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Juries will render verdicts that defy reason at times. We'll see what happens here. I certainly think the man went beyond justifiable self-defense into the realm of murder, but I'm not sitting in the jury box hearing all the evidence.
I was visiting family in the Ozarks some years back, a rural area near some mid-sized towns. One elderly man had been in a series of incidents with some local youths who had vandalized his mailbox time and again, requiring multiple replacements, calls to police, etc., etc., which had accomplished only one thing, a new mailbox was available to the youths on a recurring basis.
One night the man came outside to the sounds of the youths destroying his mailbox, yelling insults down the driveway, and such things. He got a hunting rifle, and fired one shot down the driveway into the dark to scare them off. The bullet struck the car, penetrated to the interior, and one kid was dead in short order.
The jury found him not guilty of any charge. A juror said for the papers, I'm paraphrasing, 'It's too bad someone had to die that night, but they were begging for something to happen and it did. Don't mess around with folks, they don't like it.'
I don't think we'll see that happen in this case, but it's not improbable.
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