TexasCHLforum.com

Photoman wrote:

txinvestigator wrote:So if you got mad at your neighbor and shot him with your pistola, they could not charge you with murder if he died?

You have to admit, it would be a novel defense.

People try to use the defense, "I was just trying to scare him," all the time. It doesn't work unless maybe your defense attorney is Dick DeGuerin.

This conversation is starting to look a lot like a discussion of whether when a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

- Jim

frankie_the_yankee wrote:If you're found not guilty, doesn't that mean that in the collective judgement of the finders of fact (the jury) that you did not commit a crime?

This is a narrow semantic point, but being no billed by a grand jury or found not guilty by a petit jury means that the state did not prove that you committed crime.

In some cases you could be proven innocent. For example, if, at the time the crime occurred, you were in government custody or in surgery, that would pretty much prove it. However, that sort of thing is rare.

- Jim