Posted on 10/31/2022 9:29:29 PM PDT by BenLurkin
No one disputes Wendy Howard killed ex-boyfriend Kelly Rees Pitts after finding out he molested her teenage daughter.
Last week, a Kern County, California jury acquitted Howard of murder but deadlocked on a charge of voluntary manslaughter.
The jury found Howard not guilty and moved on to voluntary manslaughter. With that charge, the jury voted on two theories: imperfect self-defense and heat of passion.
In imperfect self-defense, a person believes they need to use deadly force and kills someone to stop a perceived threat, but in reality deadly force wasn’t necessary. The jury found Howard not guilty under that theory.
But jurors deadlocked 7 to 5 on the heat of passion theory, meaning seven jurors believed she unlawfully killed Pitts after being provoked to an uncontrollable rage.
Howard could be retried under that theory.
Howard is due back in court Nov. 18 where a decision is expected on whether she will be retried.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
not guilty
Many Californians have soy for spines.
The suspect that the jurors who didn’t want to find “heat of passion” followed the jury instructions.
If many Americans weren't effing retarded puppets of their Media and social media, they'd figure out what their Owners already know - the Law is in the mouth of the corrupt stooges running the American Jesters system.
I thought California had a “He needed killin’” defense left over from SPanish colonialism.
Give her a reward
We don' nee' no stinkin' jury instructions.
Don’t tell me. He had it coming and it served him right. Right?
Now, to go read the article.
These are what jury instructions look like:
https://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/calcrim/500/
All else aside, him showing up at her home was probably a bad idea.
“No one disputes Wendy Howard killed ex-boyfriend Kelly Rees Pitts after finding out he molested her teenage daughter.”
I was right. He had it coming. Set her free. I have no qualms with someone killing a child molester. Yes, she made a bad decision when she picked him as a boyfriend, but he was an “ex” and she corrected that mistake once she found out her daughter had been harmed.
Probably impossible to get a unanimous verdict for manslaughter.
Regardless, jury nullification cuts both ways.
A lot of people at Free Republic support the idea that child molesters can be lawfully murdered by parents or vigilantes or prison inmates.
But, if we support that conduct, how can we then respond in good conscience when laws that Conservatives support are nullified by judges and juries of our political opponents?
Her actions were neither a crime nor self-defense.
I would vote not guilty as well.
The heat of passion argument works for me. If I found out someone had molested my kids, I could understand her actions.
She hadn’t just then found out about. Apparently, it had been a “years prior,” (2003?)
The shooting happened June 5, 2019, on Appaloosa Court, three days after Howard learned Pitts molested daughter Bayley Frost. Pitts was the biological father of Frost.Pitts allegedly molested another daughter of Howard’s years prior but charges weren’t brought due to insufficient evidence. She didn’t trust police to come through this time with enough evidence for an arrest, Smith said.
When I was a kid in Jackson Mississippi all rich women got off for killing husbands
Pendergrass
Bush
Those two come to mind
You can’t put a million dollars in jail.
I do the cataloguing of the Article III federal judges on FR.
I was "the judge" in a pseudo-trial in my American Government class in high school.
I understand what jury instructions are, and I also understand that American juries can do what they want [jury nullification].
Just don't let on to the joodge what you're up to, lest his or her stooge head explodes.
Judges aren’t juries.
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