Nov. 18, 2025
Indiana Man Charged With Voluntary Manslaughter After Shooting House Cleaner Trying To Enter Wrong Home
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RSS Feed Prosecutors say Indiana’s Stand Your Ground Law does not apply to homeowner Curt Anderson, who fired a single shot from the top of his stairs, through his front door, killing a 32-year-old house cleaner who’s GPS sent her to the wrong home. Anderson said he feared for his life when he was awakened to the sound of someone trying to enter his home, grabbed his gun and fired. He maintains it was his right to do so under the stand your ground law, but prosecutors maintain that fear alone is not enough to justify invoking the law. This is just the latest tragedy to unfold where a gun owner kills someone who actually meant them no harm, and is reigniting the debate on whether these laws embolden people to shoot first, and ask questions later.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, they're folks. Welcome to Amy and TJ Presents. And today a man in Indiana shot and killed a woman who had shown up to his house just to clean the house. He has yes been charged, but he has a defense, folks, stand your ground. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Presents. DJ Holmes here alongside Amy roboch Robes. This is going to be another case that we have these stand your ground laws getting national attention.
00:00:38
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:00:39
Speaker 3: And the concern is that sometimes these laws a lot of folks believe make homeowners especially feel like they have the right to defend their property, their family with deadly force, no matter what, and that just isn't the case.
00:00:57
Speaker 1: And some try to interpret the law just as what you said, I can defend my home no matter what, with deadly force. And this is a case Robes that I think we're going to have some tricky, tricky legal questions. This story comes to us out of Indiana, outside of Indianapolis, a town is called, of all things, White's Town. Do I have that right?
00:01:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do. It's called Whitewn.
00:01:20
Speaker 1: Whitestown, a suburb of Indianapolis. But this is on November fifth, that a woman showed up to a home with her husband cleaning crew. They're trying to open the door to get into this home. Just before seven am. Shot rings out. Homeowner inside awakened, startled, didn't know what was happening at the front door. He claims, shot once through the door, killing this thirty two year old woman who was there with her husband to clean the house. It turns up robes she had arrived at the wrong address. Those are the facts of the case, and this is where after that, everybody has their own interpretation of what did happen, might have happened, should have happened.
00:02:01
Speaker 3: Yes, so the man who owned the home, sixty two year old Kurt Anderson. By the way, he's now facing ten to thirty years behind bars, ten thousand dollars fine if convicted. But yeah, he says that he was awakened and neither both of these accounts agree that the house cleaner and her husband were there on the porch for around a minute. So he says he heard loud clanking sound and that would presumably be the house cleaner going through the keys, the set of keys that her cleaning company gave her to open the door. She thought she and her husband believed they were walking into a model home. They didn't think anybody was inside, They didn't think anyone lived there. They thought this was just an empty home they were cleaning to be shown shortly, so they didn't ring the doorbell, they didn't knock on the door. She immediately was looking for the right key, and of course she puts the key in. It's the wrong house, so it doesn't work. So I'm sure it made some clanking noise. But in that short period of time, he went, according to him, to go get his gun.
00:03:03
Speaker 2: He loaded.
00:03:04
Speaker 3: He said he bought it specifically to defend his property, and without saying anything, shouting anything, calling anyone, he fired through that front door. He and his wife never opened the front door, according to them, and she just called nine one one.
00:03:19
Speaker 1: Police found the woman on the front porch. He never even went outside to see what was going on. A check fired through the door. So here in lies the problem with this case. Robes it did he would you in the middle of the No, it's not the middle of the night, it's almost seven in the morning. But let's say you don't wake up till nine whatever. You're asleep, you hear someone trying to get in through your front door. Do you have a reasonable fear for your life? And if you do, then a jury could possibly down the road say, yeah, he was justified in firing that shot. That is going to be the central point of this case. Now, is that reasonable?
00:04:05
Speaker 2: I don't think it is.
00:04:06
Speaker 1: Prosecutor doesn't either.
00:04:07
Speaker 3: I don't think it's reasonable at all. There are plenty of other options you had. They hadn't come into the home. Now, if they had opened the door, even if all the same circumstances were the same, somehow they were able to open the door and they walked in, that's scary as hell. I could I could understand that from a legal standpoint, but they never were.
00:04:26
Speaker 2: In your home.
00:04:27
Speaker 3: And just because someone is on your front porch, and even if they're messing with the lock or seemingly trying to get in, that doesn't give you the right to use deadly force without even shouting out or asking a.
00:04:38
Speaker 2: Question, who's there? What are you doing? You know, there could have been some kind of communication before a shot was fired.
