Quote:
Originally Posted by Makarov
Still hard for me to imagine how pointing a gun, which you knew had some bullets but perhaps didn’t know exactly how many bullets, at someone’s head at short range and thus causing that person’s death isn’t manslaughter.
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Don't get me wrong, I'd have a hard time finding him not guilty (on the evidence that I read) simply because I understand at no point should a gun be pointed at a person under any circumstances other than with the explicit possibility that you could kill them. So for me, that probably would be a sticking point if I was on the jury. At the same time, I would have had a hard time condemning a person to a minimum of 4 years if I truly thought it was an accident.
But really the argument from the defense was that he had unloaded the gun, shot multiple times with nothing happening and therefore saw it as safe. Now it goes to the jury (if they believe that) to decide if what he did was something a reasonable person would have done in that high stress situation. If they could understand that a reasonable person may not have had a focus on where his gun was aiming while he was looking to save his wife, well that's a tough spot. And ultimately, likely, what got him off.