This seems to be the next ploy in the anti-rights, gun controller’s playbook. If they can’t totally restrict carry, they’ll try to restrict where you can carry, as in the bill being proposed in New York. Now it appears they’ll try to use this case as a venue to restrict when the law covers using deadly force for self defense.
Wichita police shooting of 9-year-old could set limits on how you can defend yourself
A court case where a Wichita police officer shot at a dog and hit a 9-year-old girl instead goes beyond whether he can be prosecuted and could set limits on how far you can go in defending yourself, Kansas Supreme Court justices acknowledged Thursday. During oral arguments in the case involving former Wichita officer Dexter Betts, justices noted they aren’t just deciding whether Betts acted properly, but determining the limits on all Kansans’ use of self-defense when it may cause harm to bystanders. Justice Dan Biles drew an analogy to a person who’s threatened at a crowded concert.
A court case where a Wichita police officer shot at a dog and hit a 9-year-old girl instead goes beyond whether he can be prosecuted and could set limits on how far you can go in defending yourself, Kansas Supreme Court justices acknowledged Thursday.
During oral arguments in the case involving former Wichita officer Dexter Betts, justices noted they aren’t just deciding whether Betts acted properly, but determining the limits on all Kansans’ use of self-defense when it may cause harm to bystanders.
Justice Dan Biles drew an analogy to a person who’s threatened at a crowded concert.
“If they’ve got a gun, they can just start shooting and regardless of how many people drop, they’re going to have immunity (from prosecution or lawsuits) as long as you can show the threat was there as long as the trigger’s being pulled?” Biles asked Betts’ attorney Jess Hoeme.
But Justice Caleb Stegall took a different tack when questioning the state’s lawyer, assistant Sedgwick County District Attorney Matt Maloney.
If the state wins the case and can charge Betts with reckless aggravated battery, “wouldn’t that effectively enable the state to charge any case as a reckless crime and therefore essentially wipe self-defense off the books?” Stegall asked.
Neither side disputes that Betts felt threatened when he responded to a domestic violence call in December 2017 and the family dog, a 30- to 35-pound bull terrier, barked and moved at him while he was in the home.
Betts fired two shots at the dog, missing both times. But one of the bullets richocheted off the concrete floor and fragments hit the girl, one of three children in the room, above her eye and in the foot.
Betts was fired from the department following the shooting.
Two years later, Sedgwick County District Court Judge Kevin O’Connor ruled that Betts was immune from prosecution or a lawsuit by the girl’s family because he had fired in self-defense. Last year, the Court of Appeals affirmed O’Connor’s decision, setting up the Supreme Court showdown.
On Thursday, Maloney argued that although Betts was threatened by the dog, the level of that threat didn’t justify him using his gun and putting children at risk.
“Officer Betts was a full-grown adult male who was wearing full police gear,” Maloney said. “I would argue that a reasonable person in that situation would not fear that because a dog barked and took a couple of steps towards him that he was at risk of death or great bodily harm.”
He said the officer could have hit the dog, grabbed it, kicked it, or beat it with his flashlight, which would have been a more appropriate response that wouldn’t have risked harming the children.
“The vast majority of human beings have encountered unfamiliar dogs in their lives, and maybe they had a little bit of fear,” he said. Nearly all manage to resolve those situations without using deadly force.
Stegall pressed Maloney on that.
“You’ve thrown a lot of hypotheticals out there and shaded the facts, I think,” Stegall said. “As I read the record, this wasn’t just a strange dog that took a step toward the officer. It was a pit bull that lunged at the officer.”
Maloney corrected Stegall: “It was not a pit bull, your honor. In fact the defendant acknowledged after the fact that he mistakenly thought it was a pit bull.”
Whether the dog lunged or not is a matter of interpretation that can vary from person to person, he said.
“I think the size and type of the dog does matter to some extent,” Maloney said. “If this were a four-pound toy Chihuahua, I don’t think anybody could claim that the use of deadly force was necessary. If it’s a 120-pound mastiff, or a massive pit bull, then yes that does factor in.”
Hoeme said it didn’t matter if the dog was actually a pit bull or not.
“It looked like a pit bull, Officer Betts believed it was a pit bull,” Hoeme argued. “It looked like a pit bull, it barked like a pit bull, it growled like a pit bull, so at the moment officer Betts took that shot, he, by all intents and purposes, believed it was a pit bull.”
Hoeme also questioned why the district attorney’s office has gone to great lengths to prosecute Betts, but not a similar case two years earlier involving an actual pit bull attack on an officer.
“That officer took two shots, the same as Officer Betts did,” Hoeme said. “That bullet hit the concrete, fragmented and hit another officer and the woman he was talking to. That case was never charged.”
Hoeme said the girl wouldn’t have been hit by fragments if the house had a wood floor instead of concrete, or if Betts had actually hit the dog he shot at, because police use specialized bullets designed to mushroom on impact rather than passing through a body.
“The biggest mistake Officer Betts made was missing,” he said.
Justices took the case under advisement and there is no established time for when they’ll rule on it.