the second the prosecutor brought up his history with a dog attack and tied it to the shooting of a dog that you "claim" was attacking your case would go to shit. short of physical evidence it harmed you everyone would think you did it out of irrational fear of dogs. thats how a trial works.

No, this is how a trial works. First, the prosecutor tries to decide if the crime is worth the cost of prosecuting. Depending on the state, the prosecutor would probably ignore it unless the penalty was either 1year + in jail or it was a felony. Assuming the prosecutor decided to go ahead with the case they would be forced to show reasonable evidence that the dog was completely harmless and that the person shot it with malicious intent or out of irresponsibility. If they are unable to meet that burden, the judge will dismiss it before trial due to inadequate evidence. Assuming there are no witnesses, and no prior history of animal abuse, the prosecutor would have no way of proving if it was self defense or not, short of calling in ballistics experts which the state will absolutely not pay for.

So unless there were aggravating charges, such as unlawful discharge of a firearm, unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon, firing towards a residence, etc, the prosecutor would either not file charges or try to force a plea before ultimately dropping charges. Any half-assed public defender would be able to pull it off.

I would bet everything I own and everything I will own in the future that if you killed a pitbull and claimed self-defense you wouldn't even be arrested, let alone tried unless there is some other serious crime involved. Imagine the news story--citizen arrested for killing pitbull in self defense. Please--prosecutors run for office like every other politician...

couldnt help but lol.

aka irrational fear of dogs due to past event.

the guy that this all revolves around credits his behavior of shooting any dog that shows aggression to this fact. thats the evidence that shows his actions had other motivations other than actual self defense.



because the state of mind of a witness has no bearing on the legitimacy of said witness. i forget a crackhead is just as viable a witness as the president of the united states.

This post was edited by Psycho- on Apr 4 2011 04:10pm

There is no witness and you can not be forced to testify against yourself. Fuck you're dumb.

thats what im saying. your statement would be all you had for defense while the other side argues that you did it out of irrational fear based on the dog attack in your past. they wouldn't even need you to bring it up because there would be many people to tell them about it.

You clearly don't understand how US justice works. To even get to a trial, the prosecutor has to have enough evidence to convince a judge to even allow it to proceed. No witnesses, and no aggravating charges = no case = case dismissed.

such as aggravated animal abuse? cause there is such a thing.

Dumbass. I explained it earlier. Aggravating as in unlawful discharge of a firearm, firing towards a residence, etc.

To prove that I said it earlier: