LAREDO, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury acquitted a man accused of killing a boy who broke into his home looking for a snack — a case that sparked outrage in this border city, where many thought the man should not have even been charged.

It took the jury of eight men and four women three hours Friday to find Jose Luis Gonzalez, 63, not guilty of murdering Francisco Anguiano, who was 13 when he and three friends broke into Gonzalez's trailer to rummage for snacks and soda one night in July 2007.

"I thank God and my attorney, the jury and the judge," Gonzalez said in Spanish after the verdict. "It was a case where it was my life or theirs, and it's a very good thing that they (the jurors) decided in my favor."

Gonzalez said he was sorry for Anguiano's death, but "it was a situation in which I feared for my life."

If your life is in danger, I think we can all agree on lethal force response...
But then there is this...

Gonzalez had endured several break-ins at his trailer when the four boys, ranging in age from 11 to 15, broke in. Gonzalez, who was in a nearby building at the time, went into the trailer and confronted the boys with a 16-gauge shotgun. Then he forced the boys, who were unarmed, to their knees, attorneys on both sides say.

The boys say they were begging for forgiveness when Gonzalez hit them with the barrel of the shotgun and kicked them repeatedly. Then, the medical examiner testified, Anguiano was shot in the back at close range. Two mashed Twinkies and some cookies were stuffed in the pockets of his shorts.

Another boy, Jesus Soto Jr., now 16, testified that Gonzalez ordered them at gunpoint to take Anguiano's body outside.

Gonzalez said he thought Anguiano was lunging at him when he fired the shotgun.[/quote]

So obviously, when the details of "he said/she said" are in dispute, a trial is warranted, right?

Many people in Laredo — a town just across the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where drug violence runs rampant — defended Gonzalez's actions. In online responses to articles published by the Morning Times, comments included statements such as "The kid got what he deserved" and calls to "stop the unfair prosecution."

The Associated Press: Texas homeowner acquitted of killing teen intruder

I wonder what it takes for a Texas jury to convict a person who killed another in the first person's home...

I guess in Texas a requirement to buy a shotgun is to check your soul at the door, . How this man can live with himself is beyond my comprehension.

in most states, making somebody kneel and then shooting them in the head would be called an execution-style murder

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I don't blame the man for shooting to kill, but he vented his rage at the same time. That is what is in question here. But then again, if you are not really really angry, can you kill someone?

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If the guy had a reasonable suspicion that the kid was attempting to harm, then he's covered by the law. He had had his home broken into repeatedly and lived in a town wracked by drug violence, oriented around illegal immigrant gangs. A group of kids breaks into his home and he stops them. When one of the kids appeared to lunge at him, he took action. IMO, he was too quick on the trigger and acted out of rage/frustration at the situation he was in (having his home broken into) and and found himself in repeatedly. OTH, had the kid actually had a weapon and the guy had hesitated, the story may be that a guy was found dead in his home after an apparent break-in. I don't like the idea that he had to kill someone as young as this for something so stupid, but if had been in his shoes, I may have done the same thing (doubtful, but given ALL the circumstances, you can never tell just how you would react).

Now, everyone will go on about the kid got killed over a couple of Twinkies and some cookies, but the fact is that the kid got killed because he did something that the guy felt was threatening to him. I do believe that the guy over-reacted to the perceived threat, but if he felt that his life could possibly be in danger, he has a legal right to take action. He doesn't have to wait until there's gun in his face, he just has to feel that his life is in danger. If I was on the floor with a pissed-off, shotgun-wielding Texan standing behind me, the last thing I'd do is move unless told to. It's a tragedy that the kid had to die, but he placed himself in the situation he ended up in and unfortunately he paid the ultimate price for his decision.

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

God is a conservative -

Ecclesiastes 10:2--"A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left."

Yes, you can. It happens all the time. People kill for a number of reasons and anger is only one of them. You can kill to take something from someone (greed, not anger), you can kill to protect someone (love, not anger), you can kill because it's your job (duty, not anger).

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

God is a conservative -

Ecclesiastes 10:2--"A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left."

Quit trying to talk in vague generics, with rewriting the ACTUAL story with things that were not present.

If the kid had come in with a knife, I don't think anybody here would bat an eye.

But DID YOU READ that the kid was put ON HIS KNEES then SHOT IN THE BACK...
The fact that he made this kid get on his knees SHOWS the guy with the shotgun WAS IN CONTROL. Not being threatened.

I don't give a damn about how many times this guy had his house broken into.
I don't give a damn about hypothetical weapons that were never there.

THIS GUY shot a kid ON HIS KNEES IN THE BACK...


The question was obviously a LEGAL one.
Not just one of capability...

Kinda hard to lunge when you're on your knees...
Keep in mind that IMO, the guy was wrong to shoot, but we have the benefit of hindsight. Without looking at anything except the situation that existed at the time, the guy was legally justified in his actions. He had four kids whom he had apprehended in the act of breaking and entering and one of them starts to lunge at him. What do you do?? Hope that he's only getting up to beg for his life or assume the worst and jump to the conclusion that he's going to try and grab your weapon so that his buddies and he can take it away from you and possibly kill you. Stay objective about this and don't look at it from hindsight, but from the shooter's POV, because that's the one that matters in a court of law. If he had a reasonable suspicion that his life was in danger, then he has a legal right to pull the trigger. I think that he was looking for a reason to kill one of those kids and when the kid took whatever action he did that Gonzalez interpretted as threatening, he pulled the trigger and did it. In hindsight what he did was immoral, unethical and deserves criminal charges, but the law in this case only applies based on the situation and how threatened Gonzalez felt. We don't know the whole story. For all we know these "kids" were hardcore gangbangers (yes, they recruit that young and yes, they kill that young) that Gonzalez felt would cause him great harm, up to and including killing him based on the behavior he had seen from them prior to this. If this was a bunch of highly violent kids with a complete disregard for other people, then you've got even more reason to see just how he could have killed the kid. But we don't know all the details, we don't know all the kid's history with Gonzalez, we don't have the whole story. What we have is repeated breaking and entering, a frustrated guy with a shotgun and a bunch of kids. Formula for disaster of the worst sort.

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

God is a conservative -

Ecclesiastes 10:2--"A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left."

Yes. If the Feds had been enforcing border laws, a lot of this wouldn't be going on. This guy is obviously not well off at all, and repeated break-ins and thefts are a much more serious matter for him than it would be for middle class suburbanites who don't live in a lawless border town. He was obviously being targeted. And, these weren't 'kids', like Wally and the Beaver, they were a feral criminal gang preying on this guy. It was either put a stop to it when he had them red-handed, or sooner or later getting killed himself. The courts don't do squat to these 'kids', and they know it; laws mean shit to them. You want to blame somebody for the killing, blame the thugs' parents; they got them killed.

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