00:04:45
Speaker 1: Was the the it was daylight probably seven am in November, right, yes, yeah, in Indiana, Indiana, YEP. I don't know that that's going to be the center point, the centerpiece of his defense is that if I am sleep and somebody, in my estimation is trying to get into my home, why should I not fear for my life? You talked about the door opening even then, like he might have a better case, But still, for most of us, what are you allowed to do? What can you fear? We've seen police officers use a justification I was scared for my life and some of those we've seen some police officers walk right out of court free men, Like what because they are able to explain that I feared for my life? Is he going to be able to explain that this was reasonable? Is that enough? What should he have done? Does he have to do anything? And we talked about this as well, you and I bro there are exceptions made. You can't just shoot the ups guy because you heard somebody on your front porch, didn't look to see who it was, and you just went pop pop pop. You can't do that.
00:05:50
Speaker 3: You can't.
00:05:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, your porch is different from the inside of your house. Now we have expanded these castle doctrine law stand your ground laws. Castle doctrine is you come into my house, I can shoot you. Stand your ground is different.
00:06:07
Speaker 2: It can be anywhere.
00:06:08
Speaker 3: You can be anywhere that you are reasonably or you should be able to consider yourself reasonably safe to be. And you don't have to retreat. You don't have to run from whatever perceived danger you have. You have the right to stand your ground wherever you are and protect and defend yourself.
00:06:25
Speaker 1: I think the key here is going to be the keys, right, somebody's on your front porch, You don't shoot, you actually think, and you hear someone messing with the lock, messing with the door trying to get in, what is your reasonable fear? Then? If you don't have family, friends, kids, nobody's come into this house, you be trying to get into this door, and if they are, they must mean me harm. Is that reasonable?
00:06:51
Speaker 3: I don't think so, because there are still a number of other possible explanations this one. Yes, maybe he couldn't have come up with it because he didn't asked for a house cleaner to come to up.
00:07:02
Speaker 2: He would never have thought that was the case.
00:07:04
Speaker 3: However, you don't know what someone's intentions are. You don't know why they're there, and if they're there to rob you that he didn't know if they were armed, he didn't know if they meant him harm. And I actually appreciate the way the prosecutor put it. He said that he didn't have enough information to know whether or not the action he took was reasonable, so he acted without information. He acted with emotion, not with information.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: And here is where you would push back in court on that. The law does not require me to have all the information. It only says I can have a reasonable fear for my life. This is my home, and there is no chance robes at any of our homes we've ever lived in that at if we're wakened in the middle of the night or while we're sleeping, and you are not going to think, hmm, I wont of this person's at the right house. You're not gonna think, hmm, I wonder what mistake this is? Good bit could have been made.
00:08:04
Speaker 3: Let me go.
00:08:04
Speaker 1: You're gonna think somebody's here to do me harm. And so is that enough? I don't have that answer. Legally.
00:08:10
Speaker 3: I think it's enough to react, to call out, to say who's there, to grab your cell phone, to call nine to one one. All of those things are more reasonable than the choice he made to load a gun and shoot without looking. There could have been a child up there, There could have been anyone on that porch. He did not know, and he fired without knowing, and he knew he didn't know.
00:08:34
Speaker 1: But is that what the law requires me to gather information? Or does it only give me the right if somebody's here uninvited for me to shoot that person and use deadly forced That is when I am fascinated to hear, because I'm putting we all have to put ourselves in the position of this homeowner. Yeah, you'd be terrified.
00:08:58
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, scared.
00:09:00
Speaker 1: My first thought, I think is not to shoot, because I don't want to kill somebody. I mean, that's just your nature. You might go, you might yell, you might throw something at the door, bang, do something, call nine one one.
00:09:12
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I could understand pointing the gun at the door, having your cell phone on the other hand, yelling I have a gun, I am going to shoot, and then calling nine one one.
00:09:21
Speaker 1: Do I have it?
00:09:22
Speaker 3: Right?
00:09:22
Speaker 1: So where's that's right? He saw through the window, he saw who was out there.
00:09:26
Speaker 3: He went and he looked around the window. He could see from the top of his stairs through the window, he could see that there were two people there. And that's when he decided to shoot.
00:09:36
Speaker 1: Okay, he saw two people, does that necessarily mean he saw exactly who it was that they seemed to be a threat at that time of morning. We just don't know that part this is and you're seeing some legal debates already start on this one. This is going to be a very very difficult case Robes because I think now, and I'm asking about it here, so I've said it several times here. Just you as a homeowner putting yourself in the position of you are to sleep at night and you hear someone trying to open your door that you know no one should be trying to open it. That is fear. I am with you though that I wouldn't have such a fear of life that I might just start shooting blindly. But does the law allow him to do it?
