This gets to core of the issue. Citizens stopped policing their own neighborhoods when as a society we went with professional police forces. Now these terribly irresponsible city and state leaders are preventing their police from responding, because these elected leaders are of the same political faction as the rioters, but, if the armed citizen returns to the streets, bodies start dropping.
One 17 year old dropped 3 in a manner of minutes, would 10 have dropped 30? Will a Jury want to green-light this? If they overcharge him, he'll get off. If he is modestly charged, and has a clean background, a hung jury is a likely outcome, but his folks will have mortgaged their house, their college fund for him and spent their own retirement funds on attorney fees trying to keep him out of prison, and even if they manage that, a felony record remains a real possibility.
Lin Wood is taking the case pro bono.
That's great but isn't that guy a civil attorney?
Kids needs a criminal defense attorney who specializes in self defense cases, and that's a pretty small pool.
Truth is, most legal cases where self defense is claimed are bullshit..... it's a last ditch attempt to avoid jail time by someone who knows he is guilty of assault, or it's a misunderstanding of basic law by someone who was engaged in mutual combat. So the claim of self defense is most often greeted with disbelief and scorn by DAs. (And that's DAs that
don't have a political axe to grind against free people who carry guns; my wife worked for a DAs office in TN a few years ago and everyone in that office carried pistols, everyday.)
A legitimate self defense claim that meets all legal standards as an affirmative defense is often discounted and disregarded by disbelieving prosecutors, or the essential elements that prove it to be justified are not brought to investigators attention, and thus not to the prosecutors and court's attention, or not effectively explained by the victim when he or she is being interviewed by responding officers. The victim is usually in shock, and will be coming down off a chemical and hormonal cocktail of adrenaline and other things that are released into their systems when their life is threatened, and they generally are not tracking well, and they get a case of motor mouth.
Many criminal defense attornies have no idea how to present an affirmative defense in a self defense case, and most have never done so. Further muddying the waters, street mutts will lie their asses off and claim they were the victims, in order to jam you up with the Man.
I'm glad the kid has an attorney, but does he have the
right attorney?