Jury acquits escort shooter

[MadBurgerMaker]

The contract might have been void. Doesn't mean she gets to keep the money.

The contract was for "time";  it was his assumption that sex was part of the deal, an assumption not made clear in the Craigslist ad.  As she spent 20 minutes with him, the contract was fulfilled.   

It was apparently for 30 min. She was leaving early.

[CountDeMoney]

Travel time door-to-door is usually included in standard house calls, whether your a plumber or a hooker.  So there.

[MadBurgerMaker]

That seems strange for an online 'order' of this nature.

E:  Also, your plumber sucks.  Mine doesn't charge travel time and therefore is awesome.

[Berkut]

If she at least sucked, this probably wouldn't have been such a problem.

[The Brain]

Did he hear her racist rant on the phone?

[OttoVonBismarck]

3. Since the agreement was illegal, the money was still rightfully owned by the shooter and the woman had no right to remove it once he demanded it returned, in which case the statute would apply.

Does it mean that I can hire prostitutes in Texas, demand my money back after being done, and shoot between the eyes any prostitute that refused to comply?  Or am I going to have to shoot them in the back of the head?

Maybe? You know I don't live in Texas nor am I a lawyer, so I'm just guessing. But why do you seem to presume that just because a law would allow something ridiculous, that must not be what the law really allows? Are you familiar with the case in California? An unmarried woman is in bed, a man comes into her bedroom and she assumes it is her boyfriend and they have sex. She later finds out it was not her boyfriend, but an intruder. This is basically rape via deception. However, the statute in California explicitly says that women cannot be raped by deception unless they are married. Why? Because in 1800s California it was understood no proper woman would have a man frequenting her bed unless it was her husband, so any proper woman would otherwise immediately violently resist the sexual advances of any other men lest she was a whore.

So it may seem ridiculous, but yes, that meant in California you could sneak into a complete stranger's house and rape them as long as the woman doesn't claim you "forcibly raped" her, for example if she assumed you were a male that she was sexually active with. I see no reason a Texas law couldn't allow the sort of scenario you're talking about, which is evidence of it being a bad law, for sure.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Damn, you got me. I've been defeated by the observation that the crazy ass gun culture in America is apparently less than 40 years old, therefore any law that was founded prior to that time cannot possibly be based on said culture.

Gee, I feel so silly now.


Apparently the law is an "anachronism" like the rape law from the 1800s. Because 1973 was a lot like the 1800s, what with the crazy ancient laws passed back in those olden days of the 70s.

The NRA was not involved in active lobbying of State legislation in the 70s.

[katmai]

Prosecutors still done fucked up, IMO.  For it to be theft, there should have been an enforceable contract.  Since prostitution is illegal in Texas, there was no such thing.  Ergo, not theft, and no authorization of deadly force.

Also, doesn't Texas have any rules of escalation?  Shooting them in the back as they're leaving still sounds more like murder than deadly force.

Please.  Just stop trying to give legal analysis.

But DSB is an expert at everything!

[garbon]

Prosecutors still done fucked up, IMO.  For it to be theft, there should have been an enforceable contract.  Since prostitution is illegal in Texas, there was no such thing.  Ergo, not theft, and no authorization of deadly force.

Also, doesn't Texas have any rules of escalation?  Shooting them in the back as they're leaving still sounds more like murder than deadly force.

Please.  Just stop trying to give legal analysis.

But DSB is an expert at everything!

[11B4V]

To go along with the Texas theme of the thread.

Free gun initiative begins in Houston neighborhood


HOUSTON –  Houston resident Cheryl Strain's inexperience with guns was apparent as she struggled to load shells into a 20-gauge shotgun.

Over the piercing blasts of gunfire in the shooting range, Strain's instructor, Dan Blackford, patiently directed her on how to use her thumb to shove a shell all the way inside the barrel and feel it click.

"Now we got a round in the chamber ready to go," Blackford said as he positioned her body on the right way to hold the shotgun. "Look down your sight, put that BB right in the middle of your target and press the trigger."

Strain's northwest Houston community of Oak Forest is the first neighborhood in the country being trained and equipped by the Armed Citizen Project, a Houston nonprofit that is giving away free shotguns to single women and residents of neighborhoods with high crime rates.

While many cities have tried gun buy-backs and other tactics in the ongoing national debate on gun control, the nonprofit and its supporters say gun giveaways to responsible owners are actually a better way to deter crime. The organization, which plans to offer training classes in Dallas, San Antonio, and Tucson, Ariz., in the next few weeks, is working to expand its giveaways to 15 cities by the end of the year, including Chicago and New York.

But others in Houston, while expressing support for Second Amendment rights, question whether more guns will result in more gun-related deaths rather than less crime.