00:10:25
Speaker 3: So, according to an Indiana legal expert, acting out of fear is not enough to invoke stand your ground. When we come back, we're going to talk about what some legal experts have said their interpretation of this law in Indiana is. And certainly these laws vary state by state, and we have some very recent and some very high profile examples of cases similar to this and different juries, different prosecutors made different choices in how to pursue charge and continuing now on Amy and TJ presents this is a legal issue that we have been talking about for years and in this latest case out of Indiana certainly ended in a tragic, tragic death of a mother of four, a Guatemalan immigrant who literally died in the arms of her husband trying to open a door with a key to the wrong house, to the wrong door to go to work. She was trying to clean a home along with her husband. She was sent there as a part of a cleaning crew and just before seven am died with a single bullet to the head. The homeowner said he feared for his life. Now, look, this is up for debate. It's a gray area. This law in thirty one states, including Indiana's standard round law, gets interpreted differently by different folks, and it's caused a lot of confusion and problems and certainly led to some very tragic, high profile cases.
00:12:10
Speaker 1: That has to be the trayvon Martin is the most the biggest standout case, because I think that's when a lot of people first heard about it and first understood wait, wait a second, wait, wait, wait, what we couldn't believe that that law defended a man who killed a teenager seventeen year old kids skittles in his pocket. The law defended.
00:12:33
Speaker 2: Him because he was afraid.
00:12:35
Speaker 1: So when you talk to me about this story at Indiana, after that experience, every standard ground case I hear, I think, well, maybe they got a.
00:12:44
Speaker 3: Shot exactly because of what happened in the Trayvon Martin George Zimmerman case. That flew in the face of what a lot of folks thought the standard ground law was. Because yes, this Indiana legal expert said, acting out of fear is not enough to stand to invoke the ed your ground. That flies in the face of the verdict of George Zimmermann.
00:13:04
Speaker 1: Reasonable then they use that word allow. You had to have a reasonable person would have a reasonable fear in those moments. They say fear is not enough. But if you have the reasonable expectation that you are going to be harmed, you have the right to not retreat, even if retreating is an option, is what the laws say. Even if you have an exit, you have no obligation to run. If you think that death or bodiling injury is imminent to you or somebody around you, Imminent is a big deal. I think in the issue in Indiana, I don't know how he's going. I think in every standard ground law, imminent is a key component. How could he make an argument that fear of bodily injury or death was imminent With somebody on the other side of the damn.
00:13:48
Speaker 3: Door, someone trying to insert a key, or someone who is rattling your door or trying to get it, that's still not an unlawful entry. Once they if they had entered his home home, he would have had a much stronger case.
00:14:04
Speaker 2: But they didn't.
00:14:05
Speaker 3: They were on the porch and they couldn't get in. It's reasonable to be scared. It's reasonable to call police. It's reasonable to shout out, who's there, I have a gun.
00:14:16
Speaker 2: Leave my porch. Now. The point with the law is.
00:14:18
Speaker 3: You are expected to at least acknowledge or say leave my property. Anyone can come on to your porch. Just because you have private property doesn't mean that people uninvited people can't enter your property. I mean you mentioned it, pizza delivery, amazones, whatever, your neighbor who needs to borrow a couple of whatever. Anyone can go and walk onto your private property up until your porch and feel reasonably secure that they can do so, they legally have a right to you. Then can say get off my property, get off my porch, leave now.
00:14:57
Speaker 2: That is your right.
00:14:58
Speaker 3: And once you've done that and made that acknowledgment, then perhaps other factors can come in. But he never ever acknowledged or said anything. And the husband who was there on the porch said they didn't hear a peep from inside the house. They truly did not think anyone.
00:15:15
Speaker 1: They fired it from upstairs, right, Yes, he didn't even go downstairs.
00:15:18
Speaker 3: Didn't see what was going on, and that is what's unreasonable. He had other options to assess what was going on. He chose not to use them and went straight to deadly force.
00:15:30
Speaker 1: I don't I mean, that's the argument about stands your ground. Somebody could if somebody's running towards you with a fly swatter set on a whoop, you ass you can't pull out your gun and shoot him. That's not you're not mean you can't do that. So this I don't know. But again I'm I'm standing by and holding resident because I every single one of these standard ground cases had blown my mind before.
00:15:52
Speaker 2: And they've gone in either direction.
00:15:54
Speaker 1: Jordan Davis was in Florida, Florida, I believe as well. He was playing loud music at a gas station and guy said he was felt in fear and shot kid. In that case went back and forth, a win and a loss and a law. So I don't know.
00:16:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, who knows what the jury is going to side, and that we know the prosecutor is pursuing charges. And I mentioned we covered this case quite extensively and we will follow it. The case out of Texas with the ding Dong ditch, the eleven year old playing a game, playing a childhood prank, ringing the doorbell and is he using a standard ground, Yes, he is using standard ground.
