In April 2014, the expert testimony of my friend and colleague Bob Smith in Spokane helped win an acquittal for Gail Gerlach, who was charged with manslaughter. Gerlach had shot a man who, while stealing his car, had pointed a metallic object at him that appeared to be a gun, and Gerlach had fired one shot, killing the man, who turned out to have been holding shiny keys in the dimly lit vehicle. In the antigun Spokane newspaper, internet comments indicated that many people had the clueless idea that Gerlach had shot the man—in the back—to stop the thief from stealing his car. One idiot wrote in defense of doing such, “That ‘inert property’ as you call it represents a significant part of a man’s life. Stealing it is the same as stealing a part of his life. Part of my life is far more important than all of a thief’s life.”
Analyze that statement. The world revolves around this speaker so much that a bit of his life spent earning an expensive object is worth “all of (another man’s) life.” Never forget that, in this country, human life is seen by the courts as having a higher value than what those courts call “mere property,” even if you’re shooting the most incorrigible lifelong thief to keep him from stealing the Hope Diamond. A principle of our law is that the evil man has the same rights as a good man. Here we have yet another case of a person dangerously confusing “how he thinks things ought to be” with “how things actually are.”
As a rule of thumb, American law does not justify using deadly force to protect property. In the rare jurisdiction that does appear to allow this, ask yourself how the following words would resonate with a jury when uttered by the plaintiff’s counsel in a closing argument: “Ladies and gentlemen, the defendant has admitted that he killed the deceased over property. How much difference is there in your hearts between the man who kills another to steal that man’s property and one who kills another to maintain possession of his own? Either way, he ended a human life for mere property!”
Why was Gerlach acquitted in this shooting? Because Bob Smith and the rest of the defense team could show the jury that he had not shot the man “for stealing his car” at all. As the car thief drove away, he turned in the front seat toward Gerlach, raised a metallic object, and pointed it at him. In the prevailing light conditions, it looked like a gun—and Gerlach fired one shot from his 9mm pistol to keep the car thief from shooting him! Since the man was aiming backward at him over his shoulder, the defensively fired bullet necessarily entered the offender’s body behind the lateral midline. At that point, the man stopped pointing the metallic object at him, so Gerlach stopped shooting. It turned out that this object, which Gerlach reasonably presumed to be a gun, was a key holder that resembled one.
Gerlach’s belief had been reasonable, and that allowed for the acquittal. It was not a case of a
