Monday, April 28, 2014
Good morning:
The Byron Smith trial resumes this morning. He has decided not to testify. Closing arguments will start soon.
Smith’s soliloquy during the lengthy audio recording of the shootings and their aftermath does not serve him well because he does not appear to be in any distress. Instead, he seems to be narrating an execution with about as much passion as a medical examiner describing an autopsy that he is conducting.
The legal test for self-defense is whether he believed that he was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily harm and whether his belief was reasonable. That is, whether a reasonable person in the same situation would have believed that he had to use deadly force to prevent being killed or suffering great bodily harm.
Since the incident happened inside his home, the law also permitted him to use deadly force, if reasonably necessary to prevent the intruders from committing a felony in his home. Again, the word reasonable means that his decision to use deadly force must be judged by what a reasonable person would have done in the same situation.
Would a reasonable person set an ambush and record it starring himself as the executioner-narrator?
Even if jurors conclude that his initial disabling shots were reasonably necessary, will they conclude that the kill shots to the head from close range were reasonably necessary to prevent them from killing him or seriously injuring him or committing a felony in his home?
He knew they were not armed and he never called 911.
There are two counts and the jury will be instructed to consider each separately. Therefore, it is possible that the jury might find him not guilty of murdering the boy, but guilty of murdering the girl.
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Frederick Leatherman Law Blog 
1000! Wow, congrats to you and Crane Station. Keep up the good work!
Thanks. We did it in about 2.5 years.
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OFF TOPIC:
”If my girl can’t do what I want, I don’t want the girl. I’ll find a girl that will do what I want,” — L.A. Clippers owner and overall piece of dreck Donald Sterling, phone chattin’ with V. Stiviano … at best an opportunistic shakedown artist who deserves no better than a racist reptile like Sterling.
Is there room for these two on Cliven Bundy’s ranch?
I have a new post up on Donald Sterling.
Notice: The jury was excused until tomorrow morning when closing arguments will start. They will be sequestered for the duration of deliberations.
A reasonable jury will convict him of two murders. He’s a danger to himself and others.
Paul Blume @PaulBlume_FOX9 22m
Nick Brady grandfather speaks to reporters at #ByronSmith trial. Whole process has been “brutal” on family. pic.twitter.com/KovcFHrN4T
from Little Falls
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We seem to have lost sight, in our culture, of how really sickening (as in causing the whole society to become sick) abuse and murder really are. We see these movies where a dozen “monster bait” throw-aways are killed per 30-minute segment and the “message” is that the good guys won again. We don’t consider violence really brutal unless it is perpetrated by an outsider such as a Muslim or a “thug.” We’re a ship without a belt.
That neighbor — talking about how the killer was “really scared” — jeez — really scared? Try being a woman, a minority, a kid in a violent family, a disadvantaged person, a disabled person, a Black kid in Fogen’s neighborhood…
Paul Blume @PaulBlume_FOX9 10m
#ByronSmith jury has received its instructions from the Judge. 4 counts. 1st & 2nd degree murder in deaths of Haile Kifer & Nick Brady.
from Little Falls
Court is in recess until 1 pm. At that time, the Court will instruct the jury.
Closing arguments will follow beginning with the prosecutor’s closing.
I have been too busy to follow, so this question: Was there a big fight over how the judge must instruct on the “deadly force to prevent a felony” law in that ridiculous state?
I believe all states have the deadly-force-to-prevent-a-felony-in-the-home language in their statutes, but it’s qualified by the reasonable-necessity requirement.
The prosecutor’s argument is that it was not reasonably necessary to use deadly force to prevent either teenager from committing a felony because he had disabled them.
Instead of finishing them off with head shots while recording a narrative soliloquy for future gratification, a reasonable person would have called 911.
He never called 911. He dragged the bodies into another room and posed the girl with her midriff exposed, knees up and legs spread.
Nothing reasonable about that behavior.
Moreover, a person cannot create a necessity to act in self-defense and here it looks like Smith set a trap in order to lure the teens into his house so that he could execute them.
I suspect, but cannot prove, that he broke the window of his house after parking his truck 3 blocks away in order to create the appearance that he was not home and someone else had already broken into his house.
Oh my how sick, he is really creepy, makes me wonder if there are any missing people there (and I’m not kidding) this is extremely disturbing.
Yes, he seems to be a psychopath.
He was in the basement with the recorder on when the glass was broken. The sound of breaking glass is heard twice in the recorder.
The Cousins tried the back door but it was boarded up from the burglary two weeks before. Where did you read about Smith posing the one body? previously hit had been written that both kids had been dragged into the work roon on tarps
Police officer testified to that at trial.
You were quoting the local FOX affilliate, weren’t you?
The girl’s body was piled on top of the boy’s body. The positioning of the bodies
came out when prosecutors showed crime scene photos to the jury.