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Thank heavens for Florida's stand and defend law. The prosecutor first wanted to try this as a death penalty case--HOLY COW! Two drunk/high thugs try to get on a sailboat to kill/throw the owner off into the water. Owner of said sailboat fires at the two criminals and ends their attack. The judge threw it out and chewed the prosecutor a new one.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/double- ... fense-law/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's amazing how quickly the situation gets fuzzy when the two parties (shooter and dead guys) are proven to have a prior (potentially adversarial) relationship.
I read that article and found myself thinking... "I wonder whether what really happened matches exactly to the victims story"?
Obviously, the Judge thought it was pretty clear.

You know for me the question about what really happened ends when they board his sailboat and are intoxicated/high. That is enough to put credence in the defendants story for me.

It is really tough case, first there are no doors on the boat, that break-in could be established. 2-against-1 with one is competitive wrestler, there is justification under disparity of force. However, no violence was done by the BGs and they were 20-ft away.

It is good the the Judge saw it as clear self-defense case.

Beiruty wrote:It is really tough case, first there are no doors on the boat, that break-in could be established. 2-against-1 with one is competitive wrestler, there is justification under disparity of force. However, no violence was done by the BGs and they were 20-ft away.

It is good the the Judge saw it as clear self-defense case.

Well I would say that if they were on his boat and he did not invite them there that would be either a. B and E or b. piracy. Twenty feet sounds like a great distance, but it can be crossed in a very very short period of time. I am quite surprised he had time to shoot both of them if they were closing. If an intruder is in my home and only 20 feet away and is saying threatening things I am shooting. I am not going to wait for him to beat the daylights out of me and in that level of disparity of force likely kill me. If he says he wants to kill me and is going to do it, then I am going to believe him and act accordingly.

With home invasion, justification of deadly force is not in doubt. What if the BG were trans-passing on the boat and never exhibited any violent intent?

Beiruty wrote:With home invasion, justification of deadly force is not in doubt. What if the BG were trans-passing on the boat and never exhibited any violent intent?

Well if they were out in the middle of the water, like it sounds, you have to get really close to board a ship. That is pretty violent to chase down and board a vessel especially considering that you can be pretty sure someone is on board if it is out sailing. I am not 100% certain but I think that can be considered piracy. If I misread and it was at dock I would not necessarily shoot someone just for being on my boat, but I would sure tell them to get their tails out, and all it would take to have me pull my weapon would be one more step in my direction or a threat of violence.

mamabearCali wrote:If an intruder is in my home and only 20 feet away and is saying threatening things I am shooting. I am not going to wait for him to beat the daylights out of me and in that level of disparity of force likely kill me. If he says he wants to kill me and is going to do it, then I am going to believe him and act accordingly.

I think it's hard to make the home invasion analogy work because of the differences between a boat and a house. This case isn't cut and dried and the articles don't help much because they provoke more questions than they answer. For example, if the boat in question is the sailboat in the photo, the purchase price of $1,000 is absurd. $50,000, maybe, but $1,000 for that boat is ridiculous. $1,000 for a 35 foot sailboat of any kind is ridiculous and suggests something fishy was going on. Did the buyer run up $500 in tickets against the seller? That should be easy to determine yet the article doesn't say. If true, then the buyer made a confrontation of some kind inevitable, and only he knows what actually happened. If there weren't any such tickets then maybe the buyer's account is true, or maybe he made it up to help justify the shooting. Maybe the dispute was over the sale price of the boat --again, we've only got the buyer's word for what happened (at least so far as the articles are concerned); but maybe $1,000 was supposed to be a payment. It's only the buyer's word that these guys boarded the boat without his permission; maybe he lured them out to the boat to kill them so he could have a $100,000 sailboat for $1,000. Something had to be going on between these three because otherwise people don't sell $100,000 sailboats for $1,000. Maybe the judge saw evidence that answers these questions but none of it is conveyed in the article --and given that one objective of the article may be liberal media effort to discredit the stand your ground law, some information crucial for justifying the shooting may have been left out deliberately.

Also, the article says the boat was at anchor --so there was no chasing down. The article doesn't say how they got out to the boat which is, again, a curious detail to omit. However, given what it does say, it seems they probably paddled out to the boat, unless they swam. Given this, I can't help but wonder if they did the drugs after they got to the boat, and again, we're left to conjecture, since the article doesn't provide the relevant information.