00:16:30
Speaker 1: He hid in the bushes. That was that case, right on his property. Yeah, after he did it a couple times. The kid did it a couple of times, and he okay, he stalk the kid almost he was lying in wait for that. That was a different type of thing. Who knows THO.
00:16:44
Speaker 3: To your point about Trayvon Martin and the case in Florida with the loud music, just when you think, well, obviously this person is going to be prosecuted and actually punished for taking a life of someone who actually wasn't posing a threat. You'd think that would be the case, but you do not know in these situations because the language there is a gray area. And that's why a lot of folks are saying we should get rid of these laws, because it emboldens folks in moments of fear to do something that maybe they wouldn't otherwise do because they feel as though they are protected by the law, that they have every right to.
00:17:22
Speaker 2: Shoot first and ask questions later. And that is not the case.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: We should have done this ahead of time. And I would be so curious to look up because I don't recall a single one. How many times does stand your ground been used? Or you've heard about killings when a criminal was there to rob the place. I don't hear about homeowners shooting people who are there to actually rob them. And I'm sure it probably, I guess, but all the standard ground, all the cases I hear about have to do with someone who was not actually there to do a person harm. I would be very curious to see if, like what use how important this law has been in helping what saved lives?
00:18:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think I've heard a case here or there, but it seems as though they pale in comparison in terms of numbers. I mean, I've heard, like, you know, a homeowner, a woman, someone's coming in, she's got the gun. But again I don't even know the details. I remember hearing one once like that's to your point, it might just not cover, it might not rise to the level of being covered because it was affected or effectual, and it was the law was being put to use in the correct way, and so it doesn't make headlines.
00:18:36
Speaker 1: But to think, why is why this is necessary to protect you from making a mistake? It seemed like what it is so often, but it also seems like it gives you more permission to make that mistake.
00:18:51
Speaker 3: What I And that's the point that people are making that basically because folks know homeowners know or even just people in general who pack heet who have concealed weapons know that. Or they believe that it's their right to defend themselves, their property, their person, their family, no matter what, and that can be their first instinct is to shoot first and to ask questions later. And that's the scary part. And when you have a case like this, which is so tragic and so sad I did read the part where they didn't go outside. They called nine one one. This is the husband and the wife who were inside the home. But they heard her husband wailing. There was a real tragic loss of life here from our woman who was just trying to do her job. It is incredibly sad.
00:19:37
Speaker 1: We want to leave room robes for not knowing all the facts of what was going on in that house. Maybe there were other factors in this, you know what a court would consider a jurm. I consider what if their house was broken into two weeks ago? What if other things and other factors. You want to leave room. I don't want to. Yes, he took a life, and I don't think he wanted to. Right This could have been just an awful mistake, a bad mistake, a bad judgment, and a good guy had a really bad night. We don't know. We always want to leave room for that, but this one, obviously, Robes shouldn't have happened.
00:20:16
Speaker 2: It shouldn't have.
00:20:17
Speaker 3: And his wife, according to police reports, did say that her husband and she was always concerned, would tell neighbors. He went out to purchase this gun specifically to protect his home, and he said if anyone were to ever try to come into my home, I would shoot them immediately, so he had it in his head that this is what he was supposed to do, or that this is what he was going to do. And then lo and behold, this situation happened, and he made good on what he said he would do.
00:20:45
Speaker 1: And this is where I try to leave room as a homeowner in Georgia where these laws were in place. Who was at home by myself in the middle of the day when three guys tried to break into my home in a coordinated effort, to which I went and immediately bought guns for that house the next day, And who lived most of my time in the Atlanta Era area with guns in my house After that experience, the next time someone attempted to do anything like that to my home, I think my first instinct would be to pick up my gun. Now, I don't know what my reaction would have been, but I assure you I checked up on the law after I got those guns, and I knew what I was allowed to do. That sounds great. Sabine was months old at that point. She was supposed to be at home with me that day, and I just happened to be home alone. So all those things. If I am a juror listening to at you just don't know. I'm not saying what he did was right and justifying it anyway, But as I and I know a lot of people are getting onto and I put myself in that position of that fear, having gone through it, having had weapons, and having to have the experience of hearing something in the middle of the night in my home in Atlanta and knowing exactly where that gun was and that clip was and loaded it that night.
00:22:16
Speaker 2: I have never heard this story before. Vave.
00:22:19
Speaker 3: I knew you.
00:22:20
Speaker 2: I knew you were a gun owner, but I did not know that story.
00:22:22
Speaker 1: That's why I was a gun owner is because of that incident at that house. So these things are real, and that fear is real. Yes, yes, yes, yes, And I hate what happened and can't imagine shooting through the door blindly. I can't imagine that. But we will see if we get to a trial, and I wouldn't be surprised. There are things we are going to learn that will make this story probably sound.
