Darrell Roberson came home from a card game late one night to find his wife rolling around with another man in a pickup truck in the driveway.
Caught in the act with her lover, Tracy Denise Roberson -- thinking quickly, if not clearly -- cried rape, authorities say. Her husband pulled a gun and killed the other man with a shot to the head.
On Thursday, a grand jury handed up a manslaughter indictment -- against the wife, not the husband.
In a case likely to reinforce the state's reputation for don't-mess-with-Texas justice, the grand jury declined to charge the husband with murder, the charge on which he was arrested by police....
Tracy Roberson, 35, could get two to 20 years in prison in the slaying of Devin LaSalle, a 32-year-old UPS employee.
Assistant District Attorney Sean Colston declined to comment on specifics of the case or the grand jury proceedings but said Texas law allows a defendant to claim justification if he has "a reasonable belief that his actions are necessary, even though what they believe at the time turns out not to be true." ...
When Tracy Roberson cried that she was being raped, LaSalle tried to drive away and her husband drew the gun he happened to be carrying and fired several shots at the truck, authorities said.
The incident is a tragedy for the victim and for the husband, and a serious crime on the woman's part; but I don't see why this as a matter of "don't-mess-with-Texas justice." The self-defense (or, to be precise, defense of others) defense is generally available whenever the defender reasonably believed that lethal force was needed to prevent death, serious bodily injury, rape, or kidnapping.
In some states, the defense is broader, for instance applying to defense against robbery, or applying even when the belief is unreasonable but sincere (in such cases, it would generally lower a murder charge to involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide). But in all states, defending someone with lethal force based on reasonable belief that the force is needed to prevent or interrupt a rape would be a full defense. I know of no states in which actual necessity for defense, as opposed to a reasonable belief in the necessity for defense, is required.
Nor is there any quintessentially "don't-mess-with-Texas justice" about the application of this defense to the facts, at least given the facts as described in the news story. It is eminently reasonable to trust a person's claim that she's being raped (at least absent some special knowledge on the defendant's part that his wife is somehow exceptionally likely to lie), especially when immediate reaction is required. And while one can always second-guess a decision like this after the fact, the law recognizes (in Justice Holmes' words) that "Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife": When your wife is shouting that she's being raped, and she's in a pickup truck that the alleged rapist is driving away in response, the law can't reasonably condemn you for believing that shooting at the truck is necessary to protect her.
The woman, on the other hand, is likely guilty of criminally negligent homicide, on the theory that she behaved in at least a grossly negligent way that jeopardized her lover's life -- especially likely if she knew that her husband sometimes carried a gun -- and possibly of manslaughter, on the theory that she was actually aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that she was jeopardizing her lover's life. (I rely here on the Texas Penal Code § 19.02 categorization of homicide, which generally tracks the Model Penal Code but apparently does not allow a "depraved heart" murder theory outside the felony-murder context.)
Thanks to Clayton Cramer for the pointer.