Saturday, September 17, 2005
Picking the Right Defense
The Hmong hunter, who decided to hell with deer, let's hunt men, and killed six out of nine he shot at, was convicted of six counts of first degree murder, three attempted murder and will get the maximum for murder in Wisconsin (where there is no death penalty), life in prison.
If you're going to murder a group of people and then defame them at trial (i.e. call them racists and attempted murderers) you can't leave anyone alive to tell the truth. But if it's too big a group, killing them all seems too much like murder for self defense to fly. As it didn't here.
I was shot at by immigrants while hunting more than a decade ago--it was their over-eagerness to kill elk, not a conscious decision to try to kill me, that sent the rounds snapping past my ear. Cold comfort there; and for a second or two, as I low crawled to behind a tree, I seriously considered returning fire. That would have been the wrong decision.
I was worried that the jury might buy the self defense theory here (despite four of the victims being shot in the back), so it's good to see justice done.
UPDATE: The defense tried to depict the murders as the result of hatred and racism by the victims. They got it half right. The source of the killing rage was indeed hatred and racism BY THE DEFENDANT, Chai Soua Vang. His inability even to begin to explain during cross-examination his statements, after the killings, that the victims deserved to die, sealed his fate.
If you're going to murder a group of people and then defame them at trial (i.e. call them racists and attempted murderers) you can't leave anyone alive to tell the truth. But if it's too big a group, killing them all seems too much like murder for self defense to fly. As it didn't here.
I was shot at by immigrants while hunting more than a decade ago--it was their over-eagerness to kill elk, not a conscious decision to try to kill me, that sent the rounds snapping past my ear. Cold comfort there; and for a second or two, as I low crawled to behind a tree, I seriously considered returning fire. That would have been the wrong decision.
I was worried that the jury might buy the self defense theory here (despite four of the victims being shot in the back), so it's good to see justice done.
UPDATE: The defense tried to depict the murders as the result of hatred and racism by the victims. They got it half right. The source of the killing rage was indeed hatred and racism BY THE DEFENDANT, Chai Soua Vang. His inability even to begin to explain during cross-examination his statements, after the killings, that the victims deserved to die, sealed his fate.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 1:46 PM 
