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posted by takyon on Thursday December 15 2016, @10:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-man's-home-is-his-castle dept.

A court case with far-ranging consequences concluded Tuesday in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Ray Rosas is a free man tonight after a jury of his peers found him not guilty of shooting three Corpus Christi police officers on February 19, 2015. On that day, early in the morning, CCPD executed a no-knock search warrant, forcing entry into the home without first knocking and announcing they were the police.

A flash bang grenade was fired into Rosas' bedroom, reportedly stunning the 47-year-old, who then opened fire on the intruders. Three officers were wounded; officers Steven Ruebelmann, Steven Brown, and Andrew Jordan. Police were looking for drugs and Rosas' nephew, who they suspected to be a dealer. However, the unnamed nephew was not home at the time of the raid.

Rosas spent nearly 2 years in jail awaiting trial, which concluded Tuesday with a Nueces County jury finding him not guilty. Rosas' defense maintained, based on statements he made immediately following the shooting and later in jail that he did not know the men breaking into his home were police officers and there was no way he could've known, having been disoriented by the flash-bang stun grenade. "The case is so easy, this is a self-defense case," said Rosas' lawyer in closing arguments.

Rosas originally faced three counts of attempted capital murder, but the prosecution dropped those charges just before the trial began, opting instead to try him for three counts of aggravated assault on the police officers. The jury sided with his defense attorney's argument he had a right to defend his home and found him not guilty on all charges.

takyon: Also at the Corpus Christi Caller Times.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday December 16 2016, @03:17AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Friday December 16 2016, @03:17AM (#441919)

    I'm basically pro cop, but you can't fault a guy for reacting to attackers who never identified themselves as police. You invade a guy's home and no holds are barred.

    If a cop says hands up, you obey and let the lawyers sort it out later if the cop was overreaching his authority because no other system results in a functioning civilization. But that can only work if the cop has identified himself. No knock needs to be very rare and used only after all other options have been rejected as more risky. And they should go in accepting, probably in writing on the warrant, the risk that they might get shot, stabbed, spindled and mutilated, etc. and will have no recourse to justice since it can only be ruled self defense.

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  • (Score: 2) by rondon on Friday December 16 2016, @01:45PM

    by rondon (5167) on Friday December 16 2016, @01:45PM (#442035)

    Every time I agree with Jmorris it feels like I saw a Unicorn!

    But seriously, if every side of the divide agrees on this issue, why TF do we keep having to hear these stories about "no-knocks" for petty drug offenses?