UncleMatt:
The best-known case I'm aware of - twenty years ago.
Acquittal in Doorstep Killing of Japanese Student
May 24, 1993
A jury today found a local meat market manager not guilty in the fatal shooting of a Japanese exchange student, ending a case that exposed major differences between the attitudes of Japanese and Americans toward guns.
The 12-member jury took just over three hours to acquit the defendant, Rodney Peairs, 31, of manslaughter in the killing of 16-year-old Yoshihiro Hattori last October.
Outside the courtroom, Mr. Peairs said he would no longer use guns, The Associated Press reported. And in remarks intended for the teen-ager's father, he said, "I'm very sorry that any of this ever happened."
Mr. Hattori was looking for a Halloween party in the Baton Rouge suburb of Central on Oct. 17 when he and a companion mistakenly rang Mr. Peairs's doorbell, frightening his wife. The case became the focus of intense interest in Japan because it seemed to confirm the Japanese view of America as a place rife with guns. News of the verdict led newscasts in Japan on Monday.
"You have the absolute legal right in this country to answer your door with a gun," Mr. Peairs's lawyer, Lewis Unglesby, said today in his closing argument. "In your house, if you want to do it, you have the legal right to answer everybody that comes to your door with a gun."
Masanori Suzuki, the executive director of the exchange program that sent Mr. Hattori to Louisiana, told The A.P. he was outraged by Mr. Unglesby's depiction of Mr. Peairs as a victim of events. "He didn't kill an animal, he killed a person," Mr. Suzuki said. "The gun he shot him with was not a gun for self-defense."
~ from The New York Times
Good luck to all,
~ The Old Bookaroo
