Man Claiming "Stand Your Ground" Faces Life Sentence
Raul Rodriguez was convicted after prosecutors convinced a jury that his self-defense claims were staged.
| Posted Thursday, June 14, 2012, at 11:14 AM
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.
If you're going to use a "stand your ground" defense to attempt to avoid jail after shooting someone, it's maybe a good idea not to brag about it beforehand.
That's apparently more or less what happened to Raul Rodriguez, a Texas man who was convicted on Wednesday of murdering his neighbor two years ago. He now faces life in prison, according to the Associated Press.
Rodriguez, 47, went to his neighbor's house with a gun to complain about noise from a birthday party. He got into an argument with Kelly Danaher, an elementary school teacher, and two other men at the party. Rodriguez recorded a 22-minute video during the confrontation, during which he said "my life is in danger now," and "I’m standing my ground here," before fatally shooting Danaher. Two others were wounded.
Rodriguez's defense, according to the Houston Chronicle, argued that the retired Houston-area firefighter (who had a concealed handgun liscence) had a split second to decide whether to fire at the three men charging at him. But prosecutors told a different story, one that the jury apparently agreed with. They argue that Rodriguez's taped confrontation was a bit too deliberate, and peppered with buzzwords from a concealed handgun licensing class, which he used to try and get away with murder after initiating a confrontation with Danaher.
As the AP reports, one neighbor even testified that Rodriguez had previously bragged to her about his guns, and told her that it's possible to avoid prosecution for a shooting if you say you feared for your life and were standing your ground.
