Isabella Thallas (photo, left) didn’t see her 22nd birthday, because Michael Close (photo, below right), 38, killed her over dog poop.
Thallas and her boyfriend, Darian Simon, were walking a dog on June 10, 2020, outside Close’s apartment building in Denver. They stopped and encouraged the dog to relieve himself. Close didn’t like it. And I get that; nobody wants to step in dog poop.
I get annoyed at heedless dog owners, too. But I don’t shoot them. At most I might say something.
Close apparently did, and I gather that Thallas and Simon became belligerent in some way. It should have ended there, or with Close calling the cops.
Instead, in a fit of rage, he grabbed an AK-47 and fired 24 rounds, killing Thallas and wounding Simon. Charged with murder and attempted murder, he pleaded insanity but the jury didn’t buy it. He was convicted on Thursday, September 23, 2022.
His public defender contended he “suffered a mental break,” arguing that “an abusive childhood, a string of job losses, a breakup and the Covid-19 pandemic contributed to his poor mental health at the time of the shooting” (see story here).
Sounds like he had issues. But the legal test of insanity is whether a person is so impaired by mental defect or illness they can’t tell the difference between right and wrong. It doesn’t take very much mental function to understand that grabbing an AK-47 and opening up on strangers ain’t right if they’re not shooting at you.
I want the insanity defense to be a high bar. I don’t want some nutso killing me for no good reason and then getting off because he had a bad childhood or cabin fever from being cooped up during the pandemic.
But what I really want is for the general public to not have AK-47s, AR-15s, ghost guns, bump stocks, switches that turn semi-auto rifles into machineguns, and for unstable people to not have guns period.
Here’s what’s insane: Our gun laws, gun policies, and gun attitudes. The Second Amendment says,
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
There’s nothing there that says the public has a right to guns except by participating in a government (not private) militia, which these days is called the National Guard.
The idea that anybody can have any type of gun — including military weaponry designed for war — and carry them anywhere, without being licensed or regulated in any manner whatsoever, has to be implied from this language, because it sure isn’t there in that language.
And if a woman’s right to control her own body can’t be implied from the Constitution, then neither can the Supreme Court’s freewheeling interpretation of the Second Amendment.
What happened in Denver that day is Wild West stuff. Attitudes among a segment of the U.S. population are shifting toward extreme violence in response to small provocations. Taking a human life over annoyance at dog poop makes all our lives too cheap. The proliferation of guns, and casual willingness of some people to use them, is out of control.
I want more sensible gun policies, but to get them we’d have to go over, around, or through Republicans — and rein in a Supreme Court that is drastically out of step with public sentiment on this and other issues. That’s probably not gonna happen; the way things are going we’ll be lucky just to avoid our democracy being overthrown and being ruled by an armed and violent minority faction.
The next best alternative is throwing the legal book at people who commit gun violence. This guy should never get out of prison. Taking a life for no better reason than dog poop should mean losing his life, or at least the freedom to live his life as he chooses.
But we’re not only stuck with insane gun policies, we’re also stuck with a lenient legal system. He’ll probably get out in 10 or 15 years. If he does, he’ll be prohibited from having guns; but lots of ex-felons have guns, and when they’re caught they get slapped on the wrist. That needs to change, too. A person prohibited from having guns because of they’re a threat to others should, if caught with a gun, be removed from society.
And then there’s the people parading with guns in public buildings to intimidate public officials, threatening and committing political violence, and talking up “civil war.” About all you can do is not vote for them, the politicians encouraging them and egging them on, or their party.
And laugh at them when they claim to be a “law and order” party, and try to blame violent crimes like this one on the other party.
The fact is, America’s Wild West traditions are alive and well, and innocent life is cheap in our country. This isn’t law, it’s politics. And it isn’t liberals or Democrats who are responsible for it.
Update: On Friday, November 4, 2022, Close was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for Thallas’ murder, and given a concurrent 48-year sentence for wounding Darian Simon (read story here).