Should parents be allowed to kill by law?

[StLGooner]

SHINER, Texas -- Hearing his 5-year-old daughter crying from behind a barn, a father ran and discovered the unthinkable: A man molesting her. The father pulled the man off his daughter, authorities say, and started pummeling him to death with his fists.

With his daughter finally safe, the father frantically called 911, begging a dispatcher to find his rural ranch and send an ambulance. "Come on! This guy is going to die on me!" the man is heard screaming on the 911 call. "I don't know what to do!"

A recording of the tape was played during a news conference Tuesday where the Lavaca County district attorney and sheriff announced that the father will not face charges.


In declining to indict the 23-year-old father in the June 9 killing of Jesus Mora Flores, a Lavaca County grand jury reached the same conclusion as investigators and many of the father's neighbors: He was authorized to use deadly force to protect his daughter.

"It's sad a man had to die," said Michael James Veit, 48, who lives across the street from where the attack happened in this small community run on ranching and the Shiner beer brewery. "But I think anybody would have done that."

Father's desperate 911 call
The family ranch is so remote that on the 911 tape, the father is heard screaming at a dispatcher who couldn't locate the property. At one point, he tells the dispatcher he's going to put the man in his truck and drive him to a hospital.

"He's going to die!" the father screams, swearing at the dispatcher. "He's going to f------ die!"

The tense, nearly five-minute call begins with the father saying he "beat up" a man found raping his daughter. The father grows increasingly frazzled, shouting into the phone so loudly at times that the call often becomes inaudible.

The Associated Press is not identifying the father in order to protect the daughter's identity. The AP generally does not identify victims of sexual assault.

"He's a peaceable soul," V'Anne Huser, the father's attorney, told reporters at the Lavaca County Courthouse.

The San Antonio Express reported that Huser said the father “had no intention to kill anyone on that day.”

“In our opinion, the story is over. You will not get an interview from (the father) or his family,” she said, according to the paper, asking for the family to be left alone.

The attack happened on the family's ranch off a quiet, two-lane county road between the farming towns of Shiner and Yoakum.

Ran toward his child's screams
A statement released by the district attorney said a witness who saw Flores "forcibly carrying" the girl into a secluded area scrambled to find the father.

Running toward his daughter's screams, the father pulled Flores off his child and "inflicted several blows to the man's head and neck area," investigators said.

Emergency crews responding to the father's 911 call found Flores' pants and underwear pulled down on his lifeless body. The girl was examined at a hospital, and Lavaca County District Attorney Heather McMinn said forensic evidence and witness accounts corroborated the father's story that his daughter was being sexually molested.

The father was never arrested, but the killing was investigated as a homicide.

Philip Hilder, a Houston criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said he would have been surprised if the grand jury had decided to indict the father. Hilder said Texas law provides several justifications for the use of deadly force, including if someone commits a sexual assault.

"The grand jury was not about to indict this father for protecting his daughter," he said.

Authorities said the family had hired Flores before to help with horses on the ranch. He was not born in the U.S., but was here legally with a green card. Attempts to locate Flores' relatives through public records were unsuccessful.

On Tuesday, a new "No Trespassing" sign was freshly tacked onto a gate barring entrance down a gravelly, shrub-canopied path leading to the barn and chicken coop on the ranch, which belonged to the father's dad.

At the father's house, the front yard could pass for a children's playground: Blue pinwheels sunk into patchy grass, an above-ground swimming pool, a swing set, a trampoline and a couple of ropes dangling from a tree for swinging. A partial privacy fence is painted powder blue.

No one answered at the father's home. A few miles away, at a home listed as belonging to the father's sister, a woman shouted through the front door that the family had nothing to say. Huser, the father's attorney, told reporters that neither the father nor anyone else in the family would ever give interviews and asked that they be left alone.

Veit, who lives near the ranch, described the father as easygoing and polite — down to always first asking permission to search Veit's property for animals that had wandered off the ranch, even though the families have long known each other.

© http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... ester?lite


This may be a no brainer.I would kill anyone who harmed my son, especially if he was molested. But I thought I'd ask the opinions of others to see if anyone opposes, or has a reason not to kill in a case like this.

[TRA Dial Square]

An eye for an eye is never good... But as you say if I found ANYONE trying to harm my kid (when I have one) I'd probably want to kill them as well.

But I also believe death is a swift and too good 'justice' for people like this sick man... They should be put on death row and locked in a cell with a big, brutish fella named Bubba - Until the time their sentence is carried out.

[StLGooner]

Yeah, two wrongs don't make a right, but it is justifiable. I've heard a few cases like this and each time the father has gotten away with it, I have yet to see a father be charged and found guilty, and I'm not sure I would agree if he was.

[CynicalGooner]

Common sense prevailed at least.

It's not a nice situation however you look at it but he didn't kill the man in cold blood and was provoked beyond measure.

[Massa]

not just harming, but raping and molesting your own child...f***ing kill him

[StLGooner]

And you could tell by his 911 call that he didn't really want the man to die. I think I probably would have been a little more cold, as in I probably wouldn't have cared if he died, while in the rage I would surely be in. But ya never really know until you're in a situation like that.

[TRA Dial Square]

Common sense prevailed at least.

It's not a nice situation however you look at it but he didn't kill the man in cold blood and was provoked beyond measure.

Exactly!

DESPITE EVERYTHING, the father STILL (as can allegedly be heard in the 911 call) tried his damnedest to save this child rapists life?!?! As is mentioned in Jay's post above mine.

This man deserves a medal for f***ing compassion, let alone being found not guilty of murder.

[Reverend Gooner]

I understand the verdict. It was the emotion at the time and the need to protect his daughter, plus he clearly didn't want to kill him. I think it is a common sense verdict even though I don't necessarily think that parents should be allowed to kill as a standard. If he found and killed him say 2 months later, while I could understand why, legally I don't think the verdict should be the same because you cannot really set a precedent like that in society. Of course the public would be behind that person but really that should be jail time for murder. This was different though and I think justice has prevailed.

[TRA Dial Square]

^ Pretty much sums it up Rev.

[StLGooner]

I understand the verdict. It was the emotion at the time and the need to protect his daughter, plus he clearly didn't want to kill him. I think it is a common sense verdict even though I don't necessarily think that parents should be allowed to kill as a standard. If he found and killed him say 2 months later, while I could understand why, legally I don't think the verdict should be the same because you cannot really set a precedent like that in society. Of course the public would be behind that person but really that should be jail time for murder. This was different though and I think justice has prevailed.

That is a good point. Which reminds me of a case oh about ten years ago now I believe, were something similar happened, some man raped this fathers son, but the father didn't get to catch him in the act, he found out about it later, and before he could get to the guy the guy was already arrested. So as the police were moving the rapist through an airport (if I remember that correctly), the father ran up and shot him, and got away with it. I believe it went to court and everything, but the jurors found him not guilty on grounds for justifiable homicide or something along those lines. I guess then it would become a question on how long is too long to wait to get revenge?

[Maxduke]

Yeah, can't be sent down for that.

If it was me however, I'd have battered the guy, made sure he stayed alive but kept him tied up in the barn and tortured him for the rest of his days, they mentioned the farm was quite hard to get to so nobody would hear him scream.

[mg86]

So you don't think the father in Taken would be pardoned by society? I sure do, just for being so badass about it.

[StLGooner]

I still haven't seen Taken, so can't answer that.

[TRA Dial Square]

I am going to watch this tonight...

Heard so many good things about it.

[Massa]

f***ing watch it NOW. seriously you will f***ing love it