Last week, 29-year-old Shawn Shrick was convicted of brutally killing his father’s girlfriend, Margaret Dahl, and her mother, Phyllis Porter, in 2019. There is no dispute he killed them. He stabbed Margaret 20 times. This week, he received his sentence. And then immediately walked out of jail a free man.
I know what you’re thinking. Because you’re thinking what I was thinking. You’re thinking, “what the fuck?”
Allow me to fill you in. Even though he killed two people, by stabbing them a combined total of 21 times, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and not murder.
“How can that be”, you ask? Well, there’s a law on the books here in California that says that someone can’t be convicted of murder if they lacked intent. That’s right, he stabbed someone 20 times and the defense successfully argued that he didn’t intend to do it.
You see, there’s another law here in California that says that someone can’t have intent if they were unconscious at the time they committed the crime. That’s right, his successful defense against murder was that he wasn’t awake at the time he killed two people.
And do you want to know why he was unconscious? It wasn’t because he was sleepwalking. No, his attorney argued that he couldn’t have possibly been conscious of his actions because he was so drunk that he had no idea what he was doing. In California, if someone dies from the actions of a person deemed unconscious because of intoxication, worst case, the assailant can be convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
But here’s the thing. The burden of proof is on the prosecution. That’s right. All you have to do is simply identify as being black-out-drunk. It’s up to the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you weren’t.
To be fair, the prosecutor did her best. She demonstrated to the jury how Shawn chased his father’s girlfriend through the house with a knife as she ran for her life. She told them how he had to break through two doors before he could successfully chase Margaret down and kill her. And, she detailed his flight from the house and how he had the presence of mind to hide his weapon in a box of other knives.
Maybe I’m the only one, but I think that breaking down doors and hiding a weapon clearly indicates intent. But that didn’t matter to the jury. The jury decided that Shawn was too drunk to have intended to stab Margaret and her mother to death.
In other words, the jury determined that Shawn wasn’t responsible for his actions, the alcohol he drank was. And in doing so, they let Shawn Shrick get away with murder.
But wait, it gets worse.
And if that wasn’t crazy enough, California also has a law that gives a prisoner two days of credit for every day they spend locked up before trial. Taking into account Shawn’s two-for-one credits, the amount of time he had already spent in jail was greater than the maximum sentence of six-and-a-quarter years that comes with a conviction for involuntary manslaughter.
Had he been convicted of murder, he would have faced a sentence of 52 years to life in prison. But he wasn’t convicted of murder. Because the jury didn’t hold him accountable for his actions.
Shawn’s early release is yet another unintended consequence of the COVID lockdowns. Because for a good chunk of the time he spent awaiting trial, the courts were closed due to the county’s irrational and ridiculous reaction to a mildly-dangerous virus. So, while people panicked, wore masks and slathered everything with hand sanitizer, Shawn was collecting bonus points for each day of the delay.
So, having just been convicted of brutally stabbing two people to death, Shawn Shrick walked out of jail and went home. After being incarcerated for less than four years.
This is wrong on so many levels. Where to begin? Let’s start with the jury.
Profiling the jury
You’ve probably seen the meme asking something like, “would you want to be judged by twelve people who were too stupid to get out of jury duty?” Yes please.
I know we’re not supposed to profile, but we all do it all the time anyway. And I’m going to do it now. I can tell you just with what little I know about them that the jury in the case of The People vs. Shawn Shrick were all a bunch of Liberals. How do I know? That’s easy. Because the only logic Liberals know how to use is circular logic. You know, pseudo-logic like, “a woman is someone who identifies as a woman.”
Nobody forced Shawn to drink as much as he did that day. No one held him down and poured who- knows-how-much alcohol down his throat. Shawn did that to himself. 100% of the alcohol he consumed that day was by his own hand.
I know the jury was filled with Liberals because any reasonable person/Conservative would conclude that Shawn should be held accountable.
But the jury decided that, because of his own actions, Shawn couldn’t be held accountable for his own actions. See? Circular logic. In other words, because he wasn’t responsible for his own actions, Shawn accidentally broke into Margaret’s house, broke through two doors and stabbed her 20 times.
That’s just like believing that Hunter Biden was too whacked out on drugs to be considered responsible for raping little girls, taking bribes and being a traitor to his country. What he did should be punishable by death. But it won’t be. Because enough people are going to allow Hunter Biden’s own actions to get him off the hook for his own actions.
Equitable punishment
I said just a little bit ago “who knows how much alcohol” Shawn drank that day. That’s kind of the whole point. We only have Shawn’s word about how drunk he was. How much booze he drank shouldn’t matter. But it does. Because simply being drunk isn’t a defense against murder. But being too drunk is.
In California, you can be convicted of gross vehicular manslaughter if you kill someone while drunk and driving recklessly. Reckless driving includes things like driving too fast or driving the wrong way on an interstate. A conviction of gross vehicular manslaughter carries a penalty of up to 10 years for a first offense.
So, had Shawn chased down Margaret in his car while driving too fast, run over her and killed her, he could have been sentenced to 45 more months than he got for accidentally stabbing her nearly two dozen times. But he didn’t drive over her with his car. He broke into her house and killed her. And now he’s a free man.
I wonder what’s going to happen when someone tries to apply this defense to their DUI charges. The penalty for gross vehicular manslaughter jumps to 15-to-life if you’ve had two or more previous DUI’s. You don’t think that someone is going to try the “I was too drunk” defense when they’re facing life in prison?
I can see it now, some drunk bastard is going to mow down a family in a crosswalk and he’s going to get a slap on the wrist because some jury is going to say he was too drunk to know what he was doing. It’s not a question of if. It’s going to happen. The only question is when.
Burden of proof
As I see it, someone who wants to use the “I was too drunk” defense…we need a better name…let’s call it the shit-faced defense. When someone wants to use the shit-faced defense, the burden of proof should be on them. The defendant should be required to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they were actually black-out-drunk. Just claiming that they were is not proof.
I’m going to pause a bit and talk about two things tangential to this case.
The first thing is that nobody is calling for more knife control. After all, if Shawn didn’t have easy access to a knife, things may have turned out differently for Margaret and her mother. But if Shawn had used a gun, then people everywhere would be calling for more gun control.
The second thing is that the defense successfully argued that, while Shawn was partially responsible for the deaths of Margaret and Phyllis, he wasn’t entirely responsible. That means that if it wasn’t entirely Shawn’s fault, it had to also partially be someone or something else’s fault.
And that something was alcohol.
Here we have an actual court case that proves alcohol was to blame for the deaths of two people. So, where is the outrage? Where are the calls to ban alcohol? Why isn’t anyone pushing through legislation that would make it easier for Margaret’s family to sue the company that made whatever rot-gut Shawn was drinking that day?
And now, back to our story.
What we need in this country is to get back to where people are held accountable for their own actions and not be allowed to blame everyone but themselves.
By taking the first drink that day, Shawn nudged the first domino in a series of events that ultimately resulted in the death of two people. But, unlike actual dominoes, Shawn had multiple opportunities to prevent what happened. He alone decided to take his first drink. And his second drink. And his third. And his fourth.
Shawn Shrick was completely responsible for the deaths of Margaret Dahl and Phyllis Porter, and he should have been convicted of murder. But instead he’s a free man.
I’ll concede that at some point during that day, Shawn became unable to make sound decisions. But he’s the one who decided to drink enough to put himself in that situation. Allowing someone to benefit from making too many wrong decisions just doesn’t make any sense.
Because of a set of ridiculous laws designed to allow people to shirk personal accountability, Shawn Shrick was able to murder two people without facing adequate punishment.
And that should be a crime.
