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Originally Posted by ranburr
...Everyone is assuming that just because you are in a shooting, that you are going to be in a criminal court. Not true...
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I absolutely agree that just because you are in a shooting does not mean that you will wind up in criminal court. Many defensive shootings don't, because it is determined at an some stage of the investigation that the shooter is likely to be able to sustain his claim of self defense.
But if it happens to you, there is no way you can know ahead of time whether in your particular case there will be ample evidence to support your claim of self defense or if, when the smoke clears, the evidence will be sparse that you were justified in using lethal force.
Everyone who has ever been on trial after a self defense shooting probably thought (at least somewhere in the back of his mind) as he pulled the trigger that he was right -- that he had no choice. But the fact that he wound up on trial shows that in the aftermath the prosecutor found good reason to challenge the claim of justification and to believe that he could get a jury to agree.
Yes, that might be a rare event. Yet these rare events have happened to others in the past. It may happen to one of us in the future.
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Originally Posted by ranburr
...in TX, you will only go to a criminal court if a grand jury chooses to push the case through. Here, it is you (no lawyer), vs the DA in front of the grand jury. If the DA really wanted to prosecute you, you would stand zero chance of not going to trial. Fortuneately, most of our DAs follow the law when it comes to self defense shootings and they never make it past the grand jury phase....
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Actually, most DAs do follow the law (well, except for the occasional jerk -- like that guy with the Lacrosse team). It doesn't do a DA's career any good to lose a case. So a DA is not going to press for an indictment, or file charges where a grand jury review is optional, if he doesn't think he has a decent chance to win at trial.
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Originally Posted by ranburr
...back to evidence. It is such a science today, that the police will know what happened in a shooting. Whether you give a statement or not, the police can piece together the facts of the shooting itself....
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Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Or most often, there will be some ambiguous points. That's at least in part why we have trials.
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Originally Posted by ranburr
...A case in point ... In my own city, Joe Horn shot two robbers and was completely convicted on the national media stage. When it went in front of the grand jury, the DA's office presented the evidence and it died right there. When interviewed afterwards the DA stated that while they didn't agree with his actions, he broke no law....
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The Joe Horn case is interesting. One reason he was convicted in the national media is that most discussions of the event ignore, or downplay, the fact that the men Mr. Horn shot had returned to Mr. Horn's property and were coming toward him in a threatening manner. And by being on Mr. Horn's property, Texas' Castle Doctrine law came into play.