should he be charged?
 

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/11/justic...Most+Recent%29

Sheriff: Father kills man sexually abusing his daughter

"(CNN) -- A Texas father caught a man sexually assaulting his 4-year-old daughter and punched him in the head repeatedly, killing him, authorities said."

Probably depends on how many times he hit the guy... 10 or less, no problem... more than 10... maybe... more than 20... definitely.

With info provided I would not charge him.

How many daughters do you have?

Take the emotion out and look at the law. If he did enough to stop the attack and protect his daughter, no charges... if he did a little more, probably no charges given the situation... if he did a LOT more, charges...

If you take the emotion out of it and look at the law, he should be charged regardless. The whole point of this thread is based on emotion: do you think he should be chaged.

I don't care if he came back 3 weeks later and finished the job. I woudn't charge him if it were up to me.

The question was "Should he be charged?". Nothing was mentioned about the legality of his actions. At least to me, it appeared the OP wanted to know our opinions of what he did and the following consequences. If it was about the law then all you would have to do is look at the legal writings that applied.

Either way, it would be hard to find a jury that would convict a father who protected his daughter.

He should get a statue and a medal...

Pedophiles can't be rehabilitated...

Not really. You have the right to protect yourself and others... it's the point in which the threat is nullified and you keep on going which is in question. I don't know if he should be charged... not enough info... which is my point.

And that's why we're all glad you're not in a position of legal authority.

It's a legal question... if it wasn't a legal question, the word 'charged' shouldn't have been included. It wasn't 'did he do the right thing?' or 'should we throw this guy a parade?' it was a legal question by definition. My opinion was provided based upon my rudimentary knowledge of the law.

It's in Texas, can't they by law kill someone for trespassing? This is way past trespassing.

Should he be charged, yes........But the court will find him temporarily insane anyway, and dismiss the charges......so who cares.

If you think your life is in danger.

Once it no longer is (like when the dude you're pummeling is obviously out for the count), then what?

If you're going by the letter of the law, there are vastly better resources the OP could have polled than TWF.

I think by "we're all glad" you may be speaking for a good number of people that agree with me. :lol

Yep.

Read Trip's answer. He was simply protecting others.

I think OSP was just reverting back to his Valley Girl days.

"So I'm all..."

"And she's all..."

"And we're all..."

Right... which was my point.

Ok, so the guy busts in and sees his daughter being fondled... he grabs the guy and tosses him to the ground, punching him a couple of times and the dude dies... He protected his daughter. Now, let's say the guy does EXACTLY the same thing, except he hits the guy literally 100x in the face with a brick... he protected his daughter and committed manslaughter. Simple.

So the law should be biased toward people that are strong. Got it.

:didntdo:

Don't care either way, statue + medal = win

Yeh dude what happened was shitty that the guy died, as a kiddie raper, he deserved to spend a few years in jail getting his ass pounded. But the guy did nothing wrong and deserves a handshake and some free counseling for any remorse he gets from killing the guy. He was defending a child and did not intend to kill the guy, oops, sorry, next story.

shit, I would have pummeled him, took him to work so they could revive him just so I could do it again.

Not all things legally are cut and dry and have to be taken within the context of what happened. had thsi been a bar fight or soemthing yo uknow damn well a guy would get charged.

Some guy in NYC was just killed protecting a friend in a domestic dispute so it can go extreme in both ways. The guy in tx will probably walk and when they catch the guy in NYC hopefully they will nail him to the wall.

There is both a legal and a moral question and by all accounts he needed killing

And, if he would have pulled him off and shot him in the face?

I'm with Trip, statue and metal much more than jail time.

In fact, might be less subjective if he would have just shot the guy.

Agreed, sadly all the pedobears are usualy segregated in prison. Throw em in with they ayrian nation guys nad let them sort it out.

Fuck the pedo. Should have gotten a red hot rod and shoved it in his pee hole.

Beating someone to death has a much more visceral quality to it, which leads to a much better "Justifiable Rage" defense.

"I saw this guy on my daughter, and I just went out of control".

Case closed.

No DA in his right mind, is going to charge this guy with anything more than involuntary manslaughter, with a recommendation of one year's probation.

JC

Even Identifying him as a Pedo (or RIpper here in the Northeast) is considered a hate crime once he is incarcerated

I do bet they find out and out the guy one way or another.

I have two daughters...

He should receive a metal and a parade.

As a question of law, it would matter whether he was already carrying the brick when he walked in on the act, in progress. If he stopped to pick one up, then it shows forethought. As he beat the guy to death with his hands, not so much. As AMJ says no DA is going to want to go forward with such a case, if the medical evidence proves out. Certainly not if he has a hope of re-election.

Not necessarily... It's a matter of excessive force... anything beyond what was necessary to stop the attack could be considered excessive. Again, it's not clearly defined...

In the case of imminent threat, the 'excessive force' issue is frequently ignored. Especially so in cases, in which no weapon was used.

Have you ever been in a situation in which all reason left you, and you completely lost control? I have. It's a frightening thing to know that you could have killed someone. You aren't thinking about appropriate force. You aren't thinking about anything. You're simply, instinctively trying to erase something.

I'm sure the father would be proud to take jail time for what he did. Sometimes you just "gotta do what ya gotta do". Consequences be damned.

Not sure if it can be determined, but wht if the first blow was also the fatal blow? I am assuming thius guy died of bleeding into his brain and it could only take one shot to shear a blood vessel, esp if hes a little older.

Round and around we go...

If he hit the guy once and the guy died, no charges. He was defending his daughter. If he hit the guy 200 times and the guy died, from shot one or shot 200, charged. He defended his daughter until the point she was out of danger then went beyond that. There's gray area that can be argued, but the article doesn't acknowledge the level in which the guy was beaten.

Exactly.

Look we're all going to say "I would have killed him too, fuck it" but that doesn't mean there aren't possible consequences. Life isn't fair sometimes, man up and get a lawyer, you will probably get off anyway, so who cares.

Another point is: How do you know when to stop hitting? The object is to stop the threat. To me that means the threat is no longer able to defend itself or do anymore harm. To me that would mean unconscious. How would you know if someone's unconscious or dead. You might think you just knocked them out and then go to call the cops but, it turns out your last blow killed them. Lots of variables in this one.
Funny thing is if he had shot and killed the guy, I don't think anyone would question his actions but, since he was more personal it appears a different set of rules apply.

Dude is a murderer IMO

I'm curious, then, what you feel your response would have been in the same situation.

I can answer that... I'd be a murderer too.

Certainly, under the simplest definition of the word, anyone who directly kills someone else is a murderer. The question at hand, in this case, was whether or not it was a justifiable murder.

Kaneman's brief declaration was open to interpretation. But if he feels the murder in this case was unjustified, I'd be interested to know what response he would consider justified.

:?: That is the opposite I expected from you

That would be incorrect. You can be a killer, without being a murderer. The two terms are similar, but not synonymous. That is the case for both dictionary and legal definitions of the words.

I knew I would have problems as soon as the word "definition" left my keyboard. :lol:

My point is, leaving aside the moral and legal implications of the word (which is problematic, since at least half of the definitions in the dictionary I referenced use the law as context), one might say "That man is a murderer," even if the "murderer" is not legally culpable (totally looked that one up too). So when Kaneman said "Dude is a murderer IMO," he may or may not have been making a statement regarding the father's ethical or legal guilt.

At any rate, it seems the world may never know.

If this wasn't in the News section I might have gone on to talk about the mistranslation of the not-to-be-named-here book's 'prime directives' too :lol: