Brant,

Absolutely innocent until proven guilty and right to a trial by jury are part of society's values. If the thief wanted to exercise his rights, he should have dropped to the ground when so ordered. He didn't and suffered what I consider the natural and logical consequences of his actions. The problem as I see it is that the thief made a fatal error in assuming his actions were not subject to adverse consequences, but it turns out that they were. That is how it should be. You only get a trial by jury and get to be presumed innocent until proven guilty if you are captured alive. In this case the thief was attempting to elude capture when he kept running instead of dropping to the ground when ordered. He gambled with his life and lost.

You seem to be trying to turn (like a good defense attorney) the rules of problem ownership around and make the real victim (Mr. Sheen, the car and stereo owner) into the perpetrator when any contextual analysis shows that the burglar was the perp and not a victim of any kind at all. If the burglar obeyed the law, and the normative expectations of society that you don't steal other people's stuff, then the burglar would still be alive today. There are two tragedies here. One that the thief was a dumbshit, gambled and lost, and two, that Mr. Sheen has to live the rest of his life knowing he killed another human, even if the human was behaving like a scumbag at the time, Mr. Sheen will probably feel far more remorse for the burglar's loss of life than the scumbag burglar would have ever felt for stealing Mr. Sheen's stereo speaker.

It's my contention that by prosecuting people who are defending their property or life, we are in fact undermining our social values regarding honesty and "thou shall not steal." I'm not necessarily condoning vigilanteism. Mr. Sheen is charged with using excessive force. I'd like to ask the prosecutor just how much force is acceptable? Should Mr. Sheen stand on his balcony and just watch the burglar carry his stereo speaker away? How about throwing a rock? Hell he would probably miss, but what if he got lucky and hit the burglar in the head. He'd probably still be dead, so then rock throwing at burglars is also excessive force? See how rediculous the analysis gets? Where do you draw the line? What action is the property owner legally entitled to? Any? Oh, he can call the cops - - fat lot of good that's going to do, and you and everyone else knows it. Either the owner is entitled to take some action to defend his property, or he is entitled to none, because there is no line that can be drawn between doing nothing and doing what he did, take a shot at the thief after a verbal warning to drop to the ground, that makes any sense at all.

OK you get your chance. You tell us - and the jury - what reasonable alternatives were available to Mr. Sheen other than what he did. Letting the thief get in the car with the speaker and drive off never to be seen again and filing a police report is not a reasonable alternative because all evidence points to the conclusion that only an exceedingly low percentage of burglary items are ever recovered, and that the police are wholly ineffectual at preventing burglaries or finding and convicting burglars and recovering stolen property. Burglary is profitable, and that is the simple reason why it is such a popular crime. The only way to make burglary unprofitable is to shoot and kill a high enough percentage of burglars that they can't make any money at it due to risk of death. Incarceration could be an alternative, but as this case illustrates, the damn burglar won't drop to the ground when ordered, so he receives a natural consequence of his action. And society benefits.

This is fun.

Sg