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Lucylastic -> RE: Innocent bystander killed in SYG case (10/14/2013 1:51:47 AM)
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After all, Rutherford told the judge, it was 1:30 a.m., and Scott — with no police around — was the only one who could take action against a carload of menacing teen "women thugs" who had just followed his daughter and her girlfriends home on the night of April 18, 2010, Rutherford said.
According to evidence in the case, Scott’s daughter telephoned him on her way home to tell him she was being followed. Scott met his daughter and some friends outside his house, told them to go in and lie down on the kitchen floor and then went around to the front yard with a gun.
It was unreasonable to expect that Scott is required "to go back into his house, in his castle . . . and hope that the cavalry (police) are going to come . . . all that matters is that Mr. Scott felt his life was in jeopardy," Rutherford said.
Rutherford’s view of events was challenged by 5th Circuit Assistant Solicitor April Sampson, who presented evidence hoping to show Scott had no idea who he was firing at.
Sampson said during the August hearing that if Murphy granted immunity to Scott it would "be the first time any state in this Union" has granted immunity for killing an innocent bystander in a Stand Your Ground case.
"If this law were to be applied the way (Scott) wants to apply it, he could shoot a 4-year-old playing in her front yard and still be immune from prosecution," Sampson said. South Carolina would turn into "the Wild, Wild West" if fearful people can go around shooting just about anyone, Sampson said.
Under the state’s Stand Your Ground law, people have the right to use deadly force against an assailant. However, the law doesn’t specifically say a person using deadly force can kill a bystander by mistake and be immune from any criminal prosecution.
http://articles.aberdeennews.com/2013-10-10/news/42872154_1_immunity-front-yard-columbia-case
In the early morning hours of April 17, 2010, Scott shot and killed Darrel Niles, 17, after Niles followed two cars to the residence of Mr. Scott.
"These were people that had followed his daughter home from the club," Rutherford said. "Both cars. When they swung into the driveway, [Shannon Scott] is standing in the front yard, he sees both cars go by, and now they're coming at him from separate directions."
"He ascertained the threat and he reacted."
Court records say shots were fired in the direction of the home, and that's when Scott shot back.
"In firing at them, [Scott] also fired at a second car which had fired at them as well," Rutherford said. "killing an individual who was not armed."
Rutherford said his clients acs were justified under those circumstances, and a judge agreed granting Scott immunity under South Carolina's "Stand Your Ground" laws.
"Who better to defend the law than someone who helped to write it?" Rutherford questioned when asked if he felt there was a conflict of interest in him defending Shannon Scott.
http://www.wltx.com/news/article/252394/2/2010-Case-Challenges-States-Stand-Your-Ground-Laws
During the hearing, Murphy heard conflicting testimony as to whether anyone fired at Scott while he was in his front yard that night.
Rutherford said Niles’ death is tragic but, “He simply ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Niles might have had “honorable intentions,” Rutherford said, but the teen put himself in danger “by following my client’s daughter home at 1:30 in the morning.”
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, an opponent of giving people broad latitude to kill others under the authority of a Stand Young Ground law, said, “In this military, you would call Niles’ death ‘collateral damage.’
“I guess the question is, ‘How much collateral damage do we want to have?”
TIMELINE FOR APRIL 18, 2010 shooting
>> A 15-year-old girl and five friends leave a nightclub just after midnight
>> They are pursued by four young women in an SUV.
>> They arrive home and tell her father, Shannon Scott, they’re in danger.
>> Shots are fired from the street. The friends run inside.
>> Armed with a gun, Shannon Scott goes to the front yard.
>> Scott fires several times.
>> Bystander Darrell Niles, 17, in a separate car, is killed.
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/10/09/3029466/exclusive-father-not-charged-in.html#storylink=cpy
just more bits to the puzzle
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