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RubenZ wrote: So basically if a punk tries to rob me at gunpoint for my fiance's purse. I shoot him. His mommy and daddy will pretty much have a hard time finding a lawyer who will even go through with the case?

Talking Civil court here of course.

IMO, that is correct.

But I would still not advocate shooting except as a last resort.

Your points are well taken.

badkarma56 wrote: I'd like nothing better than to feel completely protected by the state against civil suits in self defense encounters, but somehow, I just don't trust this protection quite yet. I guess I'm just paranoid , or maybe I've just become jaded by my experiences. Anyhow, some cynicism is warranted until we get some case precedents concerning this issue.

The problem is that I think it is gong to be a while before we get some precedents. This is because the bar for winning this type of lawsuit has been raised to a point where such suits have become very difficult to win. For that reason, when a plaintiff approaches an attorney seeking to file a suit on a contingent fee basis, (the way most such suits are "funded") in many cases the attorney will judge that his chances of winning are too small to make it worthwhile to go forward.

So the suit won't get filed to begin with in many cases.

Given that such suits were rare in TX to begin with, and that they will be even rarer now, I think we will be waiting a long time to see what kind of case law develops.

But from the good guy's perspective, that's a good thing.

nitrogen wrote:Does a man retreating from you put you in fear for your life? is a man running away an imminent threat to you or your family?

Will you be willing to severely injure someone, possibly killing them to stop them for what they stole?

That's what it comes down to, regardless of what the law says; there's a higher law here.

I can see both sides here. In some circumstances, I could see a shoot of a retreating robber being justified, but not in most cases.

Back in RI a guy once tried to rob a jewelry store. He pointed a Beretta 9mm at the owner and told him to fill up a bag with (expensive) jewelry from a case he pointed to. The owner moved to do this, but instead drew a 45ACP auto from a holster he had fastened to the underside of the top of the case (in a way that it was out of sight to patrons).

The owner was quoted in the newspaper as saying, "I was sure he was going to shoot me, so I drew the gun."

At the sight of the gun, the would be robber turned and fled. The owner followed him out into the street, not to try to catch him, but in his words, "...to see where he went so I could point him out to the police."

As he is chasing the BG down the street the BG turns partly around, probably to see how close his pursuer was. Apparently, his gun hand swung around while he was doing this. The jeweler said, "I was sure he was going to shoot me, so I fired."

He ends up hitting the BG in the leg. (It was a heck of a shot.) The police caught him soon after.

As I am reading this account I'm thinking, this guy must have taken some kind of deadly force class. He said a lot of "magic words". He'd have to be one clever dude to come up with all that stuff himself.

It turned out that the 9mm was not loaded. Of course the jeweler would have no way of knowing that.

The cops didn't bring any charges and he was later no billed by the grand jury.

I don't know if you can, but as a practical matter I probably wouldn't if the guy's running away. As you stated, the threat is ended if he's hightailing it out of there.