That post was deleted because it was “off topic”, I found it searching for the shooting that happened in TX as well where a man was shot, with a 243 IIRC, by the home owner as he was fleeing with a TV from the home. I couldn’t find it in a quick search but it he was over 100 yards away but inside 200 and the shooter was no billed by a grand jury, didn’t even make it to trial.
I suppose that’s off topic as well because it’s obviously not a defense shooting but points out that your not going to go to prison even if you are not making choices many would think are based on sound judgment as long as the law allows. No matter the distance.
The law as written is why the man was not convicted, despite how the prosecution presented its “intension”.
jmorris,
A no bill turns on a lot of factors but grand jury transcripts are not released.
For a counterexample, TX man shoots a guy with a pickax trying to break into a storage building and goes back to bed. Charged with murder. https://fox17online.com/2019/09/30/...-and-went-back-to-bed-police-say/?share=email
And this from Texas Law Shield, https://www.uslawshield.com/defend-property-texas/
Money quote,
"Texas juries will have a three-step process to decide if you were legally justified.
- Step 1: The jury must find that you were justified under Texas Penal Code section 9.41 to use force to stop a trespasser or an interference with your property.
- Step 2: The jury must decide whether you had a reasonable belief that deadly force was immediately necessary to prevent a perpetrator from fleeing immediately after committing a burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime.
- Step 3: The jury must find that when you used deadly force to protect property, you reasonably believed it could not have been protected or recovered by other means; or using something less than deadly force would expose you to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury."
The average cost to defend someone and get a no-bill can run about $10000, go to trial after indictment, $50-100,000 or much more depending on need for expert witnesses, jury selection experts, forensic testing, etc. For the most part, you do NOT want someone unfamiliar with defending a self defense case as a lawyer.
Now, shooting a burglar over a tv that can be replaced for a couple of hundred dollars does not seem like a good cost-benefit analysis.
I can buy about 5 years of homeowners insurance versus getting no billed which covers me for other things, and decades of property insurance for what a criminal attorney would charge to represent me at a trial. Then, there is the loss of expected future earnings at risk and risks of ptsd, possible harassment in the community, etc. Mas Ayoob calls it the Mark of Cain even if you are justified.
As a result, even if I lived in Texas, I'd let anyone not threatening myself or my loved ones go with whatever ill gotten gains they had. Not worth shooting over it to me.