Accidents Do Happen

Dear Indigna,

I read an item about a woman who repeatedly shot her husband and her daughter-in-law, apparently because they were having an affair. Her defense is that she was “just going to move” the gun, she “didn’t plan to pick it up” and “evidently [her] finger was in the trigger at some point.” Does she really expect anyone to believe that? Can the prosecutor add a charge of insulting the intelligence of the jury pool?

Smarter Than Your Average Defendant
Visalia, CA

Dear Smarter,

Don’t be too quick to condemn. I had a friend who had the exact same thing happen to her. The loaded gun was just sitting there in the locked box on the top shelf of the closet in the attic. She didn’t mean to pick it up or anything but she just happened to be up there rummaging around in the closet and somehow accidentally unlocked the box, unknowingly carried the gun downstairs and apparently her finger must have grazed the trigger at some point, causing her husband and his lover to each take a few bullets in the back of the head, before she unwittingly cleaned the gun and, by some fluke or other, unintentionally carried the gun back up to the attic and unconsciously locked it in the box. She argued that the two must have committed suicide, and she would surely have been acquitted if the prosecutor hadn’t insisted on pointing out that they were shot in the yard from an upstairs window.