Rare Robbery Case Brings Cries of Racism

If three men are hitting my helpless son in the head with a baseball bat hard enough to cause brain damage after having broken into my home and I have a gun in my hand, I will do everything in my power to end their lives. This scenario makes it completely justified to kill these men. Perhaps, a long time later, when the son is out of harms way and the criminals are not moving, not armed (with even so much as a baseball bat), and are completely restrained (something in this scenario that was only achievable by death), all that would be necessary is making sure that they are completely incapable of doing anything but sit there while the son is helped. In this situation, the only way to come anywhere near accomplishing this was to shoot them. It's not like they were angels that didn't have it coming, either.

If any of them survive, the survivor is first of all all responsible for attempted murder of the son; also, if anyone dies (including the accomplices), the individual is also responsible for felony murder--if you commit a felony and it results in any deaths in any way at all, you are guilty of felony murder, period. The homeowner did the right thing--if he didn't use his gun he would have been doing the wrong thing. The survivor is a criminal and a murderer that deserves the full enforcement of the law.

I suppose this California act was a law with a very similar concept and because both the felony murder law and this act were violated, the prosecutors had to determine which would be a more appropriate law to use here, and they deemed this act as more appropriate. Either way, this or felony murder would result in essentially the same sort of punishment.

That being said--no matter what race anyone is--every action taken here is completely justified (except the actions of the three men that committed the crimes, of course). This would be the right course of action to take regardless of any racial scenario. Being that there is absolutely no other reason to believe that any racist actions were taken, it is absolutely absurd to claim that their actions were based on racism--the actions were based purely on logical reasoning!

It is disgusting that the NAACP sees a group of people doing the right thing and decides to use it to pretend that there is racism, just because one of the parties involved was African-American. This, if anything, is an example of racism from those that support these ridiculous claims against the group of people (the white majority) that they are pretending are racists. In addition, most of those who are making these claims probably know full well that there was no racism involved; of course they would never admit this, but since crying racism will only help their cause they have no reason not to.

People pretend that racism is no longer widely accepted. It is, as can be seen very clearly right here; there is a significant amount of racism against majorities just as a backlash to the minority racism that used to exist.

At the very least, it doesn't sound legal.

I'm not sure about the "Provocative Act", but in almost every state in the nation, if you commit a felony, and as a result of your crime, somebody dies, you are a murderer.

Examples of this include the deaths of accomplices, stealing a stop sign which causes a fatal accident, robbing a store with an accomplice, even if you did not know that the accomplice was armed or intended to kill, just about anything.

They tried to use the same thing (I don't remember if it was successful or not) on the guy that was in the police chase that caused two news helicopters to crash, killing everyone aboard.

I think it could be applied in some cases, but overall it seems to be abused.

You know Bill, I agree that it seems erronious to additionally charge Renato with murder, but saying that the "clowns" deserved to be brutally shot in the back and killed is just as erroneous - wouldn't you agree?

No, mike it's not. If more robbers got shot to death, there would be less robbery. These clowns deserved what they got. Bravo to the homeowner.

Edmonds' stepson, Dale Lafferty, suffered brain damage from the baseball bat beating he took during the melee. The 19-year-old lives in a rehabilitation center and can no longer feed himself.

I see everyone has failed to mention that little part. These 3 were not innocents, they were ruffians.

Phaedrus,

Should we also be allowed to shoot jaywalkers? There'd certainly be less jaywalking if they knew there was a chance they'd be shot to death for breaking the law.

Clearly, those dead brought this upon themselves, but death is not a deserved punishment for robbery. There is no death penalty for robbers. The homeowner, I'm sure, would be happy to have those two boys back alive and sitting in jail right now, rather than go through life knowing he had been put in a position where he ended two lives.

Uh, Mike, no I would not.

akj, you conveniently left out the part where they beat the homeowner's stepson, so much so, that he can't even feed himself and has to live in a rehabilitation center. If someone comes into someone's house, they should not be surprised when they get shot. You can NOT compare B&E to jaywalking.

Phaedrus,

If more robbers got shot to death, there would be less robbery.

You said it, not me. Jaywalking is not breaking and entering, no, but neither is breaking and entering killing someone. I can just as easily compare the two if you think that robbers deserve to be shot. You didn't qualify your statement with "robbers who commit assault" should be shot. If you did, I'd still tell you that assault does not equal murder.

Don't get me wrong here. If I had a child being beaten with a baseball bat by three men, I'd do anything and everything in my power to end it. I could even kill them if that was the only way out.

