Imagine using force in self-defense and being held in jail for two years as prosecutors attempt to move forward on a murder charge. That’s a potential outcome far more horrible than most folks want to contemplate. However, it happened to not one, but two men involved in a Houston defensive gun use.
Yes, if you scratched your head and though “It’s TEXAS! How can that happen?” Yes, Texas is generally far more understanding about self-defense than the Land of Lincoln. However, headlines can drive charging decisions with prosecutors. And this happened in this case. Don’t think for a minute it couldn’t happen in Illinois.
From TTAG:
As the old saying goes, the wheels of justice turn slowly. Likewise, so do the wheels of injustice, as a self-defense case out of Waco, Texas, recently proved.
This week, the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office dismissed murder charges against two Houston men involved in the self-defense incident at a party near the Baylor University campus, finally determining it was a justifiable homicide. While that was good news to Calvin Nichols Jr., it hardly makes up for the 635 days the man spent locked up in jail while the DA’s office slowly dragged its feet over the case.
According to police reports, on the night in question Nichols and his cousin, Jaytron Damon Scott, were invited to a party attended by a number of Baylor students, including football players. According to partygoers, Joseph Craig Thomas Jr. showed up uninvited and began threatening others with a gun, including a female student who asked him to move his car…
“I don’t know how this case got indicted,” Cantrell told KWTX.com. “This was the clearest self-defense case I have ever seen. And I think the problem is a lot of attorneys and, certainly the people of the community, don’t understand the law of self-defense.”
Cantrell added that since this was never a legitimate murder case, the public shouldn’t be worried about “murderers going free.”
“It scares the public that a murder case got dismissed,” Cantrell said. “This was never a murder case. This was always a justified homicide. In fact, we have the investigating officer at the scene saying six or seven times, ‘Yeah guys, this is a justified homicide here.’”…
Texas attorney Emily Taylor, who specializes in defending self-defense and gun-related cases for Walker & Taylor PLLC in Houston as well as for Texas members of U.S. LawShield, says the case serves as a cautionary tale to citizens who are forced to defend themselves.
“Self-defenders need to be aware that self-defense, defense of others and defense of property are affirmative defenses (in Texas). This means the government is free to arrest you, prosecute you and force you to assert your defense to a jury of your peers,” Taylor says. “We all hope the state does the right thing and declines to arrest the self-defender, but that kind of common sense is, unfortunately, increasingly rare.”
Get concealed carry insurance. It matters far less which vendor you choose than the fact that you’ve got it. No matter the company, you’ll have access to top-shelf legal representation in minutes, not days. All for about $150 – 300ish. Which by the way, is way less than HALF the $650 hourly billing rate of one of the nation’s best criminal defense attorneys who specialize in self-defense cases.
I can’t emphasize this enough. If you fail to plan for legal representation following a defensive use-of-force incident (be it with your car, a gun, your fist or even pepper spray) and think you’ll just take any old public defender to handle your defensive gun use case, you’re already planning to fail.
It cost James Love over $100,000 in attorneys fees to the Johnson Law Group to secure his acquittal on murder charges in Knox County, IL (Galesburg).
It cost another man, Thomas Alva, $50,000 in attorneys fees on the opposite side of the state of win his acquittal in a non-fatal defensive gun use case where GSL Defense Training instructors served as expert witnesses.
A failure to plan should have consequences.
I understand the idea of your statement. However, the thought that the bad guy/gal has more rights or resources provided by the government, is beyond upside down from where we should be.
I know some of you here don’t want to hear from me but do please take it from me that if you defend yourself or others you will be charged by liberal prosecutors. If you have the insurance that will take a load off your shoulders and your mind while you’re going through the terror of a prosecution that doesn’t care about the truth. Look at what they’re doing to Trump.
Someone has done an AI exercise by characterizing the political platform of the modern Democrats and asking AI to describe the historical political parties that that platform would conform to and you should not be surprised by the results. It is those people who are in charge of prosecutions nowadays and they don’t care about the constitution.
If you don’t have concealed carry it may bankrupt you. The amount I had to pay was substantially less than the amounts John describes in this article but it hurt nonetheless.
My brother says that Isis and the Iranian Republic call America great Satan and Israel little Satan and you know they’re not wrong. We used to be the good guy we used to be The Shining City on the hill but we are no longer we are the bad guy and the bad guys are in charge and they don’t like you exercising your rights to self-preservation of life.