You make my point for me. This isn’t about punishing a criminal, or proving guilt in a court of law, this is about reacting, in the instant of the crime, to the criminal and what he is doing.
Both of those definitions are nothing at all like what Mr. Horn was doing. He wasn’t “a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily”, nor was he “a person who ignores due process of law and enacts his or her own form of justice when they deem the response of the authorities to be insufficient.” He was a man who saw a crime being committed, and when he confronted the criminals, they resisted and he shot them. That’s it. That’s all we have here. He resisted criminals with force. You continue to try and muddy the waters by calling him a “vigilante”. He doesn’t meet either of the definitions that you’ve posted for that term. That’s why I called it a straw man.
OK. There isn’t. What does the sentence a court might administer have to do with one man confronted by criminals? Seriously, what’s the connection?
Do you follow the boards closely? Looks like you’ve been here 2 years but post count is low.
Anyway. My experience of Frank’s posts is he rarely posts more than 2-3 sentences…ever.
Of course I do not track all his posts and maybe he has expounded at length in posts and I just missed it.
Anyway…seems his way near as I can tell and while I would like to see more maybe he is just a man of few words…or too busy to write more…or who knows what.
Horn was on the phone for five minutes with dispatch. He went out with his shotgun loaded fully cognizant of what he was walking into. He was not reacting in the instant of a crime.
Texas police, I am near certain (looking for a cite), could not use lethal force in this situation. It may be different in Texas but here police have stringent rules on when they are allowed to draw or use their weapons. Horn was unencumbered by such restrictions.
Horn was not trying to apprehend anyone. He was stopping them from getting away. To do that he shot them…in the back.
You missed the last part of the definition which is distinct from the first part:
“broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice”
Fits Horn to a “T”. (call cited a bit below…again but bears repeating here)
Horn was on the (can’t help myself) horn with the police. They told him clearly, numerous times, to stay in his house. They told him shooting people over this was not cool. He was not resisting criminals because they were not engaging him. Horn proactively went after criminals a house away. The criminals’ “resistance” for all the world looks like they were trying to run away (I just do not buy Horn’s insistence he was being attacked by them…both were shot in the back and the closest was 15 feet away, neither had a gun).
Horn explicitly said in the 911 call:
So, back to the definition he deemed the response of authorities to be insufficient (the bad guys were going to get away as far as he knew not knowing police were already there).
He institutes his own form of justice. Texas police would not be allowed to shoot in his situation. Burglary is not a capital offense. Beyond a tire iron there were no weapons on the bad guys. No bad guy got closer that 15 feet. Both bad guys were shot in the back (so at that point they could not have been running at Horn unless running backwards). Horn had the drop on them the whole time…bad guys were the surprised ones. Horn says, "“Get the law over here quick. I’ve now, get, one of them’s in the front yard over there, he’s down, he almost run down the street. I had no choice. They came in the front yard with me, man, I had no choice! … Get somebody over here quick, man.” So at least one was only getting away.
Rather than letting him get away he shot the guy…in the back. That sounds for all the world to me like punishment. The crime had already occurred, Horn had not stopped that.
A helluva lot. Horn was not surprised. He did not prevent the crime. He prevented the bad guys from getting away by shooting them. They committed burglary and rather than let them escape they were shot. That is punishment. If to you it is merely “stopping” the bad guys then where is the line drawn? What crime falls below the bar of meriting being shot if you run away? I really would like to hear your answer to that.
(And if you are going to say it was self defense because a guy rushed him [which seems iffy] remember the other one never rushed him and was shot in the back as well)
First of all, my completely non-PC pragmatic point of view:
If you’re breaking into peoples houses, expect to get shot assclowns. My sympathy for people committing violent felonies is near absolute zero.
If it were me:
In this day and age, you have to assume any assjockey breaking into your house will do you harm. It is not a defense of property issue, it is a “I don’t know what the fuck you intend to do and I don’t intend to find out!” I’m shooting the asssack and if he doesn’t have a weapon, I’m putting one of my kitchen knives in his hand. With Mrs. Cad and Cad Jr. in the house, I’m not going to play slap and tickle with an assburgler hoping he just wants money and not rape, pillage, and murder.
HOWEVER, That is very different than going out of your relatively safe home into the yard and unloading 00 buckshot into guys running from your neighbors house.
Should he be indited? Yes
Should he be convicted? No because he apparently did not break the law
Should Texas consider making Castle Offence in lieu of Castle Defense a crime? It should consider it
The man’s own fucking words make it absolutely clear what his intent was,
“I’m going to kill them.” not stop, not detain, not anything else “I’m going to kill them.” The third shot proves that. In other infamous words “You don’t look too bad, here’s another”
Bricker I know Texas ain’t your jurisdiction but how the hell does that parse out?
“…to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property…”
so only during the nighttime?
“…to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property…”
but not theft during the daytime?
Now, it doesn’t seem plausible that the law was written to specifically leave out theft during the daytime. So it must mean that the law only applies to the listed crimes when, and only when, these crimes are committed at night. Recognizing that the cover of darkness increases the likelihood that the “other who is fleeing” will be more difficult to find.
Since Horn shot these two men in broad daylight, I don’t get how this section of the law applies, care to try to explain how it could?
