You're getting close, Dave, but not quite there. If you shoot someone in Ohio, it is homicide. Homicide is not necessarily criminal. The type of homicide will be determined by the police, prosecutor and possibly the courts. Murder is a form of homicide, but so is justifiable homicide.MyWifeSaidYes wrote:I understand we are talking in hypotheticals here, but...glocksmith wrote:What I have a problem with is your implication that, if I kill a Deer which is attacking me, then I'm a criminal...and no better than a poacher until I voluntarily report myself to the authorities and convince them that it was self-defense. If that's the case, then there is something seriously wrong with our system...Scoutmaster wrote:Interesting theory. Which I reject. Are you saying that it isnt a crime unless you get caught?
...our system IS SERIOUSLY FOULED UP !!!!!!!
When you shoot and kill someone in Ohio, it's murder. Period.
You are guilty until proven innocent.
It's different in 49 other states.
If you shoot a deer in self-defense, you STILL shot a deer, and THAT is a crime...whether you are man enough to report it or not.
Fessing up as quickly as possible and NOT asking to keep the kill would, IMHO, be the best way to avoid charges.
I may have once shot an injured deer on my property out of season. Someone else had shot it with an arrow and it was dying in a creek bed when I got home one day.
I did not call it in nor did I take the meat. When I told a ranger about it some time later, he let me know how much trouble he could have caused me if he had come across the kill. He said I should have reported the deer and they would have come out and shot it. Since he admitted that it would not have been a priority for them, I told him that defeated the purpose of a mercy kill. At that point, he agreed that he probably wouldn't have charged me if I had called it in and didn't want to keep the kill.
So, call it in and tell the state to come and get their darn deer.
Shooting a deer is a bit different. It is per se illegal to shoot a deer without a license, during the season and according to the regulations. So the law has been violated. Self defense can be used to justify that breach of the law. But, there is a violation. The question is whether it is a criminal violation. So, basically, you are correct, but the murder analogy is a bit off.