00:22:45
Speaker 3: Different, maybe make a little bit more sense, but it still is a tragedy in and of itself. We will, of course follow this case and there is a lot more to come. He's behind bars right now, awaiting a hearing at this point, but again facing a voluntary manslaughter charge. Thank you so much for listening to us everyone. I'm Amy Robach alongside t. J.
00:23:05
Speaker 2: Holmes. We always appreciate you
Speaker 1: Hey, they're folks. Welcome to Amy and TJ Presents. And today a man in Indiana shot and killed a woman who had shown up to his house just to clean the house. He has yes been charged, but he has a defense, folks, stand your ground. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Presents. DJ Holmes here alongside Amy roboch Robes. This is going to be another case that we have these stand your ground laws getting national attention.
00:00:38
Speaker 2: Yes.
00:00:39
Speaker 3: And the concern is that sometimes these laws a lot of folks believe make homeowners especially feel like they have the right to defend their property, their family with deadly force, no matter what, and that just isn't the case.
00:00:57
Speaker 1: And some try to interpret the law just as what you said, I can defend my home no matter what, with deadly force. And this is a case Robes that I think we're going to have some tricky, tricky legal questions. This story comes to us out of Indiana, outside of Indianapolis, a town is called, of all things, White's Town. Do I have that right?
00:01:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do. It's called Whitewn.
00:01:20
Speaker 1: Whitestown, a suburb of Indianapolis. But this is on November fifth, that a woman showed up to a home with her husband cleaning crew. They're trying to open the door to get into this home. Just before seven am. Shot rings out. Homeowner inside awakened, startled, didn't know what was happening at the front door. He claims, shot once through the door, killing this thirty two year old woman who was there with her husband to clean the house. It turns up robes she had arrived at the wrong address. Those are the facts of the case, and this is where after that, everybody has their own interpretation of what did happen, might have happened, should have happened.
00:02:01
Speaker 3: Yes, so the man who owned the home, sixty two year old Kurt Anderson. By the way, he's now facing ten to thirty years behind bars, ten thousand dollars fine if convicted. But yeah, he says that he was awakened and neither both of these accounts agree that the house cleaner and her husband were there on the porch for around a minute. So he says he heard loud clanking sound and that would presumably be the house cleaner going through the keys, the set of keys that her cleaning company gave her to open the door. She thought she and her husband believed they were walking into a model home. They didn't think anybody was inside, They didn't think anyone lived there. They thought this was just an empty home they were cleaning to be shown shortly, so they didn't ring the doorbell, they didn't knock on the door. She immediately was looking for the right key, and of course she puts the key in. It's the wrong house, so it doesn't work. So I'm sure it made some clanking noise. But in that short period of time, he went, according to him, to go get his gun.
00:03:03
Speaker 2: He loaded.
00:03:04
Speaker 3: He said he bought it specifically to defend his property, and without saying anything, shouting anything, calling anyone, he fired through that front door. He and his wife never opened the front door, according to them, and she just called nine one one.
00:03:19
Speaker 1: Police found the woman on the front porch. He never even went outside to see what was going on. A check fired through the door. So here in lies the problem with this case. Robes it did he would you in the middle of the No, it's not the middle of the night, it's almost seven in the morning. But let's say you don't wake up till nine whatever. You're asleep, you hear someone trying to get in through your front door. Do you have a reasonable fear for your life? And if you do, then a jury could possibly down the road say, yeah, he was justified in firing that shot. That is going to be the central point of this case. Now, is that reasonable?
00:04:05
Speaker 2: I don't think it is.
00:04:06
Speaker 1: Prosecutor doesn't either.
00:04:07
Speaker 3: I don't think it's reasonable at all. There are plenty of other options you had. They hadn't come into the home. Now, if they had opened the door, even if all the same circumstances were the same, somehow they were able to open the door and they walked in, that's scary as hell. I could I could understand that from a legal standpoint, but they never were.
00:04:26
Speaker 2: In your home.
00:04:27
Speaker 3: And just because someone is on your front porch, and even if they're messing with the lock or seemingly trying to get in, that doesn't give you the right to use deadly force without even shouting out or asking a.
00:04:38
Speaker 2: Question, who's there? What are you doing? You know, there could have been some kind of communication before a shot was fired.
00:04:45
Speaker 1: Was the the it was daylight probably seven am in November, right, yes, yeah, in Indiana, Indiana, YEP. I don't know that that's going to be the center point, the centerpiece of his defense is that if I am sleep and somebody, in my estimation is trying to get into my home, why should I not fear for my life? You talked about the door opening even then, like he might have a better case, But still, for most of us, what are you allowed to do? What can you fear? We've seen police officers use a justification I was scared for my life and some of those we've seen some police officers walk right out of court free men, Like what because they are able to explain that I feared for my life? Is he going to be able to explain that this was reasonable? Is that enough? What should he have done? Does he have to do anything? And we talked about this as well, you and I bro there are exceptions made. You can't just shoot the ups guy because you heard somebody on your front porch, didn't look to see who it was, and you just went pop pop pop. You can't do that.