Yeah, this ALWAYS pisses me off. I’m reminded of the case of Patrick Dorismond,
Officer Vasquez didn’t know that he was shooting a (former) juvenile delinquent and Joe Horn did not know that the guys he shot were illegals with criminal histories.
The only information that is relevant is what was known by the shooter at the time of the shooting, not what we can dig up later. It’s clear, to me at least, that this isn’t done to add detail to the incident but to change the subject. It doesn’t matter if the guy you shot was altar boy or a mass murdering baby killer, the standard of evidence required to defend your actions is the same either way.
I can’t help but get the feeling that there are some folks in this thread who would cheer on a serial killer like Dexter, I mean after all, it’s not like he’s killing people who didn’t have it coming.
Strange what passes for morality these days.
CMC +fnord!
The Schofield Kid: [after killing a man for the first time] It don’t seem real… how he ain’t gonna never breathe again, ever… how he’s dead. And the other one too. All on account of pulling a trigger.
Will Munny: It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.
The Schofield Kid: Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.
Will Munny: We all got it coming, kid.
Given that the ‘force’ was lethal, and the criminals didn’t represent a threat to life or limb at the time of sentence and execution, I don’t see the difference in this case. Sorry.
“Commission of a crime” is a pretty wide field. If I see someone slug someone else (the crime of assault and battery) can I shoot 'em dead?
ETA: what Whack-a-Mole said. This fits the book definition of vigilante justice to a T.
My problem with it wasn’t the length (my post was no longer), but that, because of what he was responding to, he was calling the poster he was responding to a twisted sociopath.
Not when they’re illegal alien career criminals, they’re not. The world isn’t going to miss those guys one bit, and at least now my tax money won’t have to be spent to imprison them for however many years they got.
I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep if my neighbors had shot them dead if they were breaking into my house. Hell, I’d probably buy him a case of beer or whatever his booze of choice is. There’s a certain compact among close neighbors that says that those in the group look out for each other, and their stuff, and I’d likely hold robbers at gunpoint on my neighbors’ behalf, if not shoot them outright.
This is a classic example of “You pays your money, you takes your chances.” Those criminals pretty much abrogated any expectation of personal safety when they broke into the house.
I’m actually glad Horn did it… at least now lowlifes might think twice about stealing things that someone ELSE worked hard to earn, after paying their taxes, etc… What the fuck did the criminals do other than break the law and cost us money for deportation and law enforcement?
What are you going to do, hold them at gunpoint while you check their IDs?
My neighbors must be ignorant of this rule, or at least the part of it involving guns. I’ve had four of the same immediate neighbors for a decade now, and none of them has remotely hinted that we ought to be shooting each others’ burglars.
This, as I’ve said before, is a part that I have a great deal of trouble with: the lack of proportionality. “You’re doing something illegal, so anything bad that happens to you as a result, you have coming to you.” If our legal system were to behave that way - executing burglars - most of us (YMMV) would consider it barbaric. I don’t see how it’s less barbaric if a random citizen imposes the sentence.
Well, they didn’t try to harm anyone in the commission of their crime. You forgot that part.
Some lowlifes might think twice about stealing stuff. Others might think twice about letting any witnesses live. If you might get gunned down over a property crime, might as well shoot first if someone sees you and not take any chances, you know?
I will note that at common law, burglary was the breaking and entering, at night, of a residence, with intent to commit a crime therein. In other words, the common-law definition of burglary included “nighttime.” (And it applied only to a residence.)
Knowing that, it’s not as crazy to imagine that “in the nightime” applies only to theft.
But most states now have a statutory definition of burglary, and I don’t know what Texas’ deal is…
The fact that they are illegal aliens with prior criminal convictions, one of which had been deported back to Columbia, speaks more about our criminal justice system and border security, or lack thereof.
Is it just me, or does this strike anyone else as an episode of “King of the Hill” gone tragically wrong? The Texas setting, the Vietnamese neighbor, the redneck guy taking the law into his own hands, the racial politics…
I, personally, am ambivalent about it. I had a 10 year old bicycle stolen from my back yard a few years ago, and I felt horribly violated. Sort of like having a giant following me, de-pantsing me, and cackling loudly about how he could do it anytime that he wanted. Sure, there would be no real harm in it, but, I think if I could see the perp shot down in front of me I wouldn’t cry.
Of course, I also believe in the sanctity of human life.
OTOH, anybody that breaks into somebody’s house, in Texas of all places, should know the risks involved, and so it is on their own heads.
Somebody needs to take the DA, or whoever preferred the charges against him, to task since it isn’t against the law. This kind of crap is worse than any Patriot Act of Clinton and/or Bush in destroying civil rights.
You assume having the situation contained means that everyone is up and walking around.
My ‘armed citizen’ scenario is one that is practiced by police range masters and in simulations nationwide. What else might be included in the job description of a police officer than “confronting an armed suspect”?
I can tell you this; if I personally pulled up on this scenario, my first reaction would not be to “sit in my car and wait for backup”. It WOULD have been to exit my vehicle, go in the opposite direction (to the rear) of the scene to come up from behind in order to secure all parties from a position of advantage, ID myself verbally and control and if necessary shoot and kill Mr. Horn. If, say, Joe Horn wasn’t just out hunting criminals and was instead a murderer on a rampage, that officer could have just been shotgunned to death in his car without being able to defend himself.
