God Made Man. Colt Made Men Equal.
By Mitch Berg
You and your kids are out for a day of fun at Valleyfair.
Some dirtball cops a feel of your daughter.
You go to try to set him straight.
He calls for a bunch of his friends.
They mean to do you harm. Lots and lots of it. Eight teenagers and twentysomethings, jacked up on misplaced testosterone.
What do you do?
If you’re a concealed carry permit holder in the state of Minnesota, and didn’t seek out the confrontation, and think you can convince a jury that you reasonably fear death or great bodily harm, and that you’ve made reasonable efforts to de-escalate, and that the use of lethal force is reasonable (again with the jury), and there’s not a big crowd with possibilities for collateral damage, the decision is both easy and awful. You draw. You point. If the scumbags are like most scumbags, they get a sudden case of mortal fear, and they run like hell. If they don’t back down – say, they draw a knife or a gun of their own, or come at you with tire irons – you shoot. Given that you are probably overwhelmed with adrenaline, you don’t – can’t – try to get cutesy with your aim; you shoot for center mass, and keep shooting until your target drops. And pray that that’s enough to stop things. As, indeed, it usually is.
What if it’s not you? What if you see the event going down – the father defending his daughter, the gang of wanna-be thugs gathering, the “men” stomping on the man’s head. You have a permit. There is no sign of a security guard, to say nothing of cops. Nobody else is stepping forward. You reasonably believe that the guy, the father, is about to get his brains stomped out.
What do you do?
While Minnesota’s self-defense law states that one can use lethal force in self-defense if one reasonably believes oneself or another person are in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm, things get very cloudy when you are not the potential victim, but just a good samaritan.
There’s nothing hypothetical about the story, of course. As John Hinderaker notes, the local media is finally talking about this two-week-old beating at Valleyfair…:
Shakopee police say as the crowd was leaving Valleyfair Amusement Park around midnight on the 4th of July, the victim’s daughter was confronted by two men.
“The 12-year-old daughter was either touched or slapped in the buttocks area,” Scott County Attorney Patrick Ciliberto said. “The father confronted (the men) by yelling at them for what they had done to his daughter,” he added.
Police say the two men called their friends, who were also in the park. The group of seven men and a juvenile then confronted the father.
“They beat him to the ground and then, the evidence that we have, when he was on the ground, they used their feet on him. They were kicking him in the face when he was down,” Ciliberto said.
According to the criminal complaints, the men were stomping on the 41-year-old father as he lay on the ground, unconscious.
He suffered severe head injuries, including a fractured right orbital bone and possible subdural bleeding on the brain. “We don’t know if there are permanent injuries yet,” the County Attorney said.
Of course, nobody was armed – or if they were, they opted not to use their gun to break up the beating. Nothing unusual there; it’s a difficult decision, made all the harder by the disdain in which the local officialdom holds citizens who defend themselves or other citizens from the depraved.
In 1994, after a crazed loner killed a Saint Paul police officer, a citizen – and expert marksman – had a clear shot at the murderer. He hesitated – because he feared that he’d be prosecuted by then-Ramsey-County Attorney Mark Foley, known (as is his successor, current occupant Susan Gaertner) for his hatred of law-abiding citizens with guns. So he shot instead to mark the car – and did it with such accuracy that he was able to tell the police forensics lab exactly where to find the bullet, later on. If only he’d felt empowered to do the same with the murderer’s head; the madman went on to murder another policeman later that day. The citizen was right to be worried; Foley did try find some reason to prosecute. The Saint Paul police made it known to Foley that, since the citizen had tried to save a cop, they would not cooperate with any attempt to prosecution.
Would he have gotten the same treatment had he decided to help a typical citizen?
Like someone who had tried to draw on this lot…:
The six adults charged and held in jail are Devondre Evans-Lewis, Andrew Shannon, Darris Evans, Terry Arnold, Derry Evans, and Anthony Gildersleeve.
…and their two “juvenile” accomplices?
