Posted on 12/03/2009 7:22:42 AM PST by marktwain
Harold A. Fish, 62, convicted of second-degree murder in a Coconino County trailside shooting death of Grant Kuenzli, is no longer a convicted felon.
The Arizona Supreme Court Tuesday declined a request by Attorney General Terry Goddard to review the state appellate court's overturning of Fish's conviction. "He's now a free man," said Fish's Flagstaff-based attorney Lee Phillips. "He's no longer convicted of an offense, and justice has prevailed."
Fish was convicted in June 2006 for the May 2004 shooting death of Kuenzli on a National Forest trail in the far southeast corner of the county. He argued at trial that he fired in self-defense after Kuenzli came at him aggressively after firing a warning shot at two dogs in Kuenzli's care.
He hit Kuenzli three times in the chest and two wounds were fatal. Kuenzli did not have a weapon in his hands at the time of the shooting.
The prosecution argued that Fish overreacted and took a man's life when other, less lethal options were available. A forensic report suggested that Kuenzli was in a defensive position when he was shot.
In June, the appellate court ruled that the jury was not instructed properly as to what constitutes "unlawful physical force." The court also decided the jury should have heard evidence that Kuenzli was known to act violently when confronted about dogs in his care.
(Excerpt) Read more at azdailysun.com ...
http://www.haroldfishdefense.org/
For those who want to know the details of the whole saga, the above site is the place to go.
So the jury, unsure of the legal definition of the phrase, construed the ambiguity against the defendant??! My, my, my what a bunch of government-sucking sheeple the public has become. Or was the appellate court unspecific when they said the jurors "were not properly instructed" when in fact they were improperly instructed about the definition?
Any idea why the authorities were so set on prosecuting Mr. Fish for defending himself? It sounds like he never should have been charged in the first place, or a responsible grand jury would have dismissed the whole thing.
I noticed that Janet Napolitano vetoed that self-defense bill TWICE.
Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano Vetoes Popular Self Defense Bill ...
My interpretation is that the jury was improperly instructed.
Counter to two hundred years of American legal precedent, in the State of Arizona at the time of the Fish trial, the burden of proof in a self-defense case lay with the defendant, not the State. Guilty until proven innocent was State law.
That finally changed this year after Janet Napolitano left the Governorship.
Anyone who charges you when you're pointing a gun at them is not acting reasonably, and it is safe to assume they mean to do you great harm. It's a no brainer. That Mr. Fish served a single day of incarceration is a travesty, a sham, and a mockery of justice: A traveshamockery!
He is a good man, and am sorry he had to go through all this nonsense.
It sounds like the DA's office in the county had a hard-on for the guy (this is in Northern AZ, a reliable Dem voting area in a Pubbie state, might be NAU). The first police investigator to interview Fish determined it was justifiable, and the DA tossed him and sent a different investigator. It was obvious they had an agenda, either against Fish or against armed self-defense. Come to think of it, that helps me understand the wussy-pussy jury as well. They were drawn from voters in a liberal county.
The right (and Constitutional) thing to do when on the jury of a man accused of breaking an improper law or a proper law that shouldn't apply under the circumstances is to nullify. That's been the case since before the founding of the Republic.
One of my coworkers related to me a shoot/no shoot problem from his CCW course he recently completed. A man had an arranged meeting with the owner of a junk yard. When the man arrived at the yard, he was met by a security guard with a dog. He explained that he had an arranged meeting, but because the guard had not be notified the guard told him to leave the premises. When the man did not immediately comply, the guard unleashed the dog on him.
Now here's what surprised me: the man shot the guard! Not the dog. The dog broke off his attack. The DA did not prosecute thinking that they could not get a conviction. I was very surprised. I would have shot the dog and disarmed the guard and had him prosecuted for his "assault" with a deadly weapon (the dog).
The Fish case has special meaning for me. I run and I've been attacked by dogs. The dogs (like some of their unreasonable owners) can be unpredictable. And when they are making their intentions clear, I know they mean business and must be dealt with. I do not know what physical shape Fish was in at the time. He was in his 60's being attacked by a substantially younger man w/ two potentially deadly and unreasonable "accomplices". I would find it difficult not to do something comparable to what he did. I would have shot one or more of the dogs had they attacked me on the trail. This could be my story as I am sure for many.
Except you’re nullifying the diktats of the entity that funds the schools. Separate school and state.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.