Voting for the Wild West

The shooter in this case was just found not guilty on all charges, even though he injured three people, including a 12- and 15-year-old.

The shooter, Brendon Garza, claimed it was self-defense from the get-go, and I'm sure he thinks it was. It clearly was a dispute, and both sides were armed. 

But whether it met the legal definition of self-defense is another question, and in my opinion this Minnesota jury is completely wrong, based on what I can see from the Pioneer Press story, which is admittedly not as much as they saw. 

But this is the basic description: 

• The three shooting victims were in a van in a parking lot, getting read to go to school football game. A Camaro arrived. Garza and another man got out.
• The adult in the van (labeled A.S. in the court) got out, with a gun in his hand, and went toward Garza and the other man. Words were exchanged. One of Garza's passengers told police that A.S. was aggressive-appearing and said he would "shoot this bitch up."
• A.S. started to walk away with his arms and the gun down. This is shown on video surveillance from a nearby apartment building.
• Garza started shooting while A.S. was walking away.

So clearly Garza's self-defense was preemptive. This does not meet the definition in Minnesota, and we have a number of women in prison who suffered from domestic violence, then later killed their abusers only to be convicted of homicide, to prove it. (Here's an example.)

The situations are not generally the same, in terms of endangering bystanders and other important details, but women are often not accorded any benefit of the doubt, whereas Brendon Garza got a giant benefit of the doubt from this jury. It took them just three hours to acquit.

Wow. They're voting for the wild west.