Eight “men” who put an innocent man in the hospital, possibly with permanent brain damage? “Men” who could have killed the victim?
We don’t know. It’s all gray area.
The DFL wants to keep it that way. They want you, the law-abiding citizen, to feel out of your depth when trying to keep the forces of barbarity at bay when they are tearing civilization apart in your face. They call it “vigilante justice”. When we try to change the laws to put the average citizen on firmer ground, they lie through their teeth to scare the uninformed (who are uninformed precisely because that’s the way they want it).
Feel helpless?
Feel angry?
Good. You should.
You should turn your anger on everyone who voted against Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill. At the polls only, of course.
You should turn your anger on Citizens for a “Safer” Supine Minnesota, the lying racist orcs who want to keep the laws just as they are – because they value criminal lives more than they value yours. But only rhetorically.
You should turn your anger on the lying hacks in the bought-and-paid-for media who play along with CSM’s propaganda, who give it unquestioned play while understanding neither the laws, the proposals for change, nor any of their ramifications (beyond what’s fed to them by their benefactors). But only by repudiating their lies.
And save some anger for the alleged perps. Because they are out on bail.
And here’s praying that, if every last one of them doesn’t suddenly come to Jesus (or whomever) and beg forgiveness for trying to destroy a man and his family, that the next man they try to destroy can respond meaningfully – with half a dozen shots to the chest.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Yup.
July 17th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Well said. Best post on 2nd amendment yet! Let’s direct the anger productively for once and address liberal carry policy that causes scum to not fear consequences.
These links might be fixed:
… , Andrew Shannon, … , Terry Arnold, Derry Evans, and Anthony Gildersleeve.
http://pa.courts.state.mn.us/CaseSearchResults.aspx?SearchLinkIndex=1
Let’s address it at the polls. It’s crazy that you can’t defend someone without worrying about Ramsey county prosecutors going after YOU!
July 17th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
It’s funny how you have to take pains to remind the Mitchketeers not to go out and physically brutalize law-abiding citizens and legislators who happen to disagree with them.
July 17th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Nah. It’s sad that, were Mitch not to be explicit that when he’s talking about retribution, he’s talking about what we ought to be doing in the voting booth, the deliberately dishonest would make accusations that he was advocating something unlawful. Much better that all he has to put up with are vapid, jejeune and gormless suggestions that it’s necessary for him to do so lest folks reading this do something unlawful and immoral, as opposed to something lawful and proper.
July 17th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Oh, cute! Tim picked up “Mitchketeers” from Clownie. Does that make Tim an apprentice clown? Or a natural?
July 17th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
You guys have to read Power Line/’s commentary on the Valley Fair assualt. Shows how the blogs are miles ahead of old media.
July 17th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
zestro: in this case, of course, somebody defending himself and/or his family at Valleyfair would have no fear whatsoever of rabid, politically ambitious prosecutors of RamseyCo; Valleyfair is located in Scott County, and somebody defending himself and/or his family at Valleyfair would only have to worry about rabid, politically ambitious Scott County prosecutors.
July 17th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
A linky….
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/07/021019.php
July 17th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
If, as many are suggesting, the victim is of a different race than these dolts, the perps will be claiming racial incitement very soon.
Joel, care to comment on the likelihood of a bystander who tried to intervene to defend the victim, then had to draw and shoot to defend himself getting charged in a similar situation?
July 17th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Nerdbert: Hennepin or Ramsey: 90% (I’m optimistic, today; it would have been 100% when Amy the K was the CA); good chance of acquittal (or dismissal), with a good attorney. Otter Tail: 1%; excellent chance of acquittal.
We just don’t have any — as far as I, with expert help, can find — case law on defense of others, and how the appeals courts are going to apply 609.06 and 609.065 is a crapshoot.
In the one defense of others case I know about, the Good Guy was initially charged with a felony — reckless discharge in city limits; he fired a warning shot into the ground to deter an attack against himself and his family against; the perps’ retribution for interfering — but the case was settled. HennCo; post-Amy.
