Drugist in OKC convicted of murder

[sundog]

Read it here.

It wasn't the initial contact with the perp that the jury did not like. It was what happened after. Gotta be careful about how you handle yourself if you carry.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Just goes to reemphasize that every shot you fire has to be justifiable. Once the immediate threat of death or serious injury goes away, so does the legal justification for you to shoot.

And Ersland didn't do himself any favors by repeatedly lying to police during the investigation either. The police were able to determine he way lying and the prosecutor used those statements to bury any sympathy the jury might have had for him.

[Double Naught Spy]

Just goes to reemphasize that every shot you fire has to be justifiable. Once the immediate threat of death or serious injury goes away, so does the legal justification for you to shoot.

To be quite honest, I don't think that Ersland ever thought what he did was self defense. Given that he lied the way he did, he knew he was executing the suspect. He just figured that nobody would know the difference if he finished off the suspect that was already down.

So much for playing the wounded warrior/veteran card.
http://jeromeersland.org/

[Brian Pfleuger]

Wow, I've never seen that site before, DNS. That's just wrong. They're soliciting donations for this guy and out right lying to do it.

Anyway, I find it fascinating that 4 people are convicted of 1st degree murder for this and the one who most directly caused it by robbing a pharmacy with a firearm will get the least punishment. That just ain't right.

[Spats McGee]

I have to agree. I couldn't get a very clear sequence of events from the article, but from what I could get, it sounded much, much more like an execution than anything else. Shooting someone 45 seconds after they go down . . . that's a lifetime in a gunfight.

Originally Posted by Bartholomew Roberts

Just goes to reemphasize that every shot you fire has to be justifiable. Once the immediate threat of death or serious injury goes away, so does the legal justification for you to shoot.

Absolutely.

[thallub]

This site has numerous links related to the Ersland case:

http://www.koco.com/news/27109600/detail.html

[Eghad]

He should have been convicted. He fired 5 shots into the suspect after he retrieved another pistol was unconscious. As said by Bart once the threat ceases so does your right to use deadly force.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Shooting someone 45 seconds after they go down . . . that's a lifetime in a gunfight.

I don't know if you saw it; but the link has video of the actual shooting from both the inside and outside cameras. The two criminals come in, with one wielding a gun and the other digging around in some type of backpack/bag. Ersland shoots the criminal with the backpack in the head and the other one flees. Ersland walks past the criminal he shot and follows the one with the gun outside the store. He then returns to the store, walks past the other criminal again. Goes to the back of the pharmacy, gets a new gun and comes back and calmly shoots the criminal on the ground 5 times.

[thallub]

I don't know if you saw it; but the link has video of the actual shooting from both the inside and outside cameras.

Link to the video:

http://www.arlingtoncardinal.com/200...rmed-robber-1/

[Technosavant]

I'm kind of surprised he was convicted of first degree murder. That usually calls for premeditated malice. Maybe the prosecutor was able to show that 45 seconds amounted to that, but I'd have thought that second degree murder or manslaughter would have been more likely.

But then, if a jury of your peers slaps that on you after trial, the prosecutor made the case.

[NJgunowner]

Sorry but I'm with the jury on this one. There is ZERO reason for the pharmacist to have come back and shot the guy again. That smacks of vigilante justice. Once the robber was down and no longer a threat that should have been the end of it.

This is the old lesson of "Don't behave like your enemy lest you become them". The guy was probably dead anyway and shooting him 5 more times after the amount of time that went by was just stupid. If he'd shot the guy 5 times first thing we wouldn't be having this conversation. That would have been chalked up to adrenalin or being scared. Returning to "finish the job" was an execution.

[Frank Ettin]

Originally Posted by flyinpolack

The Pharmacist shouldn't be charged at all, he did not Act, he merely RE-ACTED to a bad situation that he was Forced into....

Nope. When he first shot BG1, he was reacting. Once he chased BG2 for a bit, and then calmly got another gun, went over to BG1 and shot him five more time, he was acting and not reacting.

[hogdogs]

The Pharmacist shouldn't be charged at all, he did not Act, he merely RE-ACTED to a bad situation that he was Forced into.

Actually, I, in my hard line approach to criminal acts against innocent folks, feel he did go beyond self defense.

However, I feel that with the EXTREME EMOTIONAL STRESS he just endured, he should have been convicted of a lesser charge and sentencing should reflect this stress.

One of the manslaughter charges or at worst... 2nd degree murder.

You cannot just walk by a downed man, "give him your back" to produce the second firearm and go back to finish off the man you didn't fear enough to keep an eye on as you walked past to get the second gun.

Brent

[OuTcAsT]

No surprise here, we pretty much called this one back in 2009, when it first happened. Glad to see justice served.

[Eagle Eye]

Ersland would have been in a more legal position if he had initially fired multiple shots. IMHO that could have been justified in his angst and fear for his life. And if he had a deep seated desire to permanently take the BG out of circulation, that would have done the job. The other BG was long gone, but Ersland may have been looking for a vehicle ID to assist cops in apprehension.

[Tom Servo]

There's also a thread on this over in Tactics & Training. This issue overlaps the two subforums a bit.

There are some supporting Ersland as a vigilante, and some of us condemning him on the same grounds. Personally, I think murder one seems harsh, but I can't call anything past Ersland's first shot self-defense.

For those just tuning in, Pax had a good summation of the facts here.

[Capt. Charlie]

The thread in T&T is closed. I would've gladly merged the two, but at this point both have too many replies for that. Doing so would've made the thread disjointed and confusing.

