(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Update on this story from yesterday, since more facts have come out:

The wife only claimed she was being raped *after* the husband shot her lover, the 911 call shows that the husband never believed her about it at all, and the husband has a history of violent and abusive behaviour.

Meaning,
1) it wasn't self-defense or defense of property, he just killed the man who was kissing his wife.
2) the accusations of rape came after that, when the wife was afraid he'd kill her, too.
3) the tape record shows that he never, ever believed her story about the rape.

Short version: Her conviction is a travesty, his non-trial is a travesty.

Comments

[kadath.livejournal.com]

This is me being totally unsurprised.

[flemco.livejournal.com]

Huh.

Well then. Another great mark for the American Justice system!

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

Yaaaay Texas.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

There's some of the state of mind!

I think her conviction is justified. She should have known that - with his history of violent and abusive behaviour, and access to a weapon, he was likely to do this. Thus, involuntary manslaughter - same as if someone started punching a driver in the back of the head, and the car veered, struck, and killed someone.

Given the fact that the gun was in his vehicle, the prosecutors would have difficulty using that to prove premeditation. Maybe they're waiting for him to say or do something stupid. Remember: it was a grand jury that declined to try him. he can always be re-indicted and tried later.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

> I think her conviction is justified. She should have known that -
> with his history of violent and abusive behaviour, and access to a
> weapon, he was likely to do this.

Great. Next up, you'll have women on charges when they try to leave their abusive husband and he beats up a police officer or a shelter worker on the way to teach her a lesson.

She is not responsible for his behaviour.

He is responsible for his behaviour. He is not a car. He is not being beaten while in command of a motor vehicle. He is having his entitlement fucked with, and if he didn't learn how to cope with that without trying to kill people before he was let out of kindergarten, it is still not her responsibility.

You are apparently fuzzy on the concept of personal responsibility, here.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

No, I'm not. She is responsible for her behaviour. If she shouts fire in a crowded theatre, it's still involuntary manslaughter when someone is trampled and killed - as an adult, she should know the likely consequences of her actions. Her attempt to cover her behaviour by claiming rape and her later testimony goes to her knowledge and her state of mind.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

You may find the article on /mens rea/ helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

[elffin.livejournal.com]

He is responsible for his behaviour. She is responsible for her behaviour. The fact that she is a woman does not give her a get-out-of-responsibility-free card for the fact that she engineered a situation that she knew was dangerous to her lover. She does not have to intend that her husband assault or kill the man, or even want it. It is merely enough that she engineered a situation that she knew, or should have known, was dangerous.

An appropriate analogy would be having sex with her lover while bungee-jumping off a bridge. If his harness broke, or he had no harness and lost his grip on her, she would still be culpable for involuntary manslaughter.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

Additionally: battered women who separate from their abusive spouses are attempting to put distance between themselves and the fact of violence. This woman chose to draw herself and another closer to the fact of violence. Claiming that she is not culpable for having done so is sexist horseshit. She callously drew her lover into a violent situation. She did not /have/ to do so, she was certainly not making a choice to distance herself or her lover from her violent spouse until the immediate fact of it was upon her. Knowingly subjecting someone to the reasonably foreseeable fact of violence is culpable to involuntary manslaughter, regardless of whose fault the violence is.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

... justified how? Because she knows her husband is a violent nutjob, she's criminally liable when he shoots her boyfriend for being her boyfriend? Infidelity isn't a crime.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

If you undertake an action that you, as an adult, know is likely to cause others to behave violently or, cause them to have a state of mind that lacks /mens rea/ and behave violently, and you know that a crime is likely to result from that action, you are inciting to a crime. She behaved in a manner that she knew would cause her husband to behave in a manner that was
A: violent
B: lacking in /mens rea/

thus, involuntary manslaughter. It is very similar to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, and the accompanying involuntary manslaughter charges that would accompany that action if someone were killed in the trample/press/stampede that a reasonable adult would know would result from that action.

[harald387.livejournal.com]

Oh good lord, not you again.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

/ad hominem/ is a fallacy.

[zastrazzi.livejournal.com]

That's an unqualified travesty. The man should be locked up and barred from owning weapons. Jesus.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

Yes, he should.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Well, that certainly changes everything.

Everything.

[geminiknight.livejournal.com]

Yep, all kinds of travesty of justice there.

Hell, if the guy should have shot anybody, it should have been the wife. I've never understood blaming the other man/woman instead of the person cheating on you. Of course, in this case, sounds like the husband was an asshole who deserved to be left.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I question the use of "should" in your statement.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

That was, until a shockingly recent period of time, a justifiable homicide defense in the state of Texas (1974, the year I was born):

Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband upon one taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided the killing take place before the parties to the act have separated. Such circumstance cannot justify a homicide where it appears that there has been, on the part of the husband, any connivance in or assent to the adulterous connection …

Thankfully, more modern minds prevailed at the time, though it's STILL nullified sometimes by juries, as appears to have been the case here.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Personally, I was kind of surprised at the lack of the word "else" after "should have shot anybody".

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

*sigh* provocation is a mitigating factor in sentencing, I'll garee. But I refuse to believe it is sufficient not to bring charges against him at all.

She looked like an utter villain in the last piece, now she looks more the abused victim - claimed she was raped to save herself from the gun toting man who just shot her lover? And she was convicted for manslaughter?

Aie aie, isn't it amazing how reporting it differently can change all the facts

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Reporting differently doesn't change the facts.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Well, that totally changes the entire thing (as details have a tendency to do). In that case it's even worse than i thought. I'm willing to give her as much leeway as she likes. I can't blame her for bad mouthing a guy after he was dead.

The husband certainly was in the wrong here. don't get me wrong, I understand. if I came home to some guy banging my girl, i'd want a piece of him, too, and in the heat of the moment I probably wouldn't too particular about which piece, but that wouldn't make it right.

totally mucked up ruling, given new information. until more details come out.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Jealousy never ceases to confuse me.

[atlasimpure.livejournal.com]

We could shoot him. :D