July 18th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Let me interrupt the ‘lets kill us some black dudes’ fantasies here, but can someone explain how a situation where one guy is dead is better than a situation where one guy is beaten.
July 18th, 2008 at 3:35 am
“You and your kids are out for a day of fun at Valleyfair.
Some dirtball cops a feel of your daughter.
You go to try to set him straight.
He calls for a bunch of his friends.
They mean to do you harm. Lots and lots of it. Eight teenagers and twentysomethings, jacked up on misplaced testosterone.”
You’re almost there, but if you want to get your “Dirty Harry Returns” script looked at, you’ll need a couple more elements:
The thugs torture and rape your daughter right in front of your eyes, leaving her in a permanent coma.
The gang is arrested and charged, but a liberal judge lets them all go cause the cop didn’t have his shoe tied when he read them their rights.
You stalk the gang, one by one, and kill them in unusual ways.
Also, you are a lady and smoking hot.
July 18th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Wow – red-letter day for defamation!
It’s funny how you have to take pains to remind the Mitchketeers not to go out and physically brutalize law-abiding citizens and legislators who happen to disagree with them.
What JoelR said. I did it so some half-witted blog-stalker wouldn’t jump up and down like a poo-flinging monkey and go “Mitch Berg calls for gangs of armed vigilantes”.
Let me interrupt the ‘lets kill us some black dudes’ fantasies
Rick,
Where did I talk about “black dudes”?
I didn’t. I left race completely out of it. Indeed, until I two days ago, I had no idea of their race. But I knew about the beating a week ago. I wouldn’t care what race they were.
This is low-rent even by your standards.
here, but can someone explain how a situation where one guy is dead is better than a situation where one guy is beaten.
What, you’re clairvoyant? You can tell by looking at a beating how it’s going to end? What condition the guy is going to be in? Fists and shoes can – and frequently do – kill.
And let’s not be so bloodthirsty, Rick. If one of the good guys pulls a gun, there is (according to Kleck) about a 98% chance the scumbags will run away (although this particular pack of scum had racked up a few “carrying unpermitted weapon” arrests).
And yes, if someone (of any race) dies committing felony assault, in a case of legitimate self-defense, it puts the bug in other scumbags’ heads; attacking law-abiding people can end your worthless life right now.
You’re only pissed because violent scumbags are a key DFL constituency. Whatever their race.
July 18th, 2008 at 7:55 am
We just don’t have any — as far as I, with expert help, can find — case law on defense of others, and how the appeals courts are going to apply 609.06 and 609.065 is a crapshoot.
609.05 sez (emphasis mine):
“The intentional taking of the life of another is not authorized by section 609.06, except when necessary in resisting or preventing an offense which the actor reasonably believes exposes the actor or another to great bodily harm or death, or preventing the commission of a felony in the actor’s place of abode.”
Seems pretty clear to me.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Foot,
It does seem clear.
But – as is beaten into ones’ head in carry permit class – you can expect a zealous county attorney to try to attack the reasonableness of your belief.
In the case of the guy who shot the cop-killer’s car in Saint Paul in ’94, Tom Foley’s office spent four days picking at the guy’s “reasonableness”, trying to find SOME grounds to charge him, until the cops said “Look, Tom – he was reasonable. Drop it”.
Which, to go back to Valley Fair, would have been great news, had the 12 year old girl been an undercover cop.
Just civilians? You’re taking some chances.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Oops. that cite should read “609.065”.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Mitch,
Joel’s comment didn’t address the reasonableness of the belief. It related to the defense of others. The statute is unambiguous on that point.
As to the reasonableness of the belief that some third party is in danger of death or great bodily harm, that’s a fact-based question and guidance on that element can be found in any case passing on that point, even if the person prosecuted in the case was defending himself. Overzealous assnozzle CAs notwithstanding.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:31 am
guidance on that element can be found in any case passing on that point,
Of which, as Joel (with help from someone who, er, knows the turf) points out, there is very little.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t disagree. I’m just in no hurry to be a test case.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Perhaps – and this is just a guess – there is so little case law on that point because the statute is so unambiguous.
