Business in this swath of Armed To The Teeth America has been
quite brisk recently.
A sixty-five year old defender of his castle was convicted of
murder in the first degree of two burglars who had broken into his home, and
was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment without parole.
The host of a bachelor party en route to the Kentucky Derby
in an RV rented from a private individual was forced to cancel the trip when a
body was found in one of the vehicle’s storage compartments. Police say the
body has been identified, but have released no details.
A 17-year old was apprehended by police at a rental storage
locker containing an array of bomb-making components. Prompted by the find, police then searched
the youth’s home and found bombs fully assembled and ready to go, along with an
impressive arsenal of lethal weapons and ammunition
A long smoldering feud between two neighbors was climaxed by
the death of one of the antagonists who took four blasts from a 12-gauge shotgun
in the hands of the other, who was cheered on by his wife.
From Joe Nocera’s Gun Report, May 8, 2014: “According to the Gun Violence
Archive, 6,258 people have been injured by gun violence in
America and 3,692 have been killed since Jan. 1, 2014.”
In the case of the Castle Defender cum 1st Degree
Murderer, defense was apparently his considered recourse. Newspaper accounts mentioned his home was
burglarized either seven or twelve times in the preceding year. During the trial, there were no published
accounts of police response to any of them.
Self-defense, legal under the State’s gun law, became the obvious
option.
The burglaries occurred Thanksgiving Day in 2012, the trial,
near the end of April, 2014. In the
intervening 18 months, the defendant was free on bond. He, ostensibly, resumed a semblance of normal
activities of retirement, cooperated fully with investigations of the shooting,
made no effort to flee or otherwise avoid trial, apparently confident his
actions met the castle defense provisions of the law. His house was not burglarized during this
period.
The dead burglars were cousins, ages 17 and 18. They were reputed to be drug addicts,
afflictions difficult to conceal in a community of 8,000 or so. Drug addicts often resort to burglary and
other crimes in order to support their addictions, but no suggestion of either
addiction or crime connected to addiction was heard at the trial, due to
pre-trial rulings of the presiding judge. In sentencing the defendant, the
judge laid great emphasis on the premeditation aspect of the law, yet in another
pre-trial ruling, he denied the defense the right to call witnesses expert in
psychiatric matters such as premeditation.
By itself, the premeditation aspect seems contradictory because having
loaded guns on the premises for defensive purposes necessarily involves a level
of premeditation, does it not?
The defendant was badly served by his lawyer. In the period between incident and trial, the
mood of the community hardened against the defendant and in favor of the
burglars. The lawyer should certainly have been aware of the climate of opinion and
petitioned for a change of venue.
Withholding any information of the burglars’ addictions and
any brushes with the law, plus denial of testimony of expert witnesses, should
have moved the defense lawyer to petition for recusal of the judge. There appear to be solid grounds for appeal.
Meanwhile, public response to the outcome of the trial has
been muted. Despite the Center for
Disease Control’s figure of 31,672, annual deaths from guns in the U.S. is
actually much higher, as the CDC readily acknowledges. That’s because only deaths from guns that are
reported to authorities make up the CDC’s total. No one knows the real total, although the
daily Gun Report and the Gun Violence Archives are earnest endeavors.
Has public opinion become so sated by gun violence that a
minimum of 86 deaths by gun violence every day of the year have become meaningless? Has our society, in which the noble
precepts enshrined in its Declaration of Independence and Constitution are so regularly
invoked that we just as regularly TiVo them? Does the motto, “In God We Trust,” still have
meaning? How long will we abdicate civil responsibility for fear of hate
mongers who distort the Second Amendment? Has anyone heard of the Four Freedoms: speech,
worship, want, fear?
Will society ever demand that guns must go?
What will be the fate of the 17-year old, who readily
admitted his plan to shoot to death his family and as many students, teachers,
and everyone else who came within his sights in a local school rampage modeled
after his admiration of the Columbine tragedy?
What can be expected in a state which allows killing burglars
a little, but prosecutes castle defenders for killing burglars a lot?
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