That said, more robbers getting shot most likely will not result in less robberies. It will result in more heavily armed robbers and, more likely than not, more dead innocent people, killed in their own homes.

I would not go so far as to say that they "deserved" to die, but I also wouldn't say they were killed "erroneously." If someone broke into my home, I would not hesitate to kill them in order to protect myself and my family from a potentially dangerous intruder. Not as a means to "punish" them or "give them what they deserve," but as a means of self-preservation.

On this, we agree. The article isn't clear on where the two mopes were actually shot. If they were still in the house it matters not a whit that they were shot in the back. As the old saying goes, "Better twelve men judging me, than six carrying me."

Bill, I have no problem at all saying that I totally agree with you on this.

I don't agree with the law (that we have here in Alabama, I don't know about CA) that you can only shoot if the home intruder is inside your house. If a guy is in your home, armed, and you shoot him with a shotgun, it is legal. If you blow him out the window, you could be guilty of murder. I think that if someone breaks into your home, causes physical harm on anyone, and tries to steal your property, you should be able to chase him as far as needed to make him pay.

I think these guys got what they had coming to them, and the one charged with murder should have died if he didn't want to face punishment. It's not up to him to pick what he is charged with, and he deserves whatever charge he gets. It may not be fair, but what he did wasn't fair to anyone either. He's not being called a racist, but people want to claim racism due to his charges? If he were white, we wouldn't even hear about this.

That's true enough on the racial angle. Here in VA I think the intruder has to be inside the house but I'm still not sure even that's enough to justify deadly force. Generally, as a legal principle you're only entitled in this day and time to employ deadly force if you yourself are confronted with deadly force, i.e., you can't shoot somebody because they punched you in the mouth.

hmmm... a rarely used law to keep an aggravated robbery suspect in prison for life and expose him to the death penalty? 20 years is not enough?

for that of kind of crime, I don't feel 20 years is enough. He wasn't doing it because he was starving, or homeless, he did it because he wanted to take weed and money from someone else. He probably picked the house because they figured a white family would be an easy target... turns out the only targets were his homeboys. They beat a young man with a baseball ball, at best that is attempted murder. I don't pity him for facing the death penalty. And I think what THEY did was racist.

Yeah, let's just kill people to show that killing is bad. That makes sense!

I agree, it doesn't make sense, but it's how the country works. That's a different debate, one filled with that same one-liner. The death penalty has existed since the beginning of civilization, and I doubt it will ever go away.

The only civilizations still using capital punishment are far from those I'd consider big on human rights. Nice crowd to be in, I guess.

Yeah, let's just kill people to show that killing is bad. That makes sense!

According to the article,

Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.

i agree, but he should at least be charged with a hate crime (since the stupid things exist)

Well, we don't know it was a hate crime. Apparently at least the kids knew each other so it wasn't a bunch of blacks ganging up on a white family because they were white.

Hate crime laws are a tough call. In my opinion, they should only be used when there is clear evidence that the crime was indeed about hate.

Turning this situation into a hate crime would most likely promote racism.

I'm not sure I completely understand this law, but to me first-degree murder is a bit of a stretch. If we were talking about criminally negligent homicide, that would make more sense.

In most states Murder in the First Degree is not only premeditated murder: it also encompasses any death caused while committing a felony. That appears to be the doctrine invoked here, although it does seem strange that they're doing it when his accomplices are the only ones dead.

Sounds to me like the beating victim must be in really bad shape. It may be that his injuries are so severe that they hauled out the law books and tried to see if they could charge him under every statute in it. That's probably enough to explain the situation.

Even if not, it would have been a hate crime, I am sure of that

hate crimes are those that go beyond the person affected by the actual act, to intimidate an entire community. Which is why say, hanging a black man is a hate crime, whereas doing the same to w white man isn't. Whites have not historically been kept back and intimidated by black people.

So if a white man is hung by a black person (or mob) it isn't a hate crime because historically blacks don't harass white people? If it is racially motivated, it's still a hate crime. What does history have to do with a current murder? I don't trust hate crimes, because they add more to a crime than needs to be there. If a mob of whites kill a black man, it is murder any way you cut it. An extra law doesn't do anything to prevent the crime, or teach lessons to others. The jury would more than likely hand out a harsh sentence without the hate crime bill. All it does is make it so that when someone kills someone of a different race, we have to spend time wondering if it was a hate crime, which makes no difference until sentencing comes into play. When does a crime against a white person count as a hate crime? It didn't apply when Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom were robbed, kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered by 5 black people. So is it something that white people don't qualify for? That can only go for so many generations until you run out of white people who oppressed blacks, and blacks who were oppressed white people. Then do we count too? racism goes both ways.

