Harold Fish did not help himself out either. He basically could not remember exactley what the threat was, he had a couple different versions. Secondly, I don't think his attorney was all that great.
Channel Investigation Discovery had a 1 hour show on how Harold Fish was convicted in court. It was worth watching....
There was a couple of points that were very interesting in it. One point was they portrayed his gun (they showed a Kimber) a 10mm and actually got the jury to believe it was way more gun than he needed to carry. They played it was more gun than the average person needed or carried, in thier words "It was overkill on his choice of gun). I could have possibly beaten that claim pretty easy, MCSO allows that claiber as a primary duty weapon. In fact, my partner carries that caliber on duty and off duty! One thing I noticed was Fish's attorney refered to his gun as a "weapon" numerous times, Firearm would have been a much beter choice of a word to use to describe the gun that Fish carried. Michael Anthony was shown as a defense witness and if I remeber correctly he used the term Firearm when mentioning about guns in a positive way, he used the term "weapon" when mentioning about a gun in a suspects hands (non-positive way).
A second interesting thing was they interviewed the jury foreman and one person from the jury, They stated in thier words that they had great concerns on the rounds that he used, The Fereral Hydra-Shock Hollow-Points!!!! The juror staed "These bullets are designed to inflick as much damage as they can to the human body". "They are made to KILL someone, that is it". The entire jury looked at the ammo this way.... Not good. In fact, Hollow Points are designed to "STOP" a threat, not to kill! The one thing that was not mentioned in the show was that these same bullets (Hollow Points) are issed by every police dept in the county. If I remeber correctly they (prosecution) used out-side expert witnesses (out side experts are generally someone not in Law Enforcement, they will generally say what the prosecution wants) to testify on the ammo. If they would have used "Inside" experts I believe they would have had a hard time playing his gun and ammo as a bad thing.
The last thing they dicussed was they (Jury) claimed that they based thier entire judgement on the circumstances that revovled around the time that the incident occured. They did not and were not allowed to use any thing from eithers past. Mainly because neither of them knew this at the time.
It was a very interesting show to see, I hear a lot say this "I would rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6". Not sure I totally agree with this. There are a lot of people that think or belive the same as these jurors did. Not every juror is a gun person or even if they are they have no idea of what is actually invovled in a gunfight. There is a whole lot more than just the bullets flying.......
Who ever has taken my class, in your handbook I handed out, on page 15 (or so) are 4 points you should be able to do if you are going to carry a gun in a self defense way! 3 of those four where mentioned above!!!!!
John
