I am not a journalist. I told my mother I was a piano player in a whorehouse, so she wouldn’t be ashamed of me. I understand that journalists are not supposed to interject themselves into a story. As a commenter I have a little more leeway. Correct me if I am wrong, but when the subject of a story asserts facts that are not true, wouldn’t it be proper to solicit the opinion of a subject matter expert to demonstrate that the facts are untrue? It seems like it would make for a more complete story. Two stories to illustrate my point.
In the first Juan Martin Garcia is fixing to get executed in Texas for a murder committed during the course of a robbery.
Texas inmate says he shouldn’t die for $8 robbery, slaying
By MICHAEL GRACZYK
(AP) — A Texas inmate set to be executed Tuesday acknowledges fatally shooting a Mexican man who was robbed of $8 and had just moved his family to Houston, but insists he doesn’t deserve to die for the killing 17 years ago.
“This is not a capital case,” Juan Martin Garcia, 35, told The Associated Press last month in a prison interview near Livingston. “I got railroaded since I didn’t take the stand (to testify at trial).”
Any attorney familiar with Texas law could point out that robbery is an offense against people, not property and the relative value of the item stolen during the course of the robbery is immaterial.
Garcia, who spoke to the AP on a phone inside a caged-in visitors’ area outside the state’s death row, said it was Mendoza who came up with the idea to rob Solano and that Solano escalated the confrontation by resisting.
“He punches me. First thing that came through my mind is that the dude is going to try to kill me,” Garcia said. “He grabbed the gun with both of his hands and it discharged.”
Solano was shot four times in the head and neck. Garcia said he didn’t rob Solano.
Once is an oops, four times requires a little more effort.
“My dad used to beat me,” Garcia said. “When that guy hit me, I was high on drugs and the first person I saw was my dad. So I kept shooting.”
Garcia intimates that the victim caused his own death by resisting and dances around an accidental, self defense, intoxication, and my dad was mean to me claim. Again any attorney sitting around with his feet higher than his butt could point out that intoxication is not a defense, and self defense cannot be raised where the suspect was the aggressor. For self defense to come into play Garcia would have to show that he discontinued the assault and robbery and started to walk away when he was attacked.
I am not even gonna bother with the other shootings and robberies he was involved in as the organizer ring leader, or the fact that two co-defendants couldn’t wait to snitch him off. I won’t even point out the gang banger tattoo peaking out of the neck of his jump suit.
The other story involves the latest mass murder in Oregon:
Oregon shooter rants in writings about having no girlfriend
Jonathan J. Cooper and Tami Abdollah, Associated Press Updated 2:05 am, Tuesday, October 6, 2015
ROSEBURG, Ore. (AP) — The gunman who killed nine people at an Oregon community college before taking his own life ranted in writings he left behind about not having a girlfriend and thinking everyone else was crazy, a law enforcement official said Monday.
The official also said the mother of 26-year-old gunman Christopher Harper-Mercer has told investigators he was struggling with some mental health issues. The official is familiar with the investigation but wasn’t authorized to speak publicly because it is ongoing.
Harper-Mercer complained in the writings about not having a girlfriend, and he seemed to feel like he was very rational while others around him were not, the official said.
He wrote something to the effect of: “Other people think I’m crazy, but I’m not. I’m the sane one,” the official said. The writings recovered at the shooting scene were a couple of pages long.
This incident is too recent to get an accurate assessment of his mental state, other than describing his actions. However, I would think it would be relatively easy to get an outraged feminist to counter his statement that it was women’s fault because he wasn’t getting laid. This could open up an entirely new field in crime prevention.
Maybe it is just my nature to be confrontational. Nobody is going to change the Oregon gunman’s mind and come Wednesday they will be throwing dirt in Juan Martin Garcia’s face. Somewhere out there will be the next idiot quoting either one of these losers and believing their line.
The other thing in play here is inmates require hyper-perfection when they are prosecuted for their misdeeds and anything short of that is an indication that they got “railroaded” or unjustly convicted. I was filling out a booking slip on a crack dealer and asked him, what he had been to the joint for? He allowed that he had been down for burglary but it was a total humbug, he didn’t do it, it was a false arrest. I asked him to tell me his tale of woe. Which he did.
It seems he and buddy decided to steal some TV’s and VCR’s from the local elementary school. He boosted his buddy up so that he could climb in an unsecured window. While his buddy was searching the classroom, my crack dealer spotted a patrol car. He was so busy tracking the progress of the patrol car that he stopped paying attention to the window. His buddy in the meantime found a 25 inch TV, that he pitched out the window to the crack dealer below. The TV handed on the crack dealers head knocking him out and that is how the police found him. They charged him with burglary. This is obviously a humbug charge since he never went in the building, he never carried anything off (in order to commit theft) and he was a victim since a TV fell on his head. Just in case it isn’t clear, in Texas, you help a guy into a building so that he can steal and the two of you split the proceeds, you just committed burglary, the busted head and TV just turned low drama into slapstick comedy.