re: #206 HappyWarrior

You know what happened is tragic but it seems to me that a murder conviction was hard to reach here. I feel awful for the young woman’s family and I think a jury definitely would have convicted for manslaughter but you can’t just convict someone of murder because the prosecution errs and overcharges someone. And as already gotten at, he is being punished for other crimes that he was convicted for.

I’m not sure that even a manslaughter charge could have been sustained. Last I heard, the defendant’s story was that he found a bag or rag (I can’t remember which) under a bench on the pier, realized there was something in it, picked it up and pulled the object out, which happened to be a gun that he fired accidentally while grasping it. Forensics stated that the bullet hit the surface of the pier something like fifty feet from the victim and bounced upward, striking her. Annie Oakley couldn’t have made this shot, and in fact the bullet might have hit almost anyone else on the pier. What’s more, there was never any suggestion of a motive or of any animus on the part of the defendant toward the victim. But IA most certainly NAL.