As for the reasonableness of belief in defense of self, there is plenty:
State v. Johnson, 2006, 719 N.W.2d 619
State v. Richardson, 2003, 670 N.W.2d 267
Case law in defense of another:
State v. Granroth, 1972, 294 Minn. 491, 200 N.W.2d 397.
State v. Dick, App.1988, 419 N.W.2d 828
Of course, in all these cases, the defendant claiming self defense was originally convicted, and I think in all these cases (or all but 1) the . You don’t normally get appeals on aquitals. However,
July 18th, 2008 at 8:51 am
What the hell just happened there? Comment got cut off. Finishing:
However, these cases are still instructive as they indicate which sorts of fact patterns will NOT help the defendant. And they can be valuable to distinguish the circumstances of the pending case against them. Those make for pretty powerful arguments.
July 18th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Foot: you’re absolutely right; the statute is unambiguous. The problem is that, when we get to actual cases, stuff happens that seems to conflict with the statute. Where, for example, in either statute, do you find an obligation to retreat? It isn’t there; it’s a (perhaps not entirely unreasonable) construction of “necessary.”
How’s it going to play out in real life? About the only safe prediction is: yucko.
A few other things: Granroth is unpublished. Whatever it is, it isn’t precedent. (It’s also another of the (*&)(*& driveway cases. I hate those.) I know I looked at Dick — and at Johnson — at some point (cue cheap jokes ), but don’t remember anything about it.
July 18th, 2008 at 10:11 am
“…explain how a situation where one guy is dead is better than a situation where one guy is beaten.”
Fairly simple: if the mythical dead guy was trying to beat someone to death for having the gall to keep his daughter from being groped by a stranger.
It doesn’t take calculus.
July 18th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Unpublished opinions can be used as persuasive precedent in the absence of anything else on point.
I just threw those cites out after a very cursory search. I bet if I looked harder I could find a bunch more.
So you’re saying you don’t know Dick then?
(Sorry. I had to get that joke in before Clown did.)
July 18th, 2008 at 10:56 am
True story:
Tom Maddox is an SF writer of fairly minor import. His major professional accomplishment, from this remove, is that he hangs out with his buddy, William Gibson, of (deserved, even though I don’t care for it) Neuromancer fame, who he, well, kind of worships.
Back in the day, he was a frequent infestation, err, presence on Usenet, promoting Gibson (pbuh) in every context.
Then one day, some guy writes in and asks something to the effect of “Which came first, Gibson’s Neuromancer or the movie Bladerunner?” Which is kind of a sore point for Gibson worshippers; legend (and, for all I know, the truth) has it is that Gibson walked out of the movie, realizing that it was thematically awfully close to the book — Neuromancer — that he was working on, and not wanting to be influenced.
Well, Maddox couldn’t just answer that question either simply (the movie came first), or with a longer explanation (see above) and shot back “Johnny Mnemonic,” and early Gibson short story. God help it if Gibson (pbuh) hadn’t come first, after all.
Which led me to do a fair thing and an unfair thing.
The fair thing was to point out that, by that standard, what really came first was the Philip K. Dick novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” which was the basis for the movie, and a strong influence on the whole cyberpunkie movement that Gibson (pbuh) is famous for, much as that discomfits the cyberpunk fanboys, who are apparently of the opinion that Gibson (pbuh) sprang, fully-formed, from the forehead of Zeus, or something.
Which I did.
And then I added, just a bit unfairly: “This only goes to show that Mr. Maddox doesn’t know his Gibson from his Dick.”
He was not overly pleased.
July 18th, 2008 at 11:32 am
but can someone explain how a situation where one guy is dead is better than a situation where one guy is beaten.
The moral relativism displayed here is just staggering.
It’s better that a completely innocent victim is maimed, possibly forever, than the attacker loses his life because of his poor (CRIMINAL) choices?
People like you scare me far worse than the criminals who beat this innocent man.
