The hardest part of law school is. . .

. . .having to be objective! This is especially tough when one party is clearly a douche. In this case I had to read for crim, this guy shot a group of four boys on the subway because he thought they were going to rob him. What made him think this? The boys approached him, without weapons or issuing threats, and said, "give us $5." Again, still no threats, and they merely repeated themselves a second time. So, what does the defendant do? He stands up, pulls out his unlicensed/unregistered gun and shoots them! When he notices that he missed one of the boys, he shoots the kid again. To the defendant's credit, there was some evidence introduced that the boys did intend to rob him, and the defendant admitted that he bought the gun after being mugged in the past, but this next part is what gets me. Immediately after successfully shooting the fourth boy, the defendant fled the scene. A whopping NINE (9!) days later, the defendant surrenders himself to police and gives them a voluntary statement. What does the idiot say in his statement? He says that if he had a little more self control, instead of firing at the boy he had originally missed from a distance, he would've walked up to him and put the barrel to his forehead and fired, and furthermore, that if he had had more bullets, he would have shot them again, and again, and again!! Seriously, way to establish the intent requisite for your conviction, moron! THEN, in court, the idiot tries to use the justification defense of self-defense!! Self-defense implies that your intent was not to commit the crime (murder), but instead to defend yourself from what you perceived as an imminent threat. Yeah, ok, and NINE days later, after you are far removed from the fear you experienced during the actual situation, you told police, in a voluntary recorded statement, that your only regret is basically not murdering the kids?! Yet you assert that your intent was not to murder and really to defend yourself?! Idiot.

In the first part of my rant, I ignored the fact that the adult man, in asserting this defense, is claiming that he felt threatened enough to shoot at the oh so big and scary young boys who had no guns and made no threats, who merely told you to get them $5!! Ok, so maybe this guy has PTSD from his previous mugging experience, so he really did feel threatened (maybe even justifiably so). However, what about the fact that during a mugging/robbery, the objective of the person committing the crime is to get your money, which, in this case, the boys asserted was $5. How is keeping your $5 worth doing something that you know will likely result in legal problems (shooting at the kids)?!?! Seriously, if you're so afraid for your life, why not just give them the $5 rather than risk something that could potentially result in you going to jail, and that the very least, will probably result in the hassle of litigation?!?!

I acknowledge that I don't know what PTSD is like, but that's beside the point, since that's merely the defense that the guy SHOULD HAVE used, but since the guy's defense attorney apparently sucked, it wasn't the defense the guy ACTUALLY used. He used the justification defense of self-defense, which implies fear of harm inducing one to try and protect themselves. However, I just don't see where the "fear" was in this situation. He didn't act like a person who was in fear, rather, he acted like a person who was pissed off at the prospect of being mugged/robbed again, as evident from his statement given nine days after the fact.

I'm also not ignoring the fact that people should have a right to try and protect themselves from being robbed— it's your money, and you should be entitled to protect it; however, this guys shooting was so patently unjustified. The kids did NOTHING to make him feel fear, so his first attempt at protecting his property should have been to just refuse to give the kids the $5. I mean, he was on a public subway train with lots of people around, so what are the kids, none of whom weren't brandishing a weapon or issuing a physical threat, reasonably going to do with him if he doesn't give them the $5? At this point, the worst they would reasonably do would be to pull out weapons, if they had them, or issue threats. This would justify the guy's shooting action, but this isn't what happened!

Hell, I would even go so far as to say that I would be able to see where the guy was coming from if he had merely busted out his gun and threatened the kids in response to them saying, "give us $5." It's not what most reasonable people would do in that situation, but having previously undergone a traumatic mugging experience, the guy is understandably a bit paranoid. Again, not an ideal situation necessarily, but at least the defendant would have been more justified in asserting his defense. Yet again, this is not what happened!

 Just how this tool and his attorney thought that they stood a smidgeon of a chance at successfully asserting a self-defense justification is really beyond me. If I were a public defender and got stuck with the unfortunate duty of representing a moron like this, who voluntarily hung himself by proving one of the tougher portions of the prosecution's case, I would hedge my bets on an insanity defense because reasonable people faced with the same situation would not react the way the defendant did. I wish casebooks came with a feature where you could somehow reach into the casebook and bitchslap parties who are blatant tools. At the very least, they should provide me the email address/contact info. for this guy's defense attorney so that I can tell him that I heard that McDonald's is currently hiring dependable employees who have reliable transportation.

Then again, I'm not an attorney specializing in criminal law, so what do I know?