Residents of Oak Forest say their neighborhood, made up of older one-story houses and a growing number of new townhomes, has experienced a recent rash of driveway robberies and home burglaries.  On a recent Sunday afternoon, a group of 10 residents, including Strain, went through training at Shiloh Shooting, a northwest Houston gun range.

Kyle Coplen, the project's 29-year-old founder said his group expects to train at least 50 Oak Forest residents and put up signs saying the neighborhood is armed.

"When we have a crime wave, we don't just say let's just increase police and that's all we do. We do multiple things. I see this as one aspect of what we can do," said Coplen, who graduated from the University of Houston with a master's degree in public administration.

It costs the organization about $300 to arm and train an individual and about $20,000 for an entire neighborhood. All costs are paid through donations, said Coplen, though he declined to say how much his organization has raised so far.

While some residents in the neighborhood are supportive, several officials have mixed feelings about it.

Sandra Keller, Strain's neighbor, said she is participating in part because of the helplessness she felt after her furniture store was robbed a couple of years ago.

"If you don't have a gun, you're just a walking victim. You're just waiting for somebody to take advantage of you and your property," said Keller, 64, after practicing at the shooting range.

But Houston City Councilwoman Ellen Cohen, who represents Oak Forest, said, "I have serious concerns about more guns in homes."

Cohen said she supports Second Amendment rights and believes that such a responsibility should include proper training and background checks.

David Hemenway, a professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health who has written about firearms and health, said studies suggesting gun ownership deters crime have been refuted by many others that say the opposite.

"Mostly what guns seem to do is make situations more lethal because most crime has nothing to do with guns," he said. "When there is a gun in the mix, there is much more likely to be somebody dying or somebody incredibly hurt."

Proponents of increased gun ownership point to a variety of statistics to support their argument, including ones showing that some cities with strict gun control laws, like Chicago, still have high murder rates.

Blackford, the firearm instructor in the Oak Forest training, said the group is teaching residents not only how to handle and store a weapon but also when to use deadly force.

"The sad part is most people think if you're pro-gun, that you've got this gunslinger attitude, that you are walking around looking for a gun fight to get into and that is so far from the truth," said Blackford, a former Secret Service agent.

Harris County Precinct One Constable Alan Rosen, whose deputies patrol Oak Forest, said that while he believes the best deterrent to crime is effective neighborhood watch programs, he believes people should have the right to protect themselves.

"In terms of having a shotgun, after you've been properly trained on it, to have that in your home to protect your home, I'm for it," he said.

Strain, 46, a single mother who has never owned a gun, said she was nervous firing the shotgun but that more training will help. She also had her 12-year-old son Rory practice firing the shotgun so "if God forbid something happens, he could be prepared as well."



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/06/08/free-gun-initiative-begins-in-houston-neighborhood/#ixzz2VglJ97zN

[Eddie Teach]

That explains "All My Exes Live in Texas". His exes are all armed and dangerous, which is why he feels he needs to be in a different state.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Hey I want a free shotgun!


So here's what probably went down with this thing:

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/06/08/no-texas-law-does-not-say-you-can-shoot-an-escort-who-refuses-to-have-sex/

A misreading of the verdict in a strange and upsetting Texas case has gone viral, since Gawker claimed: "Texas Says It's OK to Shoot an Escort If She Won't Have Sex With You." Texas law does not say that, and the jury didn't say that either. Pushing the idea that an "Insane Texas Law Made it Legal for a Man to Kill a Prostitute" is irresponsible; it misinforms the public and sends a terrible message to violent misogynists.

It is not in dispute that the defendant, Ezekiel Gilbert, paid the victim, Lenora Frago, $150 for 30 minutes of escort services advertised on Craigslist. After Frago refused to have sex with him, the defendant shot her. Frago was paralyzed and the defendant was charged with aggravated assault.  When she died seven months later Gilbert was indicted for murder instead.

At trial, defense attorneys made the shocking argument that Gilbert was justified in shooting Frago because she had stolen from him and Texas law permits the use of deadly force to defend one's property at night. That a defense was raised in this case based on Texas' awful defense of property law is certainly newsworthy and even more reason to reform that law. But there is no evidence that the jury acquitted based on the defense of property law in the first place.

The much more plausible reason for the verdict is that the jury believed the defendant's claim that he didn't intend to shoot the victim. Per Texas' homicide statute, the prosecution needed to prove that Gilbert "intentionally or knowingly" killed Frago or intended to cause her "serious bodily injury." The defense argued that Gilbert lacked the requisite intent for murder because when he shot at the car as Frago and the owner of the escort service drove away, he was aiming for the tire. The bullet hit the tire and a fragment, "literally the size of your fingernail," according to Defense Attorney Bobby Barrera, hit Frago. Barrera does not believe the jury acquitted because of the defense of property law. He believes they acquitted because they believed Gilbert didn't mean to shoot her.

