printWhen discussing “All Burglars are Home Invaders,” readers in the sensible parts of the country were convinced that their state’s “stand-your-ground” laws would shield them in the event that they were forced to use deadly force to fend off an attack on person, property or both.
These laws removed the requirement whereby “people who think they are in immediate peril must first try to retreat from the confrontation before using deadly force. Prior to passage of the law, only people defending themselves in their own homes, for the most part, could use deadly force without first trying to flee.” (MSNBC)
That some of my readers had faith in the law surprised me somewhat. As recently as the 7/15/2011, I wrote about an “American veteran-hero jailed” for standing his ground, so to speak. Dr. Jerome Ersland was recently condemned to life in prison for defending his property and his employees from a gang of armed robbers. A pistol pointed at his head was not enough to save this hero from imprisonment, pursuant to defending his own life and the lives of his co-workers.
Ersland is from Oklahoma, which is in one of “14 states [that] have revised their laws to ensure that people don’t have to retreat from an attacker. Those states are: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas, according to the NRA.” (MSNBC)
UPDATE: At bottom, every employee, wife, pal wants a man like Ersland around when the stuff hits the fan. In “Sacrificing Kids To PC Pietism,” I describe the kind of left-liberal perverseness that permeates the letter below. Ersland is a hero; his is an adaptive, manly, normal version of the fight-or-flight response.
Ersland is hardly a poster-child for stand-your-ground, self-defense, home-defense, or responsible ownership or use of firearms. The threshold questions in any self-defense shooting, even when a stand-your-ground law applies, is that one is acting in response to a reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury and uses an appropriate level of force when doing so with the intent to defend themselves and others. What Ersland did was to use grossly disproportionate force against an aggressor who had already been neutralized with the intent to kill. If a police officer had acted likewise, he or she would be just as guilty. No self-defense law does or should countenance such behavior, and property and gun owners who cherish and exercise legally and responsibly their rights of self-defense should condemn, rather than condone, Ersland’s conduct. It’s unfortunate that Dr. Ersland chose to commit murder and that he is to lose his freedom and that his community and family will lose his companionship and his service, but that is the consequence of the choice he made.
First Degree Murder!!! Who was on the jury? Maybe more like second degree manslaughter because after the hoodlum was disabled, the going back to pump additional bullets was arguably some heat-of-the-moment aggravated out-of-control aggression. How the hell is this pre-meditated murder?? As I said, the benefit of the doubt should go to the original victim, not the instigating hoodlum.
Tom Oster, think on this. Ersland went to work that day to conduct his business in a normal,safe, sane fashion. His “victim” went out that day with the intention to commit a violent crime and caused this situation. Luckily for the rest of the US he picked the wrong guy to molest and now the rest of the population is a tiny bit safer. Ersland has no criminal intentions and REACTED in a manly way to protect what is his. I take it you have never been shot at or had guns pointed at you?
While not familiar with Oklahoma’s specific criminal statutes and what exact defenses to murder they permit, I agree that Dr. Ersland likely had a tenable partial defense of provocation or imperfect self-defense, which would have supported the lesser-included charge of voluntary manslaughter. Whether he was offered a plea agreement and rejected it, or prevented his attorney from focusing his defense on that point, I cannot say.
@Myron: certainly not a jury of his “peers” then.
Tom, have you ever been robbed at gun-point or threat thereof? Have you ever been threatened, in YOUR FRONT YARD, by someone who said he was going to get his gun and return? Have you ever had a brother-in-law who was beaten to the ground and watched, helplessly, while his aging mother was knocked around as well by 2 assailants?
I wager that most individuals who had the weapons to fight back would be so adrenalin fueled that the would simply wish to eliminate the threat…period. Myron has a valid point.
I suggest to you, Tom, that you start reading http://www.detnews.com and see what life is in the big city. You may wish to read http://www.windsorstar.com as well to see creeping violence in Canada.
Remember: GOD MADE MAN, BUT COLT MADE THEM EQUAL.
For real…This is the area in which I and most of my friends grew up. Think hard and long before ranting against STAND YOUR GROUND and CASTLE LAWS because, eventually this will seek out your neighborhood!
http://detnews.com/article/20110929/METRO/109290453
What you say has merit. I still feel that in Tennessee and Mississippi anyway a person can stand his ground in his own home or his own legitimate, personal territory, if in fear of his life or in fear of significant bodily harm. Of course personal responsibility is expected. One is responsible for where his bullets land. Also the amount of force must match the threat. My response to a gang of Hell’s Angels coming at me with guns and tire irons would have to be different from somene’s 90 year old grandmother coming at me, even with the same tire irons and guns. You are correct, however in that our political masters are loathe to allow the citizen complete freedom from governmental control.
This is an argument that can and probably will go on forever. “Is a man guilty of murder if after the attacker is on the ground and doesn’t appear to be a threat, you reload and empty another magazine into him?” The law expects the jury to decide under the concept of “would a reasonable man” Naturally that leaves one to question what is reasonable. Also, Tulsa is the Democratic city in the middle of Republican Oklahoma. If he had gone to court in another county, it is possible he would have gotten a lesser sentence. There is also the fact that our courts are overburdened with cases and if they had to go to trial on every case, they could only hear maybe a fifth of their pending cases a year. It’s possible he became an example for others that wanted a trial. Standard policy is if you waste our time in insisting on a jury, you will get the maximum sentence. That said, the case is probably on appeal and usually the Oklahoma Supreme court judges are willing to look at the case from a reasonable viewpoint.
I disagree. You can’t go on chasing hoodlums to kill them. That’s MORE than self-defense. I support the castle doctrine but even this isn’t supported by that.