Not sure if you saw this, but this attorney is really going for a master class challenge, though I imagine its to try to avoid an attempted first degree murder charge of some sort,
"This
wasn't any type of ambush shooting," Christmas said in an interview
with The Associated Press, countering an earlier description by St.
Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar of the March 12 shooting outside
Ferguson police headquarters. "Those officers were shot accidentally."
Williams
told investigators he was not targeting law enforcement and had been
aiming instead at someone with whom he had a dispute, authorities said.
But that assertion was met with skepticism by St. Louis County
Prosecutor Robert McCulloch.
"We're not sure we completely buy that part of it," the prosecutor said Sunday.
I saw this. Very odd tactic. I wonder if he is going to try to claim that the "dispute" with the other person was a legitimate case of self defense, in which case (if he can convince the jury) he could avoid criminal liability, but likely wouldn't escape civil liability.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I haven't seen any version of this attorney's statements where he suggests that this was a defensive shooting. If his claim is that he was meaning to illegally shoot someone else then the attorney is doing the prosecution's job for them in establishing an intentional act that should (unless Missouri has screwy laws) transfer. Typically, if you intended to murder sumbitch #1 and instead hit a bystander it counts as murder just as if you hit sumbitch #1.
It will be interesting to see if the defendant and his lawyer talk him into a third attempted murder charge.