All of that is left out in the article so hopefully the judge had more of that information available. A few points

If* it was dispute over a down payment vs full payment then there are legal means to take the person to court and recoup your loss other than boarding a vessel drunk and high to evict the person in the middle of the water. Not smart at all and totally outside the law. Had the two succeeded they likely could have been charged with attempted murder for throwing him in the water unless the shore was 30 feet away, they knew he could swim, and had done no damage to him in the process of throwing him off the boat. Even with that they likely would have faced criminal charges of assault and endangerment.

If* they did the drugs while on his boat it was rather odd that the third gentlemen had no alcohol and no drugs in his system.

If* this fellow did try to lure them out there to kill them and take a 100K the boat that is beyond stupid as he has I am sure incurred massive legal bills, likely lost the use of the boat for an extended period of time, and nearly lost his life. After all there was no guarantee that the other two people in this deal would be unarmed. Now people are stupid, but I tend to see sober 65 year old man as slightly more intelligent than a drugged up ex-wrestler going out to evict someone from a boat in the middle of the water.

As far as the price of the boat--well my home is "worth" 235,000, but if I tried to sell it right now I *might* get 180,000. Note we bought this home 2 years ago. There are many unanswered questions as to the price of the boat--what was the condition of the boat when sold...how desperate were the sellers etc etc. I know a person who bought a house 4 years ago for $300K, he just sold it for $125 K.

I am not sure you could classify the boarding of a boat in the middle of the water as anything other than a home invasion because where is he supposed to go--jump in the water and swim to shore. He has no where to retreat to. What could it possibly be other than a home invasion.

You are right in that there are many unanswered questions, but for me the two dum dums going to a boat (at anchor) in the middle of the water drunk and high puts all the "what if's" that could be their story in serious doubt. And places the evidence in the direction of the man who shot the two boat boarders.

VMI77 wrote:

mamabearCali wrote:If an intruder is in my home and only 20 feet away and is saying threatening things I am shooting. I am not going to wait for him to beat the daylights out of me and in that level of disparity of force likely kill me. If he says he wants to kill me and is going to do it, then I am going to believe him and act accordingly.

I think it's hard to make the home invasion analogy work because of the differences between a boat and a house. This case isn't cut and dried and the articles don't help much because they provoke more questions than they answer. For example, if the boat in question is the sailboat in the photo, the purchase price of $1,000 is absurd. $50,000, maybe, but $1,000 for that boat is ridiculous. $1,000 for a 35 foot sailboat of any kind is ridiculous and suggests something fishy was going on. Did the buyer run up $500 in tickets against the seller? That should be easy to determine yet the article doesn't say. If true, then the buyer made a confrontation of some kind inevitable, and only he knows what actually happened. If there weren't any such tickets then maybe the buyer's account is true, or maybe he made it up to help justify the shooting. Maybe the dispute was over the sale price of the boat --again, we've only got the buyer's word for what happened (at least so far as the articles are concerned); but maybe $1,000 was supposed to be a payment. It's only the buyer's word that these guys boarded the boat without his permission; maybe he lured them out to the boat to kill them so he could have a $100,000 sailboat for $1,000. Something had to be going on between these three because otherwise people don't sell $100,000 sailboats for $1,000. Maybe the judge saw evidence that answers these questions but none of it is conveyed in the article --and given that one objective of the article may be liberal media effort to discredit the stand your ground law, some information crucial for justifying the shooting may have been left out deliberately.

Also, the article says the boat was at anchor --so there was no chasing down. The article doesn't say how they got out to the boat which is, again, a curious detail to omit. However, given what it does say, it seems they probably paddled out to the boat, unless they swam. Given this, I can't help but wonder if they did the drugs after they got to the boat, and again, we're left to conjecture, since the article doesn't provide the relevant information.

We have two out of three lesser BG's now. It sounds like they all might have been crooks, but I am simply jumping to conclusions.

Purplehood wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

mamabearCali wrote:If an intruder is in my home and only 20 feet away and is saying threatening things I am shooting. I am not going to wait for him to beat the daylights out of me and in that level of disparity of force likely kill me. If he says he wants to kill me and is going to do it, then I am going to believe him and act accordingly.

