Georgia Black Man Charged with Murder Claims He Shot at White Teens in Self-Defense

Yes, I've seen that statistic before. A statistic born of raw numbers. Never looking at the individual cases themselves in order to determine the validity of each case. Its doing exactly what BLM is doing with their list of unarmed black people shot "unjustifiably". Its also doing exactly the same thing that white supremacists do when they quote the fact that blacks are incarcerated at a higher rate for murder than white people.

A statistic only tells you numbers. It does not tell you the why.

 

It does not matter if he can prove it. It's literally irrelevant. Had he shot the DRIVER instead, it would be relevant, but he didn't do that. He needs to try to justify his shooting of Haley Hutcheson. She was the PASSENGER in another vehicle. He had no reasonable basis for believing that Haley was threatening him with death or great bodily harm. He has no legal justification for shooting her in the head.

 

BTW, I found this additional information:

Police report reveals new details in deadly shooting of Statesboro teenager (wtoc.com)

I suspected this when I read about the thrown beer can, but I see this as further confirmation. It seems pretty obvious from this report that Wilson was chasing / following the teens' pickup truck. That vehicle position, behind the other vehicle with options to stop, slow down, turn off the road, etc. does some pretty significant damage to his self-defense claim. Had the teens been pursuing him, it might have strengthened his claim of fearing for his life, but since he's the pursuer here, it's harder to claim he feared for his life while he was pursuing them.

Again, Wilson's case is looking more like the McMichaels than Kyle Rittenhouse.

This too, does not paint a favorable picture for Wilson. Had he come forward to the police of his own accord, like Kyle did, he positions himself as a law-abiding citizen. Instead, he chose to say nothing to the police and did not come forward even after it was apparent he'd killed someone. That doesn't look good to a judge / jury. It looks like he knows he did something wrong rather than believing he was justified in his actions.

 

Yes, virtually every shitbag gangbanger that ever gets caught trying to bust a cap in anyone claims self defense. Their claims are usually not credible.

It turns out that a higher proportion of black young men are shitbag gangbangers than white young men, and they consequently make a proportionately higher number of non-credible self-defense claims. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who understands the dynamics at play.



source: National Youth Gang Survey Analysis: Demographics | National Gang Center (ojp.gov)

 

But there is no proof that the why is racism. That’s the excuse. That’s the misinformation campaign to pass blame.

The why is simple. Crime begets crime. Single parenthood leads to failure too often. Black children are destined to fail because they’re raised in conditions that ultimately lead to failure…it’s the WHY. Drugs, crime, gangs and generational poverty due to lousy homes. And Black and Democrat leadership won’t acknowledge it. They’ll just blame the specter of institutional racism and it’s total BS.

When racism truly existed the black family was stronger. Now racism is insignificant in preventing anyone from succeeding. Today Black people regardless of class, have the most govt and private resources dedicated to helping them succeed yet the results aren’t much better. And it’s because Democrats deep down need them to still be dependent. Because once they’re no longer dependent WTF do Democrats have to offer them anymore? Screaming racism? Democrats have to manufacture it now. They’re in the business of manufacturing racism and hate. They excel in keeping the boogie man alive. It’s all they have.

 

She was in the truck that had swerved in front of them which he claims was trying to run them off the road.

Around 1 a.m. on June 14, 2020, 21-year-old Marc Wilson, who is Black, and his 21-year-old girlfriend, Emma Rigdon, who is white, left a Taco Bell in Statesboro, Georgia. At a stoplight, they pulled up next to a pickup truck. Wilson’s lawyers say that at least one of the white teenagers inside the truck shouted the n-word and “your lives don’t matter.”Wilson later told police that the teenagers in the pickup truck swerved in front of him, tried to knock his sedan off the highway, and threw an object that impacted the car with a loud sound that made him think they might be shooting at him. Wilson pulled out a gun and fired out his window at the truck. The bullet struck and killed 17-year-old Haley Hutcheson, who was sitting in the pickup’s backseat. Prosecutors charged him with felony murder and aggravated assault, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison and the possibility of the death penalty. Wilson claimed self-defense. “Me and my girlfriend were very scared that night,” Wilson told police later that week, according to a detective’s testimony. “Everything going on in this country, I’m not going to let me and my girl get run off the road.”

 

The story is they swerved IN FRONT of him and then the loud noise so it would make sense they were in front. If he believed he was under fire he could fire back in self defense no matter the position of the vehicles. Can he prove that? Have to wait and see.

No that does not he should have gone to the police immediately and reported it. Consciousness of guilt.

And this

"That night investigators interviewed everyone in the truck. They also arrested one of the passengers - Luke Conley - on a misdemeanor charge of obstruction of a law enforcement officer.

Detectives noted in the report that, “Later Mr. Conley gave a different account of the story, one that didn’t match the first account” and ”it was believed that Conley has involvement in the case. He was seen yelling out of a window of the victim vehicle just prior to the shooting.”"

That doesn't look good for that side of the incident.

LOTS to come out before any conclusions can be ascertained.

 

Googling the story it appears to be a dumpster fire with the Judge having the defense counsel detained for contempt and the defense trying to force the judge off the case because the judge returned the prosecution's evidence folder to the defense by mistake which contained evidence that the prosecution had never produced to the defense so the defense refused to return it.

 

Guess you just can't understand the difference between old ladies running Wyoming Roads with high beams on and a bunch of drunk Arizona rowdies trying to harass a guy and his wife returning home from a rodeo. It's o,k.. I never worry about road conditions or 20 car pileups.

 

So now you feel the need to embellish this little story, and it actually keeps getting better all the time So can we simply "Fast Forward" to the producers cut where a bunch of satanic worshipers thru hemlock on your car and painted hexagram on the road in front and back of your car so you couldn't escape.. I think I saw that movie too

 

And more to the story



".......The four teens — 18-year-olds Mason Glisson, Luke Conley, and Ashton DeLoach, and a 16-year-old girl — told police a similar story: They were at a stoplight beside a sedan, and when the light turned green and they drove off, the sedan's driver opened fire on them, according to court documents. Though they admitted to drinking while on the road, they were not breathalyzed.

When officers asked if they had any idea why someone would shoot at them, they said they didn’t know. But all four said that they believed that one of the people in the sedan was a classmate named Marijane — DeLoach said he was “1,000% sure” it was her, according to police records. They had encountered Marijane, who is white, earlier that night in a convenience store with her boyfriend, who is Black.

The 16-year-old girl in the truck testified that when the truck passed the sedan at an intersection, Conley and DeLoach stuck their hands and head out the window, though she said she didn’t know if they said anything. She said she thought they were waving at the person they assumed — mistakenly, it turned out — to be Marijane.

In one of the police reports, Detective Dustin Cross wrote that Conley "was seen yelling out of a window of the victim vehicle just prior to the shooting."

In his interviews with police, Conley gave conflicting statements about who he thought was in the sedan and was charged with obstruction of justice and arrested — that case remains pending.

The morning after the shooting, the Statesboro Police Department issued a press release seeking information about it. Later, they received a call from a woman who said her friend Emma Rigdon had told her about an incident that might be related: the woman conveyed that Rigdon told her the shooting had come after the teens in the truck “started using racial slurs and racial signs,” according to the police report.

The next day, officers met with Rigdon. Wilson, who happened to call her while she was speaking to police, joined the conversation by speakerphone.

Rigdon said that when the couple pulled up at the intersection outside the Taco Bell, Wilson told her that the guys in the truck beside them were saying the n-word to him. She herself didn’t hear them, she said, because she had been distracted by her puppy in her lap.

But after the light turned green, the truck swerved in front of them, and two boys were leaning out the windows shouting at them, she and Wilson said. “A truck full of — all I saw were white males — white males driving their car at me and are flipping me off and yelling racial slurs,” Wilson said to police.

“With everything going on right now,” Rigdon told police, referring to the 2020 racial justice protests across the nation, Wilson “honestly thought that they were trying to run him off the road, and I was like, ‘Marc, I’m scared.’”

“It’s in the middle of the night,” Rigdon testified at a hearing. “There’s no lights on that road. I didn’t really know what was gonna happen.”

An embankment lay beside the two-lane road, and Wilson told police he veered close enough to hear the rumble strips along the edge of the pavement. He said he fired two or three “warning shots” below the truck, which caused the truck's driver, Glisson, to slow down — DeLoach recounted the same detail in his testimony, saying "it looked like he was shooting at the ground at first."

Then the truck accelerated, and Wilson heard a “loud boom,” he said. He said he thought the truck had either rammed his car or the teens had returned fire. Police suspect the sound may have been from a thrown beer — officers found beer cans by the side of the road matching the brand the teens were drinking that night.

“I had no clue what hit me,” Wilson told police, according to Detective Travis Kreun’s testimony. “I thought that they were shooting at me.”

Wilson fired again, then turned at the next intersection.

The day after the call with police, Wilson turned himself in."
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertsamaha/marc-wilson-self-defense-case

Note this story says he turned himself in. Seems the people in the truck have a story that is not only contradictory between themselves but refuted by the witness. One has been arrested for lying to the investigators. The driver if he did try to run Wilson off the road he committed a felony. One of the persons in the truck taking the 5th. If Wilson can't sustain his self-defense claim then I would think it a manslaughter not murder. He said he wasn't trying to hit the truck and the witness in the truck said he was shooting under the truck. That's reasonable doubt for murder but certainly the highest manslaughter charge.

Funny nothing from the girlfriend in the car with him.

 

Since the participants know the results of their actions, would they do the same things they did in the first place that got them in trouble?

 

Huh?
Lolwut?

You just posted all of that?
And, then you ask a question that PROVES that you haven't even been following the case?

"nothing from the girlfriend in the car"?
Are you serious?

Wilson’s then-girlfriend Emma Rigdon described how she and Wilson had gone out for drive thru back in June 2020. She says the truck in which Haley Hutcheson was a passenger followed them through several traffic lights on Statesboro’s bypass.

She testified she was frightened and feared the worst when the truck veered into their lane several times while the young men inside waved and gestured.

“It’s in the middle of the night. There’s no lights on that road. I didn’t really know what was going to happen,” said witness Emma Rigdon.

https://www.wtoc.com/2021/09/23/day-2-marc-wilson-hearing-attorney-found-contempt-court/

 

Are you now a fan of " self defense" ?

 

Well, I would say you are completely wrong. First, we (the participants in this thread) have no more to go on than what's in the article, and there is nothing at all in the article that says this is a slam-dunk self-defense case. But let's assume, for discussion's sake, that it is... sort of, anyway.

Even if the shooter had a slam dunk case, and it was on video as being crystal clear to even Stevie Wonder that it was clear self-defense against the driver of the car/truck in question, he didn't hit the driver, he hit a woman in the back seat who, for all we know, was screaming at the driver to cease his actions. Even in the event of legit self-defense, you are still responsible for what is behind (or adjacent to) your target. Even in the event that someone kicks my door down in the middle of the night, which by law in my State gives me the absolute presumption of reasonable fear of imminent death or grave bodily harm, if my bullet goes in and out of the bad guy, and through a minimum of one internal, and two external block walls separating my from my neighbor, and somehow after all of that still has enough energy to hit and kill my neighbor, despite the fact that shooting at the bad guy in my house was 100% legal, if my neighbor dies as a result, I will be held legally accountable for that.

So, there are many problems with this article.

1- The author's inherent racial bias, and his belief that anytime a black person "claims" self-defense that it's automatically true, and anytime a white person "claims" self-defense that it's bullshit.
2- His gross misunderstandings of both the Rittenhouse and Martin cases.
3- His inaccurate assumption that the support Rittenhouse got was because of his race, rather than the fact that it was legal lethal self-defense itself that was on trial more than Rittenhouse as an individual.
4- The many, many facts regarding the case that are not in the article.
5- I could probably go on and on...

Therefore, the only reasonable conclusion that can be reached with only what's contained in this article is that it's highly questionable that the shooter has a legit self-defense claim to make. That doesn't stop him from trying, in fact it may even be malpractice if his lawyer doesn't at least try, but it appears unlikely to succeed. Any inference made about the race of the parties is only reflective of the author's own inherent racist beliefs.

