Having worked in the criminal justice system for more than three and a half decades, I always get warm and fuzzy when a jury confirms my faith in that system. It happened twice this week.<\/p>\n
In New England, a police officer was charged with manslaughter arising out of a shooting in which he and another LEO came under attack by two young suspects in a vehicle the lawmen were approaching on foot. He saw one readying a semiautomatic pistol, and the driver began to head his vehicle toward the other policeman. The cop opened fire, killing the one he\u2019d perceived to have the gun and wounding the driver, who was captured later. The dead guy\u2019s gun was never recovered.<\/p>\n
Retired FBI firearms instructor Urey Patrick, speaking eloquently for the defense, explained to the jury why the cop was correct in firing when he did. The jurors agreed, and this week they found the officer not guilty.<\/p>\n
Down South, a young man was leaving a party that was getting rough when his vehicle was surrounded by four heavily-drinking twenty-somethings. He perceived objects smashing against his vehicle (a broken bottle and a bat were later found at the scene) and then the driver\u2019s door window next to his head exploded in on him. He reflexively came up with a .38 and fired twice, killing a man who had punched through the tempered safety glass window with his bare fist. The man who fired panicked and fled the scene. He was arrested and charged with 2nd degree murder. After two years in jail (no bond on murder one in that jurisdiction) he got his day in court this week. A few hours ago, late Friday afternoon, his ordeal ended when the jury found him not guilty of anything but discharging a firearm from a vehicle. (The latter isn\u2019t as poultry-fecal as it sounds. The scared kid had fired a third shot upward as a warning not to chase him as he fled, and jurors have been known to frown on that sort of thing.)<\/p>\n
It is hard for a family to accept that their loved one may have done something that caused his death, and love and misplaced loyalty lead them to blame the person who was forced to pull the trigger. We can understand their unhappiness. But I have to feel joy for the families of two wrongfully accused men who will have them at home for Christmas. Neither, in my opinion, should ever have been criminally charged. One, 19 at the time of the shooting, has lost almost a tenth of his life so far in jail waiting for justice. When THEIR families celebrate with extra joy this Christmas\u2026well, I\u2019ll understand that too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having worked in the criminal justice system for more than three and a half decades, I always get warm and fuzzy when a jury confirms my faith in that system. It happened twice this week. In New England, a police officer was charged with manslaughter arising out of a shooting in which he and another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}