I think it's hard to make the home invasion analogy work because of the differences between a boat and a house. This case isn't cut and dried and the articles don't help much because they provoke more questions than they answer. For example, if the boat in question is the sailboat in the photo, the purchase price of $1,000 is absurd. $50,000, maybe, but $1,000 for that boat is ridiculous. $1,000 for a 35 foot sailboat of any kind is ridiculous and suggests something fishy was going on. Did the buyer run up $500 in tickets against the seller? That should be easy to determine yet the article doesn't say. If true, then the buyer made a confrontation of some kind inevitable, and only he knows what actually happened. If there weren't any such tickets then maybe the buyer's account is true, or maybe he made it up to help justify the shooting. Maybe the dispute was over the sale price of the boat --again, we've only got the buyer's word for what happened (at least so far as the articles are concerned); but maybe $1,000 was supposed to be a payment. It's only the buyer's word that these guys boarded the boat without his permission; maybe he lured them out to the boat to kill them so he could have a $100,000 sailboat for $1,000. Something had to be going on between these three because otherwise people don't sell $100,000 sailboats for $1,000. Maybe the judge saw evidence that answers these questions but none of it is conveyed in the article --and given that one objective of the article may be liberal media effort to discredit the stand your ground law, some information crucial for justifying the shooting may have been left out deliberately.

Also, the article says the boat was at anchor --so there was no chasing down. The article doesn't say how they got out to the boat which is, again, a curious detail to omit. However, given what it does say, it seems they probably paddled out to the boat, unless they swam. Given this, I can't help but wonder if they did the drugs after they got to the boat, and again, we're left to conjecture, since the article doesn't provide the relevant information.

We have two out of three lesser BG's now. It sounds like they all might have been crooks, but I am simply jumping to conclusions.

I don't disagree. My main point is just that the article doesn't provide enough information to draw an informed conclusion.

VMI77 wrote:

Purplehood wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

mamabearCali wrote:If an intruder is in my home and only 20 feet away and is saying threatening things I am shooting. I am not going to wait for him to beat the daylights out of me and in that level of disparity of force likely kill me. If he says he wants to kill me and is going to do it, then I am going to believe him and act accordingly.

I think it's hard to make the home invasion analogy work because of the differences between a boat and a house. This case isn't cut and dried and the articles don't help much because they provoke more questions than they answer. For example, if the boat in question is the sailboat in the photo, the purchase price of $1,000 is absurd. $50,000, maybe, but $1,000 for that boat is ridiculous. $1,000 for a 35 foot sailboat of any kind is ridiculous and suggests something fishy was going on. Did the buyer run up $500 in tickets against the seller? That should be easy to determine yet the article doesn't say. If true, then the buyer made a confrontation of some kind inevitable, and only he knows what actually happened. If there weren't any such tickets then maybe the buyer's account is true, or maybe he made it up to help justify the shooting. Maybe the dispute was over the sale price of the boat --again, we've only got the buyer's word for what happened (at least so far as the articles are concerned); but maybe $1,000 was supposed to be a payment. It's only the buyer's word that these guys boarded the boat without his permission; maybe he lured them out to the boat to kill them so he could have a $100,000 sailboat for $1,000. Something had to be going on between these three because otherwise people don't sell $100,000 sailboats for $1,000. Maybe the judge saw evidence that answers these questions but none of it is conveyed in the article --and given that one objective of the article may be liberal media effort to discredit the stand your ground law, some information crucial for justifying the shooting may have been left out deliberately.

Also, the article says the boat was at anchor --so there was no chasing down. The article doesn't say how they got out to the boat which is, again, a curious detail to omit. However, given what it does say, it seems they probably paddled out to the boat, unless they swam. Given this, I can't help but wonder if they did the drugs after they got to the boat, and again, we're left to conjecture, since the article doesn't provide the relevant information.

We have two out of three lesser BG's now. It sounds like they all might have been crooks, but I am simply jumping to conclusions.

I don't disagree. My main point is just that the article doesn't provide enough information to draw an informed conclusion.

And I agree with you on that...

Well that is certainly true. But still the article does highlight how Florida's castle and stand your ground laws work.

mamabearCali wrote:All of that is left out in the article so hopefully the judge had more of that information available. A few points

If* it was dispute over a down payment vs full payment then there are legal means to take the person to court and recoup your loss other than boarding a vessel drunk and high to evict the person in the middle of the water. Not smart at all and totally outside the law. Had the two succeeded they likely could have been charged with attempted murder for throwing him in the water unless the shore was 30 feet away, they knew he could swim, and had done no damage to him in the process of throwing him off the boat. Even with that they likely would have faced criminal charges of assault and endangerment.

