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El Reg reports
A father who shot down a drone that was hovering over his family home in Kentucky has been cleared of all charges.
Dad-of-two William Merideth thought the quadcopter was spying on his daughters in their yard in Hillview and blasted the gizmo out of the sky with a shotgun. That earned him the title "Drone Slayer" from pro-privacy quarters.
Merideth was arrested shortly after in July and charged with criminal mischief and wanton endangerment.
He appeared before the Bullitt County District Court on Monday this week and after a two and a half hour hearing, Judge Rebecca Ward dismissed the case against him.
"I was in my right to protect my family and my property", said Merideth.
The judge agreed, telling the court: "He had a right to shoot at this drone."
David Boggs, who owned the downed drone, was hoping to get the cost of the machine in compensation and said he will ask the Commonwealth's Attorney's office to take the case to a grand jury--or consider pursuing a civil case against Merideth.
Previous: Man Arrested for Shooting Down Drone Flying Over His Property
(Score: 1) by cloud.pt on Thursday October 29 2015, @06:19PM
You don't need to ignore my attacks on his personality, I wanted them to be just as clear as his (to me) by ignoring the obvious height shown in the video. Manipulating that fact is an attack on any person caring for this argument. It's really easy to distort a debate through fallacy, but I, once again, will concentrate on facts:
- the video shows a drone well beyond treeline altitude tumbling down. Very clearly. This video was accompanied actual GPS data to support the height and position at time of shooting
- there's still people here that won't acknowledge there's physical evidence against the 2 witnesses' testimony
- the shooter did not supply the memory card when he was requested to deliver the drone he shot down
- the judge both didn't ask around for that memory card and ignored the existence of the cached video
- ballistics are irrelevant as he might have switched ammo, especially when the first google search for max bird shot range states it can go from 198 to 330 yards. Everybody here wants to focus on how odd it seems to hit a drone at 200ft like it's the most impossible thing in the world, while, once again, there's a video of the drone tumbling down at that height...
For full disclosure, my ideological stance is as follows: I'm european, so I can't tolerate the lack of gun control that exists in America if it was to be applied verbatim in my region. But I understand its existence in America, and I also understand universally enhanced rights to protect individuals and their privacy at their homes. I am also a computer programmer, so I am the type that knows the difficulty (and sometimes lack thereof) of tampering with data, but especially I also know how easy it is to assess tampering. That's why I don't take an under oath, software data-backed assessment lightly. If a guy says he has video and data to a court, he is prepared to face the consequences if that data is found to be tampered, which go way beyond not getting his drone's value (that means jail time in case you didn't understand). I can't say the same about statements made by bystanders, made with the perk of plausible deniability, especially why they're prone to be biased for the reasons I mentioned in my very first comment. But above all I value privacy, and that's exactly why I can't stand what this guy did with a shotgun - you want to defend something you do it for the right reasons within legal bounds. It's counter-productive, and it will affect public opinion. If he had been deemed to pay for the drone he wrongly shot down it would have been much better for privacy in the long run. Now, instead of legislation against implausible drone flight, we'll have people shooting everything they deem in violation of their privacy.
The judge tossed out a case, but it could easily be appealed. Somebody noted the case was about using the gun in the city premises, rather than actually paying for the drone. Maybe I read the news wrong, but from what I understood, the case was all about the drone user demanding damages. I would call it a poor defense argument if this demand was made solely on firing a gun recklessly rather than firing the gun at property without the right to do so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2015, @07:15PM
OK, now we're getting somewhere ...
And supposedly supporting a miraculous view of ballistics. Shotguns are good for low flying birds a couple of dozen yards away, or vermin at close range. The area is not flat, and altitude above ground level is tricky. Until you have some kind of rational explanation for ludicrously effective shotgun pellets, the video evidence is, at best, open to a lot of serious questions. If you want to talk hard evidence, take all the factors into account.
... and there's someone right here who's having a hard time dealing with explicitly corroborative evidence. Seriously, the one absolutely incontrovertible fact about this whole deal, to which everybody agrees without a murmur of dissent, is that the shotgun blast took down the drone. Number 8 birdshot! Basically, metal sand, fit for pigeons and weasels at twenty yards.
Bummer. Nothing to do with the actual shooting, and given the material which might have been on it, very defensible.
They're called rules of evidence. Neither of those had anything resembling a secure chain of custody, and the lawyers against the shooter would have known that too - otherwise you'd better believe it would have been a major feature of their case.
Oh dear, this is precisely why ballistics are deeply relevant. First off, any damage to the drone would have shown what size the pellets were, so if there were an ammo switcheroo you'd better believe there'd be additional charges, starting with tampering with evidence. Second, the fact that birdshot can travel that distance doesn't even begin to tell you what it does at that range ... and the answer, in case you were wondering, is "patter". In fact, that's pretty much what it does at 150 yards, and 100 yards, and 80 yards, and for small birdshot such as number 8, to a first approximation that's what it does at 50 yards.
Nobody is claiming that a reasonable shot with a shotgun couldn't hit a drone (especially since at 50 yards the pattern of shot is likely to be the size of a van) but a lot of people are really wondering how the shot actually downed the drone - because at 20 yards I'd believe it. 30 yards ... I guess. 40 yards? Wow, lucky shot. Over 60 yards, vertical? Now I want to see real proof. And that's where the drone operator's story comes to earth with a crash.
There were a couple of issues at stake in court - one related to the firing of a weapon in city limits, but the demand of damages was another. The fact, however, that the drone operator's liability in either case hinges on the reasonability of his actions, and given that there are multiple witnesses claiming that the drone operator did shady things, during a period not covered by his video, and that the physical evidence of the shot strongly suggests that his version of events is not substantially complete or correct, the preponderance of evidence and the benefit of the doubt both favour the shooter. And thus found the judge.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 30 2015, @04:34PM
- the video shows a drone well beyond treeline altitude tumbling down. Very clearly. This video was accompanied actual GPS data to support the height and position at time of shooting
Unless, of course, the GPS data was manipulated or the GPS data is incorrect. Or it was manipulated. You still haven't explained how the vehicle was dropped by a shotgun blast from 60+ yards away vertical distance.
- there's still people here that won't acknowledge there's physical evidence against the 2 witnesses' testimony
That's because there isn't physical evidence against the two witnesses's testimony. The video you keep referring to doesn't cover all the flights of the drone and hence doesn't contradict the testimony of the witnesses.
- the shooter did not supply the memory card when he was requested to deliver the drone he shot down
Neither did the drone operator. Who actually had the memory card in the first place? According to this post [soylentnews.org] (which you should read before you reply to anyone in this discussion) the shooter left the memory card in the drone.
- the judge both didn't ask around for that memory card and ignored the existence of the cached video
Without expert testimony and a more complete video record, it's rather useless.
- ballistics are irrelevant as he might have switched ammo, especially when the first google search for max bird shot range states it can go from 198 to 330 yards. Everybody here wants to focus on how odd it seems to hit a drone at 200ft like it's the most impossible thing in the world, while, once again, there's a video of the drone tumbling down at that height...
And we'll keep doing that because we know how bird shot works. Also your video doesn't show the drone tumbling from a specific height. As I've noted before, unless you're willing to do the analysis you claim needs to be done to actually determine the height of the vehicle, you are just stating an uninformed opinion. And we still would have to decide whether to trust you or not.
Further, this is not sufficient to claim that the shooting was unjustified. As has been noted before, there are witnesses claiming the drone was well before tree line at some point. Just because it was high at the point of the shooting doesn't change that the shooting was warranted on the basis of the just prior intrusion into privacy.