July 18th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Joelr: What is the (pbuh) thing after every mention of Gibson’s name?
July 18th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I’m kinda jerking Tom’s chain, by suggesting, perhaps a touch unfairly, that he’d be more comfortable reading this if the standard abbreviation (pbuh for Peace Be Upon Him) that Muslims put after mentioning Muhammed’s name goes after Gibson’s.
It’s really substitution. Given the reverence that many on the loony left have for He Who Must Not Be Middlenamed, I’ve been tempted to do the same thing when mentioning the Obamessiah, but that might be argued that I was suggesting that Obama is a Muslim when, as we all know, he was for twenty years a member of, heaven help us, a nutsy Christian church.
July 18th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
What is the (pbuh) thing after every mention of Gibson’s name?
peace be upon him
Muslims say it reverentially after saying Mohammed’s name.
As such, joelr was taking a dig at the lofty status accorded Gibson by Maddox and Gibson worshippers.
(In fairness, I think Neuromancer is one of the greatest works in science fiction, and along with the other two form an excellent trilogy.)
July 18th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Muslims say it reverentially after saying Mohammed’s name.
As I do after saying Reagan(pbuh)’s name.
Well, sometimes.
July 18th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Y’know, I had to come back to these two comments:
It’s funny how you have to take pains to remind the Mitchketeers not to go out and physically brutalize law-abiding citizens and legislators who happen to disagree with them.
Do you actually read this blog, or do you (like, apparently, Penigma) just look for things to yap about?
I’ve noted many, many times in this blog – with citations – that the law-abiding carry permit holder is two orders of magnitude less likely to commit a crime than the average citizen.
So it’s safe to say that no, I am not nervous about the “mitchketeers”. As JoelR and I both noted above, it’s more a matter of the selective misquoting from people like…
…well, you.
And Rick:
Let me interrupt the ‘lets kill us some black dudes’ fantasies here,
Do you have any idea how corrosively stupid that crack was? How very, very destructive that sort of crap is to an actual discussion?
Tossing the “race” card in there poisons the well; it might give you that temporary shot of self-righteousness, but it doesn’t do a whole lot for, y’know, discussion.
Leaving aside that you have it backwards – the ideological roots of gun control are fundamentally racist, naturally.
July 18th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I’m trying to think of a good thing about Rick trying to spin advocacy for self-defense as racism. Not making a lot of headway.
There’s not a lot that’s good about the underlying notion; it encourages people — both black and white — to try to solve the wrong problem, and that trick never works. (Decent, law-abiding folks in the black community are disproportionately the victims of violent crime, and that’s visited upon them, disproportionately, by criminals in the black community. Neither of those problems are going to be solved by anybody — squishy liberal white guys, included — hollering “Racism!” It’s an utterly safe bet that, say, the majority of the victims of the Evans family are black; dealing with that by worrying about bigotry among white folks is kind of like looking for the housekeys you dropped in your front yard on the next street over, just because you think that the light is better there.)
I guess about the only good thing I can think of is the strong likelihood that basically nobody buys Rick’s spin; folks who have that delusion got it elsewhere.
July 18th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Do you have any idea how corrosively stupid that crack was?
Rick has no standards of morality. He as much as admitted that in the discussion on Snow. A loathsome, consumed being, I’m afraid.
Joel, thanks for the info. That’s about what I expected. In short, if you attempt to help anywhere near the metro you’re setting yourself up in front of a buzz saw. You may be in the right, you may do the right thing, but you’re going to pay for it in terms of your time, your reputation, and money for a lawyer.
And folks wonder why I view a trip inside the 694/494 loop as a trip into hostile territory.
How very, very destructive that sort of crap is to an actual discussion?
July 18th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
…I’ve been tempted to do the same thing when mentioning the Obamessiah…
Joel, the correct citation in rightist blogs is Barack (NMN) Obama.
October 25th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
[…] organisms that stomped and kicked a dad half to death for objecting to their groping his daughter at Valleyfair last year is finally going […]