I'm not really taking a position, just pointing out that you can't make an informed conclusion from the article cited. People do stupid things all the time. In fact, the signature behavior of a criminal is to act impulsively without considering the consequences. But we don't know the nature of the dispute so speculation is idle. We don't even know there was a dispute over the boat --something else entirely different might have been going on, something more personal.

mamabearCali wrote:If* they did the drugs while on his boat it was rather odd that the third gentlemen had no alcohol and no drugs in his system.

Not if he was planning to kill them.

mamabearCali wrote:If* this fellow did try to lure them out there to kill them and take a 100K the boat that is beyond stupid as he has I am sure incurred massive legal bills, likely lost the use of the boat for an extended period of time, and nearly lost his life. After all there was no guarantee that the other two people in this deal would be unarmed. Now people are stupid, but I tend to see sober 65 year old man as slightly more intelligent than a drugged up ex-wrestler going out to evict someone from a boat in the middle of the water.

Again, the boat may have had nothing to do with it --he may have had another motive for shooting them. But even if the boat was the issue, it may have played out differently. For example, he may have thought he got away with getting this boat for only $1,000 --basically stolen it in other words-- and these guys showed up high with the intent to take it back. You might consider that self-defense, but I don't.

mamabearCali wrote:As far as the price of the boat--well my home is "worth" 235,000, but if I tried to sell it right now I *might* get 180,000. Note we bought this home 2 years ago. There are many unanswered questions as to the price of the boat--what was the condition of the boat when sold...how desperate were the sellers etc etc. I know a person who bought a house 4 years ago for $300K, he just sold it for $125 K.

If a boat like the one pictured floats, and apparently it does, then $1,000 is way out of line. Way out. 20 years ago I paid more than that for a used 16' Hobie Cat. I would gladly have paid $1,000 for that boat because I could have re-sold it almost immediately for at least 30 times that, even if it wasn't in great condition. So in your analogy it's like the person with the $300K home selling it for $125K --that's understandable, but it would make no sense if he sold the house for $20K because someone could turn around and re-sell it for $125K. It just doesn't make any sense. Something else was going on.

mamabearCali wrote: I am not sure you could classify the boarding of a boat in the middle of the water as anything other than a home invasion because where is he supposed to go--jump in the water and swim to shore. He has no where to retreat to. What could it possibly be other than a home invasion.

Among other things, could be an invitation. We only have the shooter's word that the boat was boarded without his permission. And unlike a home invasion, there is no evidence like a broken window or a broken door. Furthermore, he did have somewhere to go, since the police found him paddling away in a kayak. But I'm not arguing he could have gotten away or should have, I'm just saying we don't really know what happened.

mamabearCali wrote:You are right in that there are many unanswered questions, but for me the two dum dums going to a boat (at anchor) in the middle of the water drunk and high puts all the "what if's" that could be their story in serious doubt. And places the evidence in the direction of the man who shot the two boat boarders.

If it happened that way. I'm not sure what "evidence" you're referring too, since the article didn't really present any. We've heard the shooter's story and an autopsy report of drug and alcohol consumption, and other than the two dead bodies, that's about it. His story might be true and it might not.

VMI77 wrote: If it happened that way. I'm not sure what "evidence" you're referring too, since the article didn't really present any. We've heard the shooter's story and an autopsy report of drug and alcohol consumption, and other than the two dead bodies, that's about it. His story might be true and it might not.

Except You are forgetting the testimony of the two dead people's friends. They said that those two were going out to the boat to either A. evict him (throw him in the water) or B. kill him. That would be serious evidence. That would be those two planning to commit a crime and felonies to boot! We also know that the man has a CHL, thus he does not have an extensive criminal record, and though you may think that $1,000 is a steal of a deal that does not mean anything. I know of people who buy things at rock bottom even steal of a deal prices because they pay attention so without further evidence (such as a contract with the two defendant to pay more than $1,000 etc). It is not a crime to buy a boat far far far below market price. It is however a crime to go out to a boat and intend throw someone off in the water or kill him. We have no evidence of the CHL'er planning to commit a crime--everything you have said has no evidence basis. We do have evidence of the two drunk/high people planning to commit a crime up to and including murder.

IF* the CHL-er did steal the boat by not paying the full price he agreed to (and there is no evidence for that at all) then there are legal means to deal with it. It is a crime to simply go and throw the person off the boat in the middle of the water. Had they lived through the attempt at doing that they would have been brought up on charges for that.