Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Self Defense or Murder

Jerome Ersland, the pharmacist convicted of killing an attempted robber after he'd already shot the kid and rendered him unconscious, has been sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. It seems this has a lot of people in a tissy who say that he was justified to defend himself. I would agree with that, were he actually defending himself. But let's look at the facts of this matter.

  • Two suspects entered his store and attempted to rob it.
  • One of the suspects had a pistol and was threatening Ersland and his staff.
  • Ersland defended his staff and wounded the second suspect in the process with a shot to the head.
  • The headshot was not fatal.
  • Ersland then chased the armed suspect from the store, firing two more shots as the kid ran.
At this point, the threat to both himself, his staff and his store had passed. The most dangerous suspect was running from the scene, the other suspect was subdued and unconscious and the police were on their way. If there's a fear that the kid may wake up and either try something or try to get away, then you lock him in the storage closet until the cops show up. This should have ended right there, except:

  • Ersland returned to his store and retrieved a second firearm.
  • Ersland then went to the subdued, unconscious and unarmed suspect and shot him five times in the chest.
This is no longer self-defense, this was a clear case of murder. To say otherwise is intellectually dishonest.

I could write a long essay on the morality and legality of this, but when the old saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words then you have to wonder how many words is a rather graphic security camera's video worth?

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