Hypothetically, the Tony Soprano comes to your house with a pair of his buddies. (I guess Pauly and one of those other goons). You know he’s up to no good, and you can see from the window that all 3 have drawn weapons. Maybe you owe him a few ziti from that last poker game and have yet to pay him back.
Fortunately, you’re ready for this situation and you pick up your black modern sporting rifle with a 30 round mag that you keep stashed under the couch. You take the prone position and wait until you hear Pauly picking the lock. You open fire at chest height through the door and fire til the mag’s dry. Also you call 911 and report gangsters are breaking in. Maybe the operator says you need to wait til the lock is picked on the 911 tape.
So the question is : when it comes to the trial for murder of these 3 upstanding strip club owners, could your defense team subpoena the FBI for the files on these mafia members?
Could the fact that all 3 were suspected members of the mafia be used as part of your defense? Or would the judge be able to rule that this was too prejudicial against the victims, just like if you found pictures on their phone of them putting plastic tarps in their car trunks and posing with their weapons?
IANAL, However, I did live in a “rough” neighborhood for awhile. The trial is the least of your problems. I would not take any bets that you will live long enough to attend your trial. You have set a bad example. This will need to be addressed very soon! Good luck.
Isn’t the “too prejudicial” concern generally with regard to something that unfavorably impacts the defense? I thought impugning anyone else in the cause of maintaining reasonable doubt was fair game, but I got most of my legal training from watching Law & Order.
Yes, you may. However, in doing so, you open the door to evidence being entered about your own character for peacefulness or violence.
ETA: But the evidence must still be relevant. The fact that they are mafia members being investigated by the FBI? Relevant. Strip club owners? Probably not.
The question isn’t are they bad or dangerous, but your reasonable belief. What you knew, or thought you knew, about them would generally be admissible.
Once you assert self defense everything that leads to you to think they may do you harm is admissible, which means what you believe about their character, their past conduct and their intent while coming to your door, is entirely relevant. There is a state of mind exception to the hearsay rule, which means that even what you may have heard second hand, is admissible as long as it is admitted to prove what you were thinking was reasonable, rather than just to impeach their character. If you did not know Paulie’s past criminal record, it would not be admissible. But what you were told about Paulie’s criminal background, his behavior, or what you have independent knowledge of or saw or heard, is admissible. It explains why you got out that gun out of fear and waited, when you saw Paulie when otherwise you would not for a vacuum cleaner salesman.
Disagree. You make the claim of self-defense because Paulie was invading your home with a gun. That is a prima facie case of self-defense. You can bolster that claim by pointing out that Paulie had invaded nine other homes in the past attempting to kill the home owner. You didn’t know that, but it helps your case to prove that Paulie is a violent bastard.
But, as I said, if you want to open up the door to Paulie’s past, then it is fair game for the prosecution to open up your own past.
Self defense does not depend on what Paulie was likely to do, but on what you as the suspect on trial,can reasonably believe him likely to do. Now if the DA asserts that it was unlikely that you saw Paulie with that gun as you claim, because he does not have or own or use guns, or that it is unlikely that he was engaging in behavior you described as as threatening, then Paulie’s past conduct in past episodes might be admissible to impeach those statements. But his intent is not relevant, his behavior that night is to prove what you claim you saw him do that led you to feel threatened.
If you allow them into the house, then there won’t be a trial. Armed men entering your home wouldn’t require you to provide much in the way evidence as they were:
A) Armed
B) Not invited
C) Possible predicate felons (assuming that you know them)
D) Planning on harming you or your loved ones.
Let them get inside and then blast ‘em.
There won’t be a trial.
However, you’d need to leave town ASAP as their friends and associates will take a dim view of your killing their comrades. Worrying about a trial when members of organized crime are after you for revenge seems to be misplaced concern.
If the person knows enough, they could qualify for Federal or state witness protection. That (especially Federal) would improve their lifespan significantly.
I think btthegreat has it: if you didn’t know Tony was a gangster, you can’t really claim you were defending yourself against a known criminal when you shot him. So the FBI files wouldn’t really be directly relevant, unless you can also show that you already knew most of the information in them.
Now, if the files can be used to show that you knew Tony had ill intent, for instance “Wiretap recorded Tony Soprano calling Habeed and telling him to make out a will and kiss his family goodbye”, that would be pretty relevant I imagine. Or even just something that shows you know Tony was capable of extreme things(wiretap of Tony telling you how many people he’s killed or something), would be useful to support a self-defense defense.
Though, as mentioned, that could cut both ways; the prosecution will be able to show that you’re an associate of gangsters and maybe not so trustworthy yourself. (In which case, they’d probably be way ahead of you in getting that evidence in; they’re better off making it about an intra-gang shootout than an innocent person getting their home invaded)
Finally, I wonder to what degree the FBI would be required to respond to a subpeona?
My original basis for this was I watched a particular episode of the sopranos where a jewish kid who owns part of a motel Tony wants to buy is getting tortured. And I asked myself “those goons are in the kid’s house. Why doesn’t the kid just greet them with a hail of bullets when they show up instead of getting himself tortured? On a similar note, when mafia members come to extort money, why don’t the shop keepers gun them down?”
And, oddly enough, I understand that the mafia is most prevalent in states and cities where private gun ownership is heavily restricted and self defense shootings are mostly illegal.
There’s a similar story in Mexico, where somehow 30,000+ people, many of them innocent, have been killed by gunfire fighting in a country where firearms are illegal.
There’s other statistical evidence indicating that in nations with functioning, honest police forces, private gun ownership results in more total deaths. However, if most people are armed, it may prevent organized crime from taking root.
Maybe because the shopkeeper has a realistic handle on what would happen if one single shopkeeper (who maybe at best target shoots on occasion) got into a gun battle with many professional thugs (and what would happen later, even if the shopkeeper ‘won’)? Not to mention that there’s a big difference between how prosecutors are going to view shooting Tony and friends kicking in your door with guns drawn and how they’ll view opening fire on some possibly unarmed low-level bagman who happens to walk into your store.
In the first case, maybe you could make self-defense stick (but maybe not); in the second, there not so much.
Both agree and disagree. To make a case for self-defense one must show that he was in reasonable fear of harm. However, under the rules I cited, one can bolster his claim that he was in reasonable fear by introducing character evidence of the victim showing that he has a propensity for violence:
I was in fear for my safety because he came at me in a violent manner, and look: as support for my claim, here is his criminal record showing he is a violent guy.
But as the rule says, now the prosecution can introduce my character as evidence.
