Texas jury rules - it's OK to kill escorts and prostitutes

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Is there a link to donate to his legal defense fund?

Ha-ha.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I'm serious. Is there such a link?

I thought you felt one should stay out of the business of other states.

Both the Associated Press and the Huffington Post have a slightly different take. Gilbert paid the woman $150 to have sex; then she refused, and further refused to return the money. Instead, she gave the cash to her driver. Gilbert's actions were justified because he was trying to retrieve stolen property and the driver was part of the theft scheme. 12 men and women confirmed this reasoning, and acquitted him of the charges.

It may have helped his case that the woman died 7 months after he shot her for stealing his money and not for refusing sex.

According to that law, one can gun down someone spraypainting an underpass at night and claim the spraypainting at night as being a defence. Also, murders over property? It's one thing to use deadly force in a robbery where the other side threatens one life, but say you gun down a pickpocket who is unarmed? You are killing over a wallet! Human life is so very cheap in Texas.

A misreading of the verdict in a strange and upsetting Texas case has gone viral, since Gawker claimed: “Texas Says It’s OK to Shoot an Escort If She Won’t Have Sex With You.” Texas law does not say that, and the jury didn’t say that either. Pushing the idea that an “Insane Texas Law Made it Legal for a Man to Kill a Prostitute” is irresponsible; it misinforms the public and sends a terrible message to violent misogynists.

It is not in dispute that the defendant, Ezekiel Gilbert, paid the victim, Lenora Frago, $150 for 30 minutes of escort services advertised on Craigslist. After Frago refused to have sex with him, the defendant shot her. Frago was paralyzed and the defendant was charged with aggravated assault. When she died seven months later Gilbert was indicted for murder instead.

At trial, defense attorneys made the shocking argument that Gilbert was justified in shooting Frago because she had stolen from him and Texas law permits the use of deadly force to defend one’s property at night. That a defense was raised in this case based on Texas’ awful defense of property law is certainly newsworthy and even more reason to reform that law. But there is no evidence that the jury acquitted based on the defense of property law in the first place.

The much more plausible reason for the verdict is that the jury believed the defendant’s claim that he didn’t intend to shoot the victim. Per Texas’ homicide statute, the prosecution needed to prove that Gilbert “intentionally or knowingly” killed Frago or intended to cause her “serious bodily injury.” The defense argued that Gilbert lacked the requisite intent for murder because when he shot at the car as Frago and the owner of the escort service drove away, he was aiming for the tire. The bullet hit the tire and a fragment, “literally the size of your fingernail,” according to Defense Attorney Bobby Barrera, hit Frago. Barrera does not believe the jury acquitted because of the defense of property law. He believes they acquitted because they believed Gilbert didn’t mean to shoot her.

Unless someone has interviewed a juror or can read minds, they cannot claim the jury agreed the killing was justified. And the juries do not “cite” laws. They find facts and decide “guilty” or “not guilty.” And it isn’t accurate to call Frago a “prostitute.” Witnesses for the prosecution testified she was an escort who never agreed to have sex. Rather than siding with the killer’s characterization, writers should at least say “alleged.”

One would expect the jury to find that shooting at a car with an AK-47 is at least “reckless,” in which case he could have been convicted of manslaughter. But the prosecution didn’t charge him with manslaughter, only murder. Manslaughter is a “lesser included offense” of murder and the judge is entitled to instruct the jury if the evidence supports that charge, but it appears she did not. The jury can’t convict on a charge that isn’t before them.

I think Texas’s defense of property law is abhorrent and my gut reaction was that it was a reprehensible defense. This reaction suggests, that you should think twice before hiring me as your defense attorney, sadly. As Professor Michael W. Martin of Fordham Law’s Federal Litigation Clinic reminded me: “If the law allows the defense, the lawyer must use it, if it is viable, unless there is a good strategic reason not to. Otherwise, it is ineffective assistance of counsel. If the lawyer feels like he is ethically barred from using a legal, viable defense, he should ask to be relieved.”

This story looks very different depending on whether you are looking at the law or at the reporting. Remember reporting? People used to get paid to go find facts and tell the public about them. That happens a lot less now. With many commentators and too few reporters, an alarmist story can have a long life in the echo chamber. But there are still some reporters, and a number of them, though probably stretched pretty thin, have engaged in that old-fashioned practice of going to court, making phone calls, interviewing people and checking facts for this very case. The San Antonio Express did not just start covering this case last week, that’s where to start if you want to follow this story as it develops.

This is a terrible story, a woman was killed and no one is going to prison. It is reasonable to be suspicious that prejudice based on her gender, race, or occupation led to that injustice. But all we know thus far is that the defendant received due process and a zealous defense. We don’t know that Texas’s terrible defense of property law had anything to do with him getting off. The vilification of this jury isn’t justified—we should give them the benefit of the doubt that they spent those 11 hours deliberating in good faith and did what they thought the law required. And in our concern for women and victims of violence, we must remember that even admitted killers still have rights.

I thought you felt one should stay out of the business of other states.

The business of other states, yes. The legal issues of other people who are being shafted for defending themselves against crime, no.

I'd be willing to bet that if a woman was being prosecuted for murder because she shot a man for trying to rape her, you folks would be on the other side of the issue, and demanding her immediate acquittal.

It all depends on who is seen as the "weaker" victim, doesn't it?

I know they charged him specifically with murder, but doesn't the judge have the power to reduce the charge rather than throw the case out altogether?

And IIRC in the states you are automatically charged with 1st degree murder during the commission of a felony for any death that results from it. So if the act of even putting people in the line of fire is reckless endangerment, wouldn't that mean any death resulting from it is automatically 1st degree murder or would the charges also have to include reckless endangerment for it to stick? I'd like to hear what any law expert here has to say.

Under state of mind (iv), the felony-murder doctrine, the felony committed must be an inherently dangerous felony, such as burglary, arson, rape, robbery or kidnapping. Importantly, the underlying felony cannot be a lesser included offense such as assault, otherwise all criminal homicides would be murder as all are felonies.

Will anyone else admit the fact that the criminal case is closed, and that civil damages may be all that's left to resolve?

Unless someone else takes the law into his or her own hands, that is essentially all that remains.

Right now, Texans have the opportunity to have the laws changed to please the bleeding-heart liberals from other states and countries who are wetting themselves over this whole issue; but I tell you this: There is not a metaphorical "snowball's chance in Hell" that the law will ever be changed to please them, so why don't they stop their finger-pointing and work to solve the problems of prostitution, theft, murder and other illegal activities in their own neighborhoods?

... because it's easier for them to point out the motes in other people's eyes than it is to remove the boulders from their own.

Very good! Everything all laid out, nice and neat.

Now, if the woman had died immediately, then the prosecution might have won its case; but since it took her 7 months to die there is reasonable doubt that the gunshot led directly to her death. It could have been inadequate hospital care, improper medication, or some other unrelated event that actually killed her.

"Reasonable Doubt" is all that it takes for an acquittal.

The man could have recovered his money by mean other than deadly force. He could have informed the police that the prostitute absconded with the money he paid her for the service he did not received.

Which means deadly force was not the only means of recovery so he was not justified in shooting the prostitute.

ruveyn