Case for castle doctrine
I can’t believe this. A bunch of drunken hoodlums show up at a man’s house, hollering “nigger,” obviously looking for a fight, the man defends himself and his son, and a jury convicts him? Of what?
Update: As is always the case in these things, there’s another side to the story that makes it unclear (in comments from original link):
I read the account in Newsday. White and his son walked out in the driveway carrying a pistol and shotgun, apparently going right up to the teenagers (according to the account, the dead boy was ‘inches away’. The son was shouting racial insults and slurs of his own.
The prosecutor said he should have stayed inside, locked the doors, and called police.
Escalating the situation is never good. But no one should be forced to rely on waiting for the police who, when seconds count, are only minutes away.
Conversely, I wonder what the result would have been were races reversed.
December 27th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Ironically, I don’t think that the shooter would have been convicted in most places in the South.
One dead cracker.
He was looking for trouble and found it.
December 27th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
NY has one of the best self defense laws in the country. Lethal force is allowed whenever a person reasonably feels their life is in danger. There is no duty to retreat. However, this guy apparently went to confront the thugs and escaladed the situation. That was a mistake. The prosecutor is exactly right.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
On it’s face, I think the prosecutor is right. The white boys had no guns (that could be seen, no one had started shooting, no property damage was being done) and had done nothing more than shoot insults and threats. The man should have called police, told them he feared for his safety, and told the police he was armed and would shoot if the crowd came toward the door.
Stepping out to confront them was stupid.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
He had the right to tell them to leave his property. He couldn’t do that while hiding. If an asshole gets himself killed because he was an asshole that’s just nature asserting the incontravertible laws of nature.
It makes no difference that the white kids weren’t armed, they outnumbered the victims they assaulted. I couldn’t have voted to convict.
December 27th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Hard to tell what the right thing to do was, except in retrospect.
Your home is — at least — under siege by what sure appears to be a lynch mob. You know that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
Stay inside and wait for them? Or have the confrontation outside, where your family, at least, is protected by the walls?
I don’t like either choice, myself.
December 27th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
He went outside to confront them. He didn’t need to do that.
December 27th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
I’m sorry, but if hooligans are outside your home acting like a racist lynch mob, you don’t give them a chance to get inside to harm your family.
I’d put myself between that crowd and a locked door, and have some serious firepower in my hands for that instance! It’d be too much like shooting fish in a barrel firing from my second-floor window.
December 27th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
He did the right thing by going outside to confront the mob.
The man has to live with himself as a man.
He doesn’t need to hear (or permit his family to hear) that kind of abuse.
These white boys provoked a very serious matter.
This is not a dispute that originated because one person bumped into another person at a crowded bar.
The white guys were trying to remove the black homeowners’ dignity. That is a serious matter.
I would like to have seen the dead white boy’s friends after they realized that the residents, of the home that they were serenading, didn’t care for their choice of lyrics.
Bunch of crackers whose family trees don’t fork.
I don’t know what happened after the shooter confronted the mob, and that would determine his legal culpability.
December 27th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Your opinion means nothing. NY law is clear. Use of force is justified whenever a person feels their life is endangered unless the person is the aggressor. When he went out to confront the punks, he acted aggressively and escaladed the situation when he didn’t have to. Discussion over.
December 28th, 2007 at 1:05 am
No, Jacob the discussion isn’t over. Only the trial in a kangaroo court is over. NY law may be clear, but it wasn’t applied. Those boys had several choices. They could have chose not to do it at all. They could have chosen to leave the property when confronted by the resident and told to leave, they could have stood in the middle of the street to holler their epithets. They did none of those things. They invaded the man’s property and set about abusing his family. They were the aggressors. Period.
It is unfortunate that a “don’t scare whitey” attitude was why the man was convicted.
December 28th, 2007 at 2:39 am
I agree with straightarrow. There’s no worst racists than New York’s John-Gotti-wannabes. The black guy “did the right thing” and hopefully that will be a lesson to some
GinzosJohn-Gotti-wannabes who think about doing that to some [n-word] again.December 28th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
And quite frankly, in a Republic, it is never, “that’s the law and it’s over.” When laws are against what the People think public policy should be, the laws get changed. This is a despicable decision that furthers my opinion that the nastiest racists in America live in New England, not the old south.
December 28th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Except, dumbasses, White’s own attorney’s claimed the shooting was accidental, not self-defense. How can any of you claim it was self-defense when the person who actually did the shooting admits it wasn’t?
December 28th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
because Jacob, now pay attention here, I am typing verrrry slowly so you can follow along, there would have been no reason for him to confront trespassers abusing his family if they weren’t trespassers abusing his family.
The sequence of events was set in motion by the trespassers and abusers. The proper people to have charged with murder would have been the allies of the dead guy. Everywhere civiilized does just that. They charge the accomplices with murder when one of their own is killed while they were all participating in a criminal act, regardless of who killed him.
Did I type too fast for you.