00:05:50
Speaker 3: You can't.
00:05:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, your porch is different from the inside of your house. Now we have expanded these castle doctrine law stand your ground laws. Castle doctrine is you come into my house, I can shoot you. Stand your ground is different.
00:06:07
Speaker 2: It can be anywhere.
00:06:08
Speaker 3: You can be anywhere that you are reasonably or you should be able to consider yourself reasonably safe to be. And you don't have to retreat. You don't have to run from whatever perceived danger you have. You have the right to stand your ground wherever you are and protect and defend yourself.
00:06:25
Speaker 1: I think the key here is going to be the keys, right, somebody's on your front porch, You don't shoot, you actually think, and you hear someone messing with the lock, messing with the door trying to get in, what is your reasonable fear? Then? If you don't have family, friends, kids, nobody's come into this house, you be trying to get into this door, and if they are, they must mean me harm. Is that reasonable?
00:06:51
Speaker 3: I don't think so, because there are still a number of other possible explanations this one. Yes, maybe he couldn't have come up with it because he didn't asked for a house cleaner to come to up.
00:07:02
Speaker 2: He would never have thought that was the case.
00:07:04
Speaker 3: However, you don't know what someone's intentions are. You don't know why they're there, and if they're there to rob you that he didn't know if they were armed, he didn't know if they meant him harm. And I actually appreciate the way the prosecutor put it. He said that he didn't have enough information to know whether or not the action he took was reasonable, so he acted without information. He acted with emotion, not with information.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: And here is where you would push back in court on that. The law does not require me to have all the information. It only says I can have a reasonable fear for my life. This is my home, and there is no chance robes at any of our homes we've ever lived in that at if we're wakened in the middle of the night or while we're sleeping, and you are not going to think, hmm, I wont of this person's at the right house. You're not gonna think, hmm, I wonder what mistake this is? Good bit could have been made.
00:08:04
Speaker 3: Let me go.
00:08:04
Speaker 1: You're gonna think somebody's here to do me harm. And so is that enough? I don't have that answer. Legally.
00:08:10
Speaker 3: I think it's enough to react, to call out, to say who's there, to grab your cell phone, to call nine to one one. All of those things are more reasonable than the choice he made to load a gun and shoot without looking. There could have been a child up there, There could have been anyone on that porch. He did not know, and he fired without knowing, and he knew he didn't know.
00:08:34
Speaker 1: But is that what the law requires me to gather information? Or does it only give me the right if somebody's here uninvited for me to shoot that person and use deadly forced That is when I am fascinated to hear, because I'm putting we all have to put ourselves in the position of this homeowner. Yeah, you'd be terrified.
00:08:58
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, scared.
00:09:00
Speaker 1: My first thought, I think is not to shoot, because I don't want to kill somebody. I mean, that's just your nature. You might go, you might yell, you might throw something at the door, bang, do something, call nine one one.
00:09:12
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I could understand pointing the gun at the door, having your cell phone on the other hand, yelling I have a gun, I am going to shoot, and then calling nine one one.
00:09:21
Speaker 1: Do I have it?
00:09:22
Speaker 3: Right?
00:09:22
Speaker 1: So where's that's right? He saw through the window, he saw who was out there.
00:09:26
Speaker 3: He went and he looked around the window. He could see from the top of his stairs through the window, he could see that there were two people there. And that's when he decided to shoot.
00:09:36
Speaker 1: Okay, he saw two people, does that necessarily mean he saw exactly who it was that they seemed to be a threat at that time of morning. We just don't know that part this is and you're seeing some legal debates already start on this one. This is going to be a very very difficult case Robes because I think now, and I'm asking about it here, so I've said it several times here. Just you as a homeowner putting yourself in the position of you are to sleep at night and you hear someone trying to open your door that you know no one should be trying to open it. That is fear. I am with you though that I wouldn't have such a fear of life that I might just start shooting blindly. But does the law allow him to do it?
00:10:25
Speaker 3: So, according to an Indiana legal expert, acting out of fear is not enough to invoke stand your ground. When we come back, we're going to talk about what some legal experts have said their interpretation of this law in Indiana is. And certainly these laws vary state by state, and we have some very recent and some very high profile examples of cases similar to this and different juries, different prosecutors made different choices in how to pursue charge and continuing now on Amy and TJ presents this is a legal issue that we have been talking about for years and in this latest case out of Indiana certainly ended in a tragic, tragic death of a mother of four, a Guatemalan immigrant who literally died in the arms of her husband trying to open a door with a key to the wrong house, to the wrong door to go to work. She was trying to clean a home along with her husband. She was sent there as a part of a cleaning crew and just before seven am died with a single bullet to the head. The homeowner said he feared for his life. Now, look, this is up for debate. It's a gray area. This law in thirty one states, including Indiana's standard round law, gets interpreted differently by different folks, and it's caused a lot of confusion and problems and certainly led to some very tragic, high profile cases.
