white frat boys that screech their tires around my neighborhood in this college town were to smash themselves fatally into trees while missing all other bystanders? I would not shed a tear, except maybe for the trees.
And speaking of trees, you are really barking up the wrong one here: I detest drunk, reckless* drivers and my generic, default image of them is still largely of white males.
- I add this qualifier because some people get really drunk and then drive 3 mph until they slowly collide with a hedge and pass out. Those people are pretty harmless and kind of adorable.
Cite for the fact that she was driving the car with a .25 bac?
What I was initially saying was that, without looking at the Michigan statute, it seemed to me that if he could claim a reasonable belief that she was burglarizing his home, he could rely on the presumption of a reasonable fear.
Then I looked at the statute and misread the “and” as an “or” (i.e., she needed to be a burglar OR he needed to have an honest and reasonable belief that she was a burglar). Which further supported my thought.
Except that the “and” was, in fact, an “and.” Which suggests to me that it woudl have to be shown that she was in fact a burglar (I don’t know the burden of production or proof on this), which seems hard to do.
So, I fouled that up. That being said, I stand by my initial point, which is that we’re just fabricating facts in order to support our predispositions. For example, I have no reason to believe (or disbelieve) that she was simply loudly knocking on his door at night. That whole event falls into the “?” category.
Do we know what happened at the other houses?
Not sure if posted yet in the thread, but here’s the (heavily redacted) police report, at the bottom of this The Detroit News article. From it at page 15, according to Sergeant Gurka of, presumably, the Dearborn Heights P.D., the only damage to the screen door was that the screen “was popped out with a tear in the screen” Neither the side door nor the front door had any signs of tampering, and the front entry door did not have any signs of prying or kicking. I don’t believe though that either door would show any signs if McBride was just trying to open them though, only if she tried to break them open.
The screen for the screen door was held in loosely—as has been my experience growing up in a house with a screen door entrance, they aren’t Lab or toddler proof—but there isn’t a picture of what the original door looked like.
DragonAsh, I think it’s a reasonable inference that, if she died at about 4:30 a.m. with a BAC of 0.221%, then she had a .25% BAC or greater when she actually wrecked the car at 1:30 A.M. More reasonable anyway than the idea that she wrecked her car, and only then started to heavily drink. Especially since we haven’t heard of any empties on her or in her car, and we don’t have any witnesses saying she’d been drinking after the crash.
It’s still nearly irrelevant to the decision of whether Wafer was justified in shooting her. Though not, I guess, to the OP’s original point. Still, the penalty for DUI isn’t death. Even if they’re a shitty person. Even after they kill someone while doing it.
What matters is whether Wafer satisfied the requirements for self-defense in Michigan when he pulled that trigger, and right now, it doesn’t look like he came even close. It’ll be interesting to see the details of what story he eventually claims. Even if shooting her was an accident, if he intentionally pointed the shotgun at her, he’s still getting convicted of manslaughter. Unless he can cobble together some story to try and claim self-defense. I just don’t see how though, with the facts we have.
I have to admit, I laughed out loud when I read the “shotgun approach” line from Muffin.
Err - what?
I was asking if there was a bullet hole in the screen door. That would be proof that he fired thru the door at her. If the screen was popped out and torn, then I suppose it is possible he fired thru the hole at her. If the whole screen door were intact except for a bullet hole, then it is likely he fired thru a locked, intact screen door.
I would also be interested in knowing (if possible) if the screen were popped out and torn before that night.
AIUI, the story so far is that McBride got real drunk, crashed her car, wandered around the neighborhood for a few hours looking for help and/or passed out. She eventually winds up at Wafer’s house. She bangs on the front door, gets no answer, bangs on the side door, gets no answer, goes back to the front door and bangs again. Wafer opens the front door, leaving the screen door locked, with his shotgun.
It is possible that Wafer thought “here’s some drunk, she’s trying to get into my house, BLAM!” What I am wondering is if it was “here’s some drunk, she’s trying to get into my house, HOLY SHIT SHE’S TEARING OPEN THE SCREEN BLAM!”
Too soon to tell, no doubt.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - I am guessing from the way the articles are written, and the reaction of the Usual Suspects in the black community, that Wafer is white. I very much hope to be wrong here.
Imagine my surprise.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s a very possible inference…but a bac of over .25 means she’d be almost certainly incapable of walking or speaking…yet she ended up half a mile from the crash.
There’s this:
Having been in two serious car accidents, I have no problem believing she’d be ‘confused/disorientated’ from the crash, and can imagine someone in that state being confused with being under the influence…but that doesn’t seem to be the same thing as ‘sloppy drunk with a bac of over .25’, especially when she’s clearly moving around well enough (get in and out of car, walked away etc).
But was was pointed out - it’s almost certainly totally and completely irrelevant to the case.
I’m wondering if some of this confusion is being caused by time zone stuff (like East Coast outlets using Eastern time).
The police say there were no signs of forced entry at the house. They’ve also said McBride was not shot at particularly close range (I assume that means they didn’t find gunpowder burns).
I think the police disclosed early on that he is white.
Heh - it’s not like there was there a time zone line in the half-mile between where she crashed the car and where she was shot, but yeah, the news reports have been all over the place. Crash at midnight, crash at 1am, 2am, 3am, getting shot a 1:30am, 2:30am, 3am, 4am, 4:30am…
The most recent stories I’ve seen -seem- to be reasonably consistent at putting the crash at a bit after 1am, and the shooting at a bit after 4:30am.
If she *was *in fact very very drunk - hell, she probably passed out for 3 hours at some point in someone’s yard.
Whether it was two hours or three, she was very, very drunk. And yes, my guess is that she spent the interim passed out someplace between the accident scene and Wafer’s house.