You have to read this to believe it. Because, if I just told you, I’m not sure I’d be believed. Either that or I’m just old and well into the ‘whole world’s gone crazy’ stage of life:

Gawker — A jury in Bexar County, Texas just acquitted Ezekiel Gilbert of charges that he murdered a 23-year-old Craigslist escort—agreeing that because he was attempting to retrieve the $150 he’d paid to Lenora Ivie Frago, who wouldn’t have sex with him, his actions were justified.

Gilbert had admitted to shooting Frago in the neck on Christmas Eve 2009, when she accepted $150 from Gilbert and left his home without having sex with him. Frago, who was paralyzed by the shooting, died several months later.

If only she’d been armed, eh? Then we coulda had a good old-fashioned Texas shootout! I don’t know the details in this case, maybe she pocketed the money, laughed at him, and bragged he’d just been scammed as she walked out. But that wouldn’t exactly justify shooting someone, it would be a rather inexpensive lesson in that free market magic we always hear so much about — buyer beware! Particularly when responding to online ads in the sex section of Craigslist for what could be accurately described as a shadowy, quasi-legal service at best! Besides, there’s no info that anything like that happened. I’d guess what actually happened is more like the lady was an escort and not a sex worker, and that pissed the horny guy off. FWIW the escort testified — before dying from the paralyzing neck wound — that she had to pay a waiting cab driver a good chunk of the money.

This is a case where shooting back might have justified imo, not just morally but legally under the arbitrary gun nut laws we have in the US in general and in the Lone Star State specifically; wouldn’t the right to self-protection apply universally once a gun came out regardless of who introduced it or why? And since gun violence solves everything, according to some, I’d like to see how the strapped and pack’n crowd feel about it solving this stand-off in a quite different way. If she squeezed off a lethal round after being mortally wounded, or even after being grazed or just threatened, would that be legal, too? That’s one of the big, big problems with this shoot first bullshit, somehow both sides are behaving completely within the law even as they escalate matters to a needless, pointless live firefight.

On this case, before some troll goes into ‘the thieving hooker deserved it’ mode, think about the precedent this might create. Prostitution is illegal in Texas. Now, thanks to this outcome and assuming it doesn’t get overturned, if any maniac feels they’ve been shortchanged on an illegal, or presumably legal transaction, and the service provider won’t hand over the money pronto, whether the product in question is crack cocaine or pizza delivery or just getting a place sprayed for bugs, forget about small claims court, the maniac can start firing away with impunity AKA ‘in self defense’ to ‘retrieve stolen property’.

It seems to me like a good field test for a purported theft worthy of gun play is would the police actively pursue or aggressively investigate a reported theft after the fact? Considering the john here could give them the lady’s contact info, the cab driver could have told them where he dropped her off, and she probably has an ad up all the time, it seems reasonable that if the police considered it a legit, credible report they could intervene as surely as if a car thief had an online ad up after making off with an SUV. In this case I’d bet that test would fail, that the police would have politely told the “victim” that they don’t enforce petty theft laws when it’s an illegal activity and the man should have used better judgement, that bad judgement like this can get you hurt or killed, followed by the obligatory litany of people getting ripped off or killed online and/or by anonymous hookers/pimps which should be well-known to anyone over age 15 or who’s seen more than five episodes of COPS.