who screamed for help, and at what point was the handgun drawn?
Angry protesters insisting that the dead teen was the genuine victim chant, “No justice, no peace.” After the controversial “not guilty” verdict, the man is featured in the news several times for brushes with the law involving violent outbursts. (Alvarez and Buckley, 2013; and Jauregui, 2014)
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At around 4:30 am, a 55-year-old white man hears loud pounding and shouting at his front door and then at his side door. He grabs a shotgun and fires a blast through his locked screen door into the face of a teenage black girl standing on his front porch, killing her instantly. He is arrested and put on trial. Although he initially told the police that his weapon discharged accidentally, he tells the jury that he thought his home was about to be invaded by several intruders and, fearing for his life, vowed that “I wasn’t going to cower in my house, I didn’t want to be a victim.” The pros- ecution contends that he went to the door armed because he wanted to confront and frighten vandals who had defaced his vehicle with paintballs a few weeks earlier. The jury rejects his claim of firing in self-defense, and finds the man guilty of second degree murder and manslaughter. The young woman he killed turned out to be 19, unarmed, and intoxicated. Apparently she was making a commotion because she was seeking help after being involved in a car crash nearby several hours earlier. (Anderson, 2014; and Abby-Lambertz, 2014)
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W H A T I S V I CT I M O LO G Y ? 7
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A 29-year-old mother of 3 enters her home to gather her belongings so she can escape from her abusive estranged husband, whose periodic beatings have inflicted injuries that have sent her to a hospital. But he returns home unexpectedly, accompanied by two of her stepsons. The 10-year-old and 13-year-old watch in horror as he beats and strangles her. She runs into the garage to get into her car but finds herself trapped, so she grabs her licensed handgun and returns to their house. When he curses and charges towards her, she fires what she contends are three warning shots into the kitchen ceiling to ward him off. But he calls the police, and her shots are viewed as angry attempts to hurt or kill him and his sons. She rejects a plea offer and is put on trial, and after the jury deliberates for a mere 12 minutes, she is convicted of three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, which could keep her in prison for 20 years. A grassroots move- ment of supporters fights for her release and for the charges to be dropped, viewing her as a battered woman who used a weapon to defend herself from imminent bodily injury. When her conviction is overturned because of faulty jury instructions, the prosecution vows to retry her and to seek consecutive sentences that would keep her behind bars for 60 years. (Shepeard, 2014)
In all three of these recent high-profile cases presented above, one other question arose: whether the race of the participants, and especially whether negative racial stereotypes, colors the thinking of various groups about which person should be des- ignated as the genuine victim (see Ghandnoosh, 2014). Also, in all three of these cases, individuals perceiving themselves to be facing a threat of immi- nent bodily harm reached for their gun, triggering a debate between advocates of armed self-defense and supporters of gun control legislation (the arguments of both sides of this controversy appear in Chapter 13). Sharply different points of view were aired in dinner table discussions, news media columnists’ interpretations, courtroom proceedings, and even political rallies about the role of race in decision making and about the use of deadly weapons for self-protection These are the kind of issues that vic- timologists need to study scientifically.
Whenever different interpretations of the facts lead to sharply divergent conclusions about who is actually the guilty party and who really is the injured party, knee-jerk pro-victim impulses provide no use- ful guidance for action. The confusion inherent in the unrealistically simplistic labels of 100 percent cul- pable criminal and 100 percent innocent victim underscores the need for objectivity when trying to figure out who is primarily responsible for whatever lawbreaking took place. Clearly, the dynamics between victims and victimizers need to be sorted out in an evenhanded and open-minded manner, not only by victimologists but also by journalists, police officers, prosecutors, judges, and juries.
In rare instances, even the authorities can’t make up their minds, as this unresolved incident demonstrates:
A pizza parlor chef and a mob henchman become embroiled in a knife fight that spills out on to a city street. They stab and slash each other and wind up in different hospitals. The police arrest both of the injured parties on charges of attempted murder as well as other offenses. However, each of the combatants refuses to testify in front of a grand jury against his adversary, fearing self-incrimination if he has to explain his motives and actions. The district attor- ney’s office declines to grant immunity from prose- cution to either of the two parties because detectives cannot figure out who was the attacker and who fought back in self-defense. As a result, neither is indicted, and a judge dismisses all the charges pend- ing from the melee. Both wounded men, and the lawyers representing them, walk out of court pleased with the outcome—that no one will get in trouble for an assault with a deadly weapon. (Robbins, 2011)
Criminals Can Be Victims Too
To further complicate matters, impartiality is called for when the injured party clearly turns out to be an undeniable lawbreaker. To put it bluntly, predators prey upon each other as well as upon innocent members of the general public. Some assaults and slayings surely can be characterized as
8 CH APT ER 1
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“criminal-on-criminal.” Researchers (see Singer, 1981; and Fattah, 1990) noted long ago that people who routinely engage in illegal activities are more likely to get hurt than their law-abiding counterparts. When an organized crime syndicate “puts out a contract” on a rival faction’s chieftain, the gangster who gets “whacked” in a “mob rub- out” is not an upstanding citizen struck down by an act of randomly directed violence. Similarly, when a turf battle erupts between drug dealers and one vanquishes the other, it must be remembered that the loser aspired to be the victor. When youth gangs feud with each other by carrying out “drive- by” shootings, the young members who get gunned down are casualties of their own brand of retali- atory “street justice.” Hustlers, con men, high- stakes gamblers, pimps, prostitutes, fences, swindlers, smugglers, traffickers, and others living life in the fast lane of the underworld often get hurt because they enter into showdowns with volatile persons known to be armed and dangerous.