Unless someone has interviewed a juror or can read minds, they cannot claim the jury agreed the killing was justified. And the juries do not "cite" laws. They find facts and decide "guilty" or "not guilty." And it isn't accurate to call Frago a "prostitute." Witnesses for the prosecution testified she was an escort who never agreed to have sex. Rather than siding with the killer's characterization, writers should at least say "alleged."

One would expect the jury to find that shooting at a car with an AK-47 is at least "reckless," in which case he could have been convicted of manslaughter. But the prosecution didn't charge him with manslaughter, only murder. Manslaughter is a "lesser included offense" of murder and the judge is entitled to instruct the jury if the evidence supports that charge, but it appears she did not. The jury can't convict on a charge that isn't before them.

I think Texas's defense of property law is abhorrent and my gut reaction was that it was a reprehensible defense. This reaction suggests, that you should think twice before hiring me as your defense attorney, sadly. As Professor Michael W. Martin of Fordham Law's Federal Litigation Clinic reminded me: "If the law allows the defense, the lawyer must use it, if it is viable, unless there is a good strategic reason not to. Otherwise, it is ineffective assistance of counsel. If the lawyer feels like he is ethically barred from using a legal, viable defense, he should ask to be relieved."

This story looks very different depending on whether you are looking at the law or at the reporting. Remember reporting? People used to get paid to go find facts and tell the public about them. That happens a lot less now. With many commentators and too few reporters, an alarmist story can have a long life in the echo chamber. But there are still some reporters, and a number of them, though probably stretched pretty thin, have engaged in that old-fashioned practice of going to court, making phone calls, interviewing people and checking facts for this very case. The San Antonio Express did not just start covering this case last week, that's where to start if you want to follow this story as it develops.

This is a terrible story, a woman was killed and no one is going to prison. It is reasonable to be suspicious that prejudice based on her gender, race, or occupation led to that injustice. But all we know thus far is that the defendant received due process and a zealous defense. We don't know that Texas's terrible defense of property law had anything to do with him getting off. The vilification of this jury isn't justified—we should give them the benefit of the doubt that they spent those 11 hours deliberating in good faith and did what they thought the law required. And in our concern for women and victims of violence, we must remember that even admitted killers still have rights.

So he got off not because it's cool to blast prostitutes, but because they didn't also charge him with manslaughter and all the jury could do was decide on murder.  Since it wasn't murder, and there wasn't anything else, he walked away.  Nice job, prosecutor.

[Malthus]

So he got off not because it's cool to blast prostitutes, but because they didn't also charge him with manslaughter and all the jury could do was decide on murder.  Since it wasn't murder, and there wasn't anything else, he walked away.  Nice job, prosecutor.

Correction: it is a plausible reason for this abhorrent outcome that he got off because of a failure to charge him with manslaughter, as opposed to the bizzare Texan kill-robbers-by-night defence. Given that *both* were issues before the jury, we can't know why they decided what they did, unless a juror tells us.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Correction: it is a plausible reason for this abhorrent outcome that he got off because of a failure to charge him with manslaughter, as opposed to the bizzare Texan kill-robbers-by-night defence. Given that *both* were issues before the jury, we can't know why they decided what they did, unless a juror tells us.

It's why his lawyers were using the "he shot her but didn't mean to" line of reasoning, and why they have been making that point to the (local) press.  That doesn't have anything to do with the "kill robbers by night" defense, which is also why Valmy and I (and anyone else) had never heard of it being used like that.  Because it most likely wasn't.  I bet it would have been much more useful for any manslaughter charges that came up, because manslaughter doesn't need that intent thing and can still send you away for 20, buuuut...

E:  Oh there was another thing about it that wasn't mentioned in these articles that showed up so quickly.  Apparently the argument was between escort hiring dude and escorts "driver," who was the one who had the cash.  According to the driver, the girl went out there after 20 min, gave the driver the cash, and dude went out there to get it back. The driver told him he would have to take it from him, dude went and got the gun. 

[MadBurgerMaker]

I'm still shocked they *only* charged him with murder.  Firing off a weapon in an apartment complex parking lot in a heavily populated part of the city, shooting at people in a car, solicitation/prostitution, etc.  There's all sorts of stuff there, and they're usually not shy about doing that, at least just from what I've seen other times.  Hell, there's a school right down the street from there (Churchill High School), so I'm surprised they couldn't get some THINK OF THE CHILDREN stuff going on too ().