As the focus on both seems to approach the legal angles more than tactical, it seemed best to close that one and let this one remain.

[Wildalaska]

As I posted in the other, now closed, yet first in time, thread:

I win.

Screech all ya want, for whatever motivation floats your boat, but its:

WildjustanotherscumbagofftotheslammerAlaska ™©2002-2011

[Mello2u]

The prosecution secured a guilty verdict on the charge of First Degree Murder against Ersland.

The prosecutor must have persuaded the jury that Ersland's act of retrieving a second gun, walking over to the unconscious Antwun Parker and firing 5 shots into the abdomen of the unconscious Antwun Parker (and unarmed as perceived by Ersland); amounted to a pre-meditated (malice aforethought) act against someone who was no longer a threat (unlawful) and thus murder.

Would you feel justified, claiming self-defense, shooting an unconscious person? One basic tenant of self-defense is that there be an imminent threat of great bodily harm or death. How can there be a threat if that person is unconscious and unarmed?

§21-701.7. Murder in the first degree
A. A person commits murder in the first degree when that person unlawfully and with malice aforethought causes the death of another human being. Malice is that deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a human being, which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof.

[Eghad]

The first degree murder charge is appropriate for his behavior. If you go back and grab another pistol and shoot a guy who is out of five more times it sounds premeditated to me.

[MLeake]

I could have gone either way, between 1st and 2nd degree, but either way a murder conviction was appropriate.

And yes, it would have been a good shoot, if Ersland hadn't retrieved the second gun and shot a downed person.

[Double Naught Spy]

Wow, I've never seen that site before, DNS. That's just wrong. They're soliciting donations for this guy and out right lying to do it.

Yeah, you gotta like the part about how one of the robbers' bullets struck Ersland. That is a bit of a stretch. As I recall, he claimed on the news that he had been wounded, but was never able to prove he had a wound. Apparently it turned out that he had a hole in his trousers. In other words, maybe he was almost shot, assuming a shot from the suspect was proven. He did sport a bandage on his forearm where he claimed he was grazed by a bullet, but apparently nobody in authority ever saw the wound and it was healed by the time he was arrested. So he had 2 possible wounds or near wounds from being shot at? See below...

I went back and reviewed the old thread on the case when it came out.
http://thefiringline.com/forums/show...hlight=ersland
If you read the accounts Ersland gave, the story continually morphs until which time the video comes out and all of a sudden it become apparent how much stuff he made up and how his descriptions of his glorious gun battle weren't anything like what he described, especially given as pax noted in post #184 of the thread that,

Furthermore: "There is no evidence at the scene that shows that the robbery suspects ever fired a round inside the pharmacy."

So where did premeditation come from? I think it came from the fact that Ersland had to go to his desk drawer, unlock it with a key, then get out the gun that he used to murder the downed suspect. Up until that time, he had done all his shooting with his Judge revolver and had to get a .380 out of the drawer of his desk.

[carguychris]

I'm kind of surprised he was convicted of first degree murder. That usually calls for premeditated malice. Maybe the prosecutor was able to show that 45 seconds amounted to that, but I'd have thought that second degree murder or manslaughter would have been more likely.

I disagree; I would argue that it was premeditated. First, here's the definition of premeditation, from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/:

premeditation n. planning, plotting or deliberating before doing something. Premeditation is an element in first degree murder and shows intent to commit that crime.

Here are my two arguments:

1. Elapsed time is not a factor in the definition. Ersland performed several intervening deliberate actions between initially shooting Parker and returning to shoot him again. This indicates planning and intent, even if only a few seconds elapsed.
2. Premeditation does not necessarily need a specific target when the planning and intent occur. It can be generalized, e.g. "if some scumbag tries to rob my store, I'm going to get my gun and kill him". This is planning and intent, even if it the actor is not targeting a specific person when he or she makes this statement.

If it could be shown that Ersland was planning ahead of time to kill anyone robbing his store, his actions were premeditated, even if he had never seen Parker before. OTOH I'll admit that I don't know enough about the Ersland case to know if the second argument applies here.

[Mr. James]

Guilty as charged. Good job. He executed a defenseless (and possibly mortally wounded) man.

[Evan Thomas]

Originally Posted by Mello2u

The prosecutor must have persuaded the jury that Ersland's act of retrieving a second gun, walking over to the unconscious Antwun Parker and firing 5 shots into the abdomen of the unconscious Antwun Parker (and unarmed as perceived by Ersland); amounted to a pre-meditated (malice aforethought) act against someone who was no longer a threat (unlawful) and thus murder.

Exactly. It's the correct verdict. And Mr. Parker was in fact unarmed; the detectives at the scene found no weapons on him.

And the autopsy report describes the head wound he received when Mr. Ersland shot him the first time around as a "non-fatal gunshot entrance/graze wound." It was the subsequent five shots to the chest and abdomen that killed him.

Mr. Ersland surely didn't help himself by lying about what happened: he initially claimed he shot Mr. Parker before he left the pharmacy to go after the other suspect, but this was clearly contradicted by the video record; he also falsely claimed to have been shot himself. These lies suggest that he knew what he did was wrong.

He also told detectives a series of elaborate lies about his military record, claiming that his back problems were from a combat-related injury and that he suffered from PTSD (he not only was never in combat, he never served in a war zone).

The jury took 3 1/2 hours to reach a verdict and recommend a sentence of life in prison... so they didn't need a lot of convincing.

WildjustanotherscumbagofftotheslammerAlaska

Just so...