 

Do you realize that the "witness", Emma Rigdon, is the shooter's girlfriend?

Also, it's not going to go well for Wilson if the sequence of events described in the article is borne out by the evidence: that he started firing "warning shots" underneath the truck before the loud noise that he claims he thought might have been an occupant of the truck shooting at him. Up to the point where Wilson opened fire, the only things the truck's occupants had done was say / sign mean things and "swerved in front of them":

I hope we can all agree that just because a vehicle "swerved in front of them" was not justification for firing a gun in the direction of the vehicle.

This may be why he's charged with aggravated assault and felony murder rather than a more direct murder charge. It's probably easier for the state to prove (since he and his girlfriend both admitted to it) that he fired at the vehicle (aggravated assault) and that Haley died as a result (felony murder). Wilson is apparently going to claim self defense, but his best legal basis for that (the loud noise) came, by his own admission, after he had already opened fire. Those first shots, at least, are aggravated assault.

Trying to claim that one developed the legal basis for self defense after having already opened fire at the victim is going to be a tricky proposition for the defense.

 

Just so I'm clear, from my attempt to parse out this word salad, if Rittenhouse had shot somebody other than the 3 people he shot, there would have been no good self defense claim for that shooting?? The key to self defense is being a good shot??

Doesn't seem to be the case from a quick google search

https://law.jrank.org/pages/1474/Justification-Self-Defense-Risk-innocent-bystanders.html

If he had shot somebody NOT in the truck, then that case is stronger, but at that time, I think most people would consider anybody in the truck part of the threat, if the truck is eventually determined to have been a threat at all...

 

It is funny how people want to compare apples and oranges and come up with gold. This case is not Rittenhouse. This case isn't Arbery.

This man had a million options available to him and he chose the wrong one which resulted in the death of another human being. His actions were illegal to start. He is guilty of murder and many other charges.

 

Tough case. In this instance I think it comes down to whatever "Stand your Ground" or "Castle" laws there are in the state. But I don't think there are any parallels here to the Rittenhouse case. Rittenhouse was in imminent danger of the very least a massive butt kicking. I am making an assumption here, but I do assume there was no contact between the vehicles. If someone is really trying to run you off the road... Personally I don't think there is enough information here for the shooter to shoot. I do think there are other actions yet to be taken, like stop your vehicle and make a u turn. Have your passenger dial 911 (because who doesn't have a cell phone these days). And at the same point, those teenagers shouldn't have been doing what there were doing. It does sound like they were committing hate crimes.

If I flip the script here and I am in the shooters position I try to get away. I don't fire into a truck full of black people yelling at me and swerving in front of me. I do my best to get away. If I get my car turned around and they give chase, well, then I start thinking about shooting. But my wife would be on the phone with the police and I would be heading to them.

 

Seeing that they didn't actually do anything to Wilson or his girlfriend. And noting the fact that they were driving away from him when he fired. Claiming self defense is too steep a hill. I think he just wanted to make a statement and put a mark on their truck. I doubt he intended to actually kill anyone. The fact that the people in the pickup actually initiated the conflict with aggression and animus, should weigh heavily in deliberations.

 

Completely disagree. There has to be evidence worthy of conviction before you drag someone into court and often ruin their lives. If someone breaks into your home with a weapon and you shoot them should your life be dragged through hell?

 

It's not the shooter's state of mind. It is whether a reasonable person would feel they were in danger of death or serious bodily injury. Based upon the current evidence it seems the driver could have easily extracted himself from the situation as opposed to resorting to violent and deadly road rage.

 

I've seen posters in this thread saying that the shooter had other options. The home owner in your example also has several options.

 

Which is why the prosecutor looks at the facts to determine whether there is evidence that a case should be brought to courts. Obviously innocent people should never be drug through our courts.

 

is that the same rules cops go by?

I agree with you, but stand your ground laws say he doesn't need to do that

stand your ground laws are different then self-defense laws in that you do not have to retreat if you could