00:12:10
Speaker 1: That has to be the trayvon Martin is the most the biggest standout case, because I think that's when a lot of people first heard about it and first understood wait, wait a second, wait, wait, wait, what we couldn't believe that that law defended a man who killed a teenager seventeen year old kids skittles in his pocket. The law defended.
00:12:33
Speaker 2: Him because he was afraid.
00:12:35
Speaker 1: So when you talk to me about this story at Indiana, after that experience, every standard ground case I hear, I think, well, maybe they got a.
00:12:44
Speaker 3: Shot exactly because of what happened in the Trayvon Martin George Zimmerman case. That flew in the face of what a lot of folks thought the standard ground law was. Because yes, this Indiana legal expert said, acting out of fear is not enough to stand to invoke the ed your ground. That flies in the face of the verdict of George Zimmermann.
00:13:04
Speaker 1: Reasonable then they use that word allow. You had to have a reasonable person would have a reasonable fear in those moments. They say fear is not enough. But if you have the reasonable expectation that you are going to be harmed, you have the right to not retreat, even if retreating is an option, is what the laws say. Even if you have an exit, you have no obligation to run. If you think that death or bodiling injury is imminent to you or somebody around you, Imminent is a big deal. I think in the issue in Indiana, I don't know how he's going. I think in every standard ground law, imminent is a key component. How could he make an argument that fear of bodily injury or death was imminent With somebody on the other side of the damn.
00:13:48
Speaker 3: Door, someone trying to insert a key, or someone who is rattling your door or trying to get it, that's still not an unlawful entry. Once they if they had entered his home home, he would have had a much stronger case.
00:14:04
Speaker 2: But they didn't.
00:14:05
Speaker 3: They were on the porch and they couldn't get in. It's reasonable to be scared. It's reasonable to call police. It's reasonable to shout out, who's there, I have a gun.
00:14:16
Speaker 2: Leave my porch. Now. The point with the law is.
00:14:18
Speaker 3: You are expected to at least acknowledge or say leave my property. Anyone can come on to your porch. Just because you have private property doesn't mean that people uninvited people can't enter your property. I mean you mentioned it, pizza delivery, amazones, whatever, your neighbor who needs to borrow a couple of whatever. Anyone can go and walk onto your private property up until your porch and feel reasonably secure that they can do so, they legally have a right to you. Then can say get off my property, get off my porch, leave now.
00:14:57
Speaker 2: That is your right.
00:14:58
Speaker 3: And once you've done that and made that acknowledgment, then perhaps other factors can come in. But he never ever acknowledged or said anything. And the husband who was there on the porch said they didn't hear a peep from inside the house. They truly did not think anyone.
00:15:15
Speaker 1: They fired it from upstairs, right, Yes, he didn't even go downstairs.
00:15:18
Speaker 3: Didn't see what was going on, and that is what's unreasonable. He had other options to assess what was going on. He chose not to use them and went straight to deadly force.
00:15:30
Speaker 1: I don't I mean, that's the argument about stands your ground. Somebody could if somebody's running towards you with a fly swatter set on a whoop, you ass you can't pull out your gun and shoot him. That's not you're not mean you can't do that. So this I don't know. But again I'm I'm standing by and holding resident because I every single one of these standard ground cases had blown my mind before.
00:15:52
Speaker 2: And they've gone in either direction.
00:15:54
Speaker 1: Jordan Davis was in Florida, Florida, I believe as well. He was playing loud music at a gas station and guy said he was felt in fear and shot kid. In that case went back and forth, a win and a loss and a law. So I don't know.
00:16:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, who knows what the jury is going to side, and that we know the prosecutor is pursuing charges. And I mentioned we covered this case quite extensively and we will follow it. The case out of Texas with the ding Dong ditch, the eleven year old playing a game, playing a childhood prank, ringing the doorbell and is he using a standard ground, Yes, he is using standard ground.
00:16:30
Speaker 1: He hid in the bushes. That was that case, right on his property. Yeah, after he did it a couple times. The kid did it a couple of times, and he okay, he stalk the kid almost he was lying in wait for that. That was a different type of thing. Who knows THO.
