What happened to rodney peairs

Article:

It was Saturday night, October 17, 1992, fourteen days before Halloween. In their modest brick ranch home on a quiet treeless street, Rodney Peairs, 30, and his wife, Bonnie, were just sitting down to a supper of grits and eggs with their two children when the doorbell rang. Not expecting visitors, Bonnie gets up to peer through the curtains of the window. Unable to see clearly, she goes to the side door of the house and opens the door a crack. Almost immediately she slams the door shut and with rising panic in her voice shouts, “Rodney, get your gun!” Rodney bolts to the bedroom closet to fetch his .44 caliber Magnum pistol fitted with a night hunting scope which he keeps fully loaded alongside his shotgun, rifle, and two pellet guns.

What frightened Bonnie Peairs was the sight of two sixteen-year-old boys, one a Japanese exchange stu- dent, the other a local boy, who had rung the door- bell expecting to be welcomed to a Halloween party actually taking place five doors down the street. Yoshi Hattori was dressed in a white tuxedo jacket in an attempt to imitate John Travolta; Webb was in ordinary clothing with bandages wrapped around his head to imitate an accident victim. Driving through an unfa- miliar neighborhood to a classmate’s Halloween party, the boys had mistakenly transposed the numbers of the address: instead of number 3131, they had arrived at number 1313. The house was festively decorated with a large Happy Halloween banner stretched across the front window so they figured they had come to the right place. Walking up to the front door, they rang the doorbell expecting to be greeted by their friends. They saw someone peer out a curtain and when Bonnie Peairs opened the carport door, Webb started to speak, saying “Excuse me. . .” only to be answered by Bonnie’s slammed door.

Webb and Yoshi, then, turned to leave walking back to their car when they heard the carport door re-open. This time it was Rodney carrying a long-barreled and powerful gun pointed directly at the two boys. Yoshi, turned and skipped back toward Rodney, arms out at his sides in a dancing motion, repeating a gleeful refrain, “We’re here for the party!” Rodney assumed a crouch position and yelled, “Freeze!” but Yoshi kept moving forward. Rodney shot him in the chest from about five feet away.

The entire sequence of events took less than two minutes. No words were exchanged other than the one sentence uttered by Yoshi, “We’re here for the party” and the one word of warning uttered by Rodney Peairs, “Freeze!” Webb, standing only a few feet away, saw a man point a large gun at his friend, heard him shout “freeze,” then saw his friend collapse. Rodney shut the door and locked it while Webb screamed for help. Alarmed by the sound of the gunfire and the cries for help, a neighbor called the police. Twenty-five minutes later, Yoshi was declared dead from one fatal shot to his heart.

the Judicial process

The sheriff who arrived on the scene did not arrest Rodney Peairs or his wife Bonnie that night. Accord- ing to his later testimony, the officers believed, “He was not a criminal. It was an accident.” In Louisiana state law, a property owner has the right to use lethal force to defend his property from invaders or to compel someone to leave his property. In 1983, an amendment to the state code known as the “shoot the burglar” law permits residents to justifiably kill someone they believe to be an intruder if they are within four walls of a residence.

Was Rodney Peairs acting in defense of his family, life, and property as permitted by law? Or did Rodney Peairs commit a crime when he shot and killed Yoshi Hattori? In the minds of the law enforcement officers who arrived on the scene that night, the answer was obvious. Rodney Peairs, a meat-cutter at a local super- market, was a family man protecting his property from what he believed was a lethal threat. They did not take him into custody that night nor did they seek a war- rant for his arrest in the following days.

But the district attorney’s office took a different view of the matter. The district attorney convened a grand jury seeking to indict Rodney Peairs on a criminal charge of negligent homicide. According to the district attorney, Rodney Peairs acted negligently when he fired his .44 caliber weapon point blank at Yoshi Hat- tori. Owners of firearms have a special duty to operate these weapons with care: although they did not believe that Rodney Peairs had the desire to kill Hattori and they did believe he had been genuinely frightened by his wife’s fear and by the unusual behavior and appear- ance of the two boys that night, they argued, nonethe- less, that he acted with a degree of carelessness that was criminal. Prosecutors believed that Rodney should be held criminally liable for the death of Yoshi Hattori because of his failure to operate his firearm with suf- ficient care and diligence. The grand jury agreed and Rodney Peairs was indicted for negligent homicide.

The case attracted enormous publicity largely because of the interest taken in the case by the Japa- nese public.1 While the killing of Americans by fire- arms is relatively commonplace, in Japan these events rarely happen even among the criminal underworld. With a population half the size of America, densely crowded on a tiny series of islands, there are less than a hundred deaths from guns per year and most of these occur among organized crime gangs. Compare this to the 12,000 American deaths each year from handguns alone and you may appreciate how shocking the death of Yoshi Hattori was to the Japanese public. Almost immediately, the case became a national media attrac- tion in Japan.

In this kind of atmosphere, jury selection is always a delicate affair. Both sides presented potential jurors with elaborate questionnaires that asked the typical questions required of jurors. In addition, each attor- ney was permitted to ask questions specific to this case. The defense grilled potential jurors about their

attitudes toward gun control and about the right of a person to defend their property against invasion by intruders. The questionnaire asked potential jurors if they were members of crime-watch groups; “What do you believe needs to be done to lower the crime rate?” “how many people owned guns?” “who poten- tial jurors felt was their greatest hero?” “have you ever experienced unannounced visitors at your home, i.e. girl scouts selling cookies, charitable organizations, persons looking for directions, etc.?” From the answers to these types of questions, attorneys for each side argued that certain jurors were prejudiced against the case from the outset. Most of these arguments were made by the defense since the law gives the defense a greater number of opportunities to strike potential jurors. In this case, the final jury that was seated con- sisted entirely of Louisiana citizens who believed in the right to gun ownership, the right to keep a gun at home, and the right to use a gun to protect one’s family and property.

At the trial, there was little disagreement between the defense and the prosecution as to the “facts” dur- ing those fateful two minutes. The case hinged upon the interpretation of those facts and what was in the mind of Rodney Peairs and whether this was a rea- sonable state of mind for any common citizen con- fronted by the same set of circumstances. The law of self-defense does not require an individual to be “cor- rect” in the perception that he or she is facing a lethal threat. The law simply requires that the person act as any reasonable person would act faced with a similar set of circumstances. Would any “reasonable person” have come to the conclusion that he and his family were about to be subject to an invasion of their home? Did Rodney Peairs act as any reasonable person would have done to defend his family from a lethal threat?

According to the argument presented by the defense, Rodney Peairs acted reasonably, justifiably shooting and killing Yoshi Hattori given his percep- tion in those seconds prior to the shooting. He was, in fact, wrong in those perceptions, and he is terri- bly sorry for the tragic mistake, but he acted legally and justifiably on the information he had at the time. Alarmed by his wife’s cries and claiming never to have heard her so frightened, Rodney perceived Yoshi and Webb as invaders who were threatening his family. Rodney Peairs gave a verbal warning and Yoshi failed to heed his warning to stay back and “freeze.” It was dark and Rodney thought the camera in his hand was a weapon. Yoshi was moving erratically, waving his arms