Quote:
MLeake
Senior Member
Join Date: November 15, 2007
Location: NW Georgia
Posts: 4,860
Some people in this thread seem to have an issue with comparing Ersland with his robbers; some of the same people seem to think that those of us who believe Ersland did in fact commit first degree murder are sympathetic to his robbers.
I think Ersland did commit Murder 1, and got what he deserved.
OTOH, I am not sympathetic to the robbers. I think they should all be up on Murder 1 charges (the 3 survivors), but I don't know if OK law makes accomplices to a crime liable for the results of their crime, as do many other states.
And, if a civil suit were to ensue, I would not decide in favor of the survivors of the decedent. He was part of an armed robbery, and I have no sympathy.
However, I would not have shot him while he lay, unconscious, on the ground. Ersland did, despite what should have been sufficient cooling-off time to realize he really should not do that.
So, I also have no sympathy for Ersland. And I'm really not sure why so many of you do.
|
Really, cooling off period? When, all I saw was a man engaged, returned and reengaged erroneously because of a false interpretation of what he thought was a purposeful movement of a severely brain injured man. If you have never seen brain injured people performing involuntary movements, you could easily mistake these reflexes as a directed movement.
Is there not room for reasonable doubt that he intended to maliciously and with malice of forethought deliberately intend to kill this boy just to kill him?Why not go with the heat of passion manslaughter which has a much better fit to the situation? There is something wrong with our current system where the jury is not allowed to consider heat of passion manslaughter but only given the other options.
Perhaps their verdict was based on ignorance of OK manslaughter laws and perhaps they were not instructed on that as an option.