00:16:44
Speaker 3: To your point about Trayvon Martin and the case in Florida with the loud music, just when you think, well, obviously this person is going to be prosecuted and actually punished for taking a life of someone who actually wasn't posing a threat. You'd think that would be the case, but you do not know in these situations because the language there is a gray area. And that's why a lot of folks are saying we should get rid of these laws, because it emboldens folks in moments of fear to do something that maybe they wouldn't otherwise do because they feel as though they are protected by the law, that they have every right to.
00:17:22
Speaker 2: Shoot first and ask questions later. And that is not the case.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: We should have done this ahead of time. And I would be so curious to look up because I don't recall a single one. How many times does stand your ground been used? Or you've heard about killings when a criminal was there to rob the place. I don't hear about homeowners shooting people who are there to actually rob them. And I'm sure it probably, I guess, but all the standard ground, all the cases I hear about have to do with someone who was not actually there to do a person harm. I would be very curious to see if, like what use how important this law has been in helping what saved lives?
00:18:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think I've heard a case here or there, but it seems as though they pale in comparison in terms of numbers. I mean, I've heard, like, you know, a homeowner, a woman, someone's coming in, she's got the gun. But again I don't even know the details. I remember hearing one once like that's to your point, it might just not cover, it might not rise to the level of being covered because it was affected or effectual, and it was the law was being put to use in the correct way, and so it doesn't make headlines.
00:18:36
Speaker 1: But to think, why is why this is necessary to protect you from making a mistake? It seemed like what it is so often, but it also seems like it gives you more permission to make that mistake.
00:18:51
Speaker 3: What I And that's the point that people are making that basically because folks know homeowners know or even just people in general who pack heet who have concealed weapons know that. Or they believe that it's their right to defend themselves, their property, their person, their family, no matter what, and that can be their first instinct is to shoot first and to ask questions later. And that's the scary part. And when you have a case like this, which is so tragic and so sad I did read the part where they didn't go outside. They called nine one one. This is the husband and the wife who were inside the home. But they heard her husband wailing. There was a real tragic loss of life here from our woman who was just trying to do her job. It is incredibly sad.
00:19:37
Speaker 1: We want to leave room robes for not knowing all the facts of what was going on in that house. Maybe there were other factors in this, you know what a court would consider a jurm. I consider what if their house was broken into two weeks ago? What if other things and other factors. You want to leave room. I don't want to. Yes, he took a life, and I don't think he wanted to. Right This could have been just an awful mistake, a bad mistake, a bad judgment, and a good guy had a really bad night. We don't know. We always want to leave room for that, but this one, obviously, Robes shouldn't have happened.
00:20:16
Speaker 2: It shouldn't have.
00:20:17
Speaker 3: And his wife, according to police reports, did say that her husband and she was always concerned, would tell neighbors. He went out to purchase this gun specifically to protect his home, and he said if anyone were to ever try to come into my home, I would shoot them immediately, so he had it in his head that this is what he was supposed to do, or that this is what he was going to do. And then lo and behold, this situation happened, and he made good on what he said he would do.
00:20:45
Speaker 1: And this is where I try to leave room as a homeowner in Georgia where these laws were in place. Who was at home by myself in the middle of the day when three guys tried to break into my home in a coordinated effort, to which I went and immediately bought guns for that house the next day, And who lived most of my time in the Atlanta Era area with guns in my house After that experience, the next time someone attempted to do anything like that to my home, I think my first instinct would be to pick up my gun. Now, I don't know what my reaction would have been, but I assure you I checked up on the law after I got those guns, and I knew what I was allowed to do. That sounds great. Sabine was months old at that point. She was supposed to be at home with me that day, and I just happened to be home alone. So all those things. If I am a juror listening to at you just don't know. I'm not saying what he did was right and justifying it anyway, But as I and I know a lot of people are getting onto and I put myself in that position of that fear, having gone through it, having had weapons, and having to have the experience of hearing something in the middle of the night in my home in Atlanta and knowing exactly where that gun was and that clip was and loaded it that night.
00:22:16
Speaker 2: I have never heard this story before. Vave.
00:22:19
Speaker 3: I knew you.
00:22:20
Speaker 2: I knew you were a gun owner, but I did not know that story.
00:22:22
Speaker 1: That's why I was a gun owner is because of that incident at that house. So these things are real, and that fear is real. Yes, yes, yes, yes, And I hate what happened and can't imagine shooting through the door blindly. I can't imagine that. But we will see if we get to a trial, and I wouldn't be surprised. There are things we are going to learn that will make this story probably sound.
00:22:45
Speaker 3: Different, maybe make a little bit more sense, but it still is a tragedy in and of itself. We will, of course follow this case and there is a lot more to come. He's behind bars right now, awaiting a hearing at this point, but again facing a voluntary manslaughter charge. Thank you so much for listening to us everyone. I'm Amy Robach alongside t. J.
00:23:05
Speaker 2: Holmes. We always appreciate you