Until white people are forced to live for 100s of years as second class citizens and denied participation in society for 100s of years, all this talk of racism and whites seems a bit forced and very silly.

Whites have not historically been kept back and intimidated by black people.

Would you like to go live in an all black neighborhood? Or can I just give you my experiences that include being raped in my bed with my infant daughter asleep next to me and having the black police make fun of me and being told by social workers that I needed to stay in my house and keep my kids in my house because we made of my one neighbor sick to see us? Do you have any idea what it's like for only a few folks to know your name and everyone else to say, "Oh, that white @!$%#". (When, as I've mentioned, I grew up with white sibs who called me an "Indian bastard")

The dominant "race" in any area, no matter the color, is capable of heinous behavior and if whites doing it to blacks is a hate crime, the reverse is also true. Say a black woman comes into my yard and tries to grab my child and then starts beating me when I take the child from her, scratching my face and screeching, "You f**king white @!$%#, you c**t I'm going to kill you". If I did that to her, it would be a hate crime, right? Then her doing it to me is a hate crime.

Personally, I think the idea of "hate crime" is foolish. Any act of violence is a hate crime.

Personally, I think the idea of "hate crime" is foolish.

Quite so. A crime is a crime is a crime. The scumbags who dragged James Byrd behind their truck or the punks who killed Matthew Shepherd could have easily been punished by existing law to the fullest extent of their heinous crimes without going into the malevolent motivations in their twisted hearts and heads.

Personally, I think the idea of "hate crime" is foolish.

Agree with that one !

JonesGirl,

It's ridiculous to say that whites can't be the victim of racism. I'm not going to be denied my rights to not be discriminated against because of what white people 2 generations before my time. I've never had any slaves, I've never segregated anyone, and neither did my family. I am not a victim of "white guilt" because I have never done anything to anyone of any other color. But if someone discriminates against me because I'm white, then it is still racism. Don't try to preach about second-class citizens when you live in and support a country that still places people in that category. My family fought for civil rights in it's "birthplace" (Montgomery, AL... 49.6% black, 47.7% white) where we remain to this day. White people have the same right to stick for their own discrimination as any other race does, without it being "white supremacy" or anything of that nature. Your argument might have held water 60 years ago, but not in my lifetime. I've never seen a "Colored Only" water fountain, or "white only" bathrooms. And I bet you haven't either, so don't try to feed me that @!$%#. We're all equal. We all have the same opportunity, and we all get shat on by the same system. And I agree with Gwenny, if you don't think white people can be the subject of racism, see what happens when a white family moves into a neighborhood that is primarily made up of another race. People can get away with calling whites "White Devils" or claim they are "held down by the white man" but god forbid a black man get arrested by a white cop in a "white county" and go to prison over a crime he committed, that has got to be racism!

Hate crimes are meant to address situations where the motivation is a hate, they are not meant to set a precedent that killing a black guy is worse than killing a white one. So yes, if a bunch of black men killed a white guy because he was white, they would fall under the charge of a hate crime, and rightfully so.

Your argument might have held water 60 years ago, but not in my lifetime.

That's not even a generation ago. Do you really think that the second the "whites only" signs were taken down, racism ceased to exist? Personally, I think it's seeing a re-emergence with immigration and the war, not to mention the increasingly popular theme that history, majority, power and privilege have no effect on issues like racism, or that racism doesn't actually exist anymore, therefore whites are the most disadvantaged group ever.

No, I don't think racism ended when the "Whites Only" signs were removed, racism will never end 100%. But I don't see how a 25 year old white person should be held to the standards of the whites who actually oppressed the blacks or any other race. WE are not guilty, we had no part in any of that. And a 25 year old black person had no part in it either. So to say that whites can't be victims of racism because of what old, ignorant white people did is insane, and racist. It's OK for white's to be painted in a negative manner, because we did bad things to other people? We are not alone in that. Keep in mind that slaves were not stolen from Africa, they were purchased... most of the time from Africans. The Middle East is full of human rights abuses. As is Africa. As well as Asia. Racism against whites is acceptable as a whole, yet people want to call for an end to racism. That is called hypocrisy. You may call it silly, but I don't live in a predominantly white area, so I know full well that it exists.

You're right. Thanks for the clarification. I did read that as "My son did not murder his childhood friend." - lacking the plurality and assumed it meant the stepson.

I don't think I would be checking ID's at that point, especially in my house..

Thanks for the info, Jcool.