Now that American society is saturated with guns, it’s not surprising people are resorting to them with increasing frequency.
Washington self-defense law is clear: You can legally use deadly force only to defend yourself or another person from an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm. Recovering your mail from a thief doesn’t, ipso facto, make the cut.
Let’s say you’re a public defender representing Chad Wilson, the 39-year-old man Port Orchard, Washington, man accused of gunning down a 31-year-old Puyallup man, Richard Taii, at around 11:00 p.m. Monday night, January 9, 2022, on a residential street in Port Orchard where mailbox thefts have recently been a problem.
Doorbell videos from neighboring houses show an SUV stopped in front of mailboxes. A pickup pulls up behind it. The SUV takes off, and the pickup follows. From down the street, you hear a voice say, “Give me my (bleeping) mail back,” followed by a single gunshot. By the time medics arrived, Wilson had left and Taii was dead behind the SUV’s wheel. The police arrested Wilson several hours later at his home about a mile away.
Two key questions are (1) was Taii stealing mail, and (2) when confronted by Wilson, did Taii pull a weapon or assault him? This is relevant to whether Wilson had a legitimate reason to confront Taii, and when he did so, a legitimate reason to defend himself. That’s what his defense lawyer will be looking for.
Two female passengers were with Taii in the SUV, which belonged to one of the women. They had come from Puyallup to pick up Taii from the Kitsap County jail in Port Orchard, then after the three of them hung out at a Walmart and 7-11, Taii started driving around residential neighborhoods. Wilson told police he was in his living room when he saw the Tahoe slowly driving past and a passenger opening mailboxes.
Wilson told the cops he followed them in his pickup, tried to wave them down, then attempted to block their vehicle in a cul-de-sac. He said he shot Taii for trying to run him over. “Deputies said at least one piece of mail from the street where Wilson lives could be seen inside the Tahoe,” a Seattle TV station reported (here).
Deputies arrested Wilson for murder — after all, he’d just killed someone — but may have done so figuring the prosecutor’s office will sort things out. Plenty of cops have shot drivers they thought were trying to run them over. They consider a car a deadly weapon.
On the other hand, Wilson may be in legal trouble for taking matters into his own hands instead of getting a license number and calling the police. Chasing after a thief isn’t a smart thing to do, and while having a gun can make you feel safer, it also can ruin your life if you use it.
But there’s the not-so-little matter of jury nullification. Wilson may be technically guilty of a crime, but a jury of his neighbors might not give a damn what the law says, and let him walk. Prosecutors who want to discourage vigilante behavior may not like this, but juries sometimes have a mind of their own.
Which reminds me of a story about Old West justice. Two cowboys were put on trial in a saloon before a jury of the most sober men who could be coaxed away from the bar. They found the first one guilty of stealing a horse, and sentenced him to hang. They found the other found guilty of shooting another cowboy in the back in an alley, and sentenced him to jail. They explained, “Around here, we got cowboys who deserve to be shot in the back, but we got no horses that deserve to be stolen.” Substitute mail thief for cowboy, and mail for horse, and juries that haven’t changed much in 150 years, and there you are.
So the final question is, will the proliferation of guns in 21st-century America bring back the ways of the Old West? Are we all cowboys now?