The endless turning of human behavior is so unusual, it’s sometimes unbelievable. For people who work in the criminal field, we know it’s not a TV show, so when something truly odd occurs, we’re amazed by it.

I was involved with a case of a large family who all lived together, although they lived in shifts, in a two-story home. Adults and children occupied the house and some of the adults worked real jobs to support the group. Others used government programs for support and others used criminal means to pay their share.

One uncle sold drugs to make ends meet. He’d often do the deals in the back porch while the family ate dinner, for instance.

A particular evening, he invited the buyer into the house. They moved into a bedroom upstairs to do their business. Family members who were home told police, they heard a loud “pop” from upstairs and a few minutes later, the buyer came down and left. No one seemed to notice that the uncle disappeared for the next three days.

They discovered him upstairs in the back bedroom, dead from a gunshot wound. Apparently, no one, including the children, ever thought to look for him or to see what happened in the bedroom.

True story.

Another case involved a father who had unusual ideas for disciplining his children. When they wouldn’t clean their bedrooms as instructed, he went into each one and removed their pet gerbils from the drawers where the children kept them.

In order to teach them a lesson, he took the little animals outside and called for the children to come out with him. When they stepped into the back yard, the father pulled out an air gun with a wide barrel. He loaded the gerbils into the air gun and shot them across the back fence into the neighbor’s yard. The neighbor, as you can imagine, became upset when two rat-like animals flew into his yard unexpectedly.

The neighbor returned the stunned critters. The father was so mad, he took the dazed gerbils and drowned each of them in a pail of water before the kids.

True story.

For a writer, it’s wonderful to transfer these stories into novels. My only problem is I’m afraid no one will believe they really happened!

Do you have weird or unusal stories that could make good plot lines in a book? Please let me know.

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1.  A burglar named Bob broke into a suburban house through the sliding door on the patio.  Dressed in black, like he’d seen on TV, Bob didn’t waste time.  He went right for the valuables in the bedroom.  He scored big and felt successful.  On his way out to the patio he saw a laptop computer pen on the kitchen table.  Bob stopped, keyed in his Facebook page, and announced what he was doing.  Then he ran out the door—forgetting to log out of Facebook.  When the police got there, they found Bob’s open Facebook page—and they found him!

2.  Another mistake made by criminals included Sergei.  He and his wife were having big problems.  In fact, he wanted to kill her—which he did.  He faced the problem all murderers have: how do you get rid of a dead body?

Sergei had a brilliant idea.  He dragged his wife into the bathtub and sawed her up into dozens of pieces.  Then he took the pieces to the kitchen where he stuffed them one by one down the garbage disposal.  It was working great until the disposal became clogged and stopped working.  After that, it was easy for the police to find the remaining evidence.

3.  Here’s a really stupid mistake made by criminals.  Arvid wanted to rob a store at the Mall of America.  Without wearing a disguise, he entered the mall.  Arvid carried a large plastic garbage bag and filled it with stolen jewelry from a store.  Somehow, he managed to get out of the mall past security.  When the police arrived they found Aarvid with the garbage bag.  He was standing outside waiting for his get-away vehicle—the city bus.

4.  Joe was drunk at a local restaurant.  The bouncer told him to leave.  Joe did, but he carried a concealed handgun.  He pulled it out and shot the bouncer.  Four shots killed the father of four children.  Joe panicked and decided to jump into the Mississippi River to escape.  While in the water, he dropped the gun to hide the evidence.  Unfortunately, Joe couldn’t swim.  He had to be rescued and was arrested.  What happened to the gun?  The next day, the city lowered the river in order to dredge a channel.  Which exposed the gun with Joe’s fingerprints all over it.  This stupid mistake made by a criminal was used to convict Joe easily.

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Is this self defense or murder?

This situation really happened in Minneapolis and it’s troubled many people.  Let’s look at their concerns:

1.  The shooter is another example of “vigilantes.”  Untrained but armed citizens who “take the law into their own hands.”

2.  This is a Good Samaritan who tried to rescue a victim and stop the attacker.  He provided a public service, and when the attacker turned on him the rescuer acted in self-defense.

As a criminal lawyer myself, clearly the rescuer is within his rights to help the victim.  Also to try and recover the stolen purse.  To even chase the attacker.  He was also licensed to carry a gun.  But once the attacker turned and ran away, the rescuer doesn’t have a duty to chase him.  What about self-defense?

But he did choose to run after the attacker.

Under the law, this is considered a separate incident from the original crime.  At this point, if the rescuer uses force against the attacker, the rescuer may be committing the crime of assault.  Because the original crime was not directed at the rescuer.  Strange as it may sound, if the attacker feels threatened by the rescuer, he has a right to defend himself against the rescuer!

In Minnesota, the right of self-defense is defined as:

Taking of the life of another is authorized when necessary in resisting or preventing an offense in which the actor reasonably believes exposes the actor to great bodily harm or death to himself.

In the real case we have only the rescuer’s version since the attacker died from the gunshot.  It’s possible that either man acted in self-defense.  The rescuer could be charged with some level of homicide, although the prosecuting attorney has said he will not do so.

One concern that I have is the “vigilante” aspect of this incident.  For all I know, the rescuer acted as a Good Samaritan and only when he was threatened with death himself, reluctantly pulled out his own gun and shot the attacker dead.  But what if his intention from the start was to act as law enforcement, knowing he was armed and ready to shoot at the smallest reason?

As a society, we license law enforcement to use force—only after rigorous training and education about weapons and violent situations.  Most of us, even if we’re licensed to carry a weapon, lack similar training and may act in a rash, wrong, and deadly way.

What do you think?

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In my own experience as a lawyer representing killers, I have made a few discoveries.  Granted, I’m not a psychologist but here they are:

1.  Most people who are able to kill others usually do it in “the heat of passion.”  They’re so upset or drunk or high, (or all of these) they pull out a gun and shoot the other person.  Murder and your brain in this case probably don’t mean much until after the event.  These kind of people are often extremely sorry for what they did and probably won’t do it again.

2.  Some people are sober and plan to kill.  An example could be a gang member who finds a rival on the street and does a drive-by shooting.  I’ve found that the shooters are usually very broken and psychologically messed up in their brains.  They’ve experienced a lot of pain in their lives that comes out as anger and violence toward others.  Certainly, murder and your brain will have a big effect on these people.  They often kill again.

3.  Then there are psychopaths.  People who are so far off the chart of normal brain activities they don’t have a conscience.  They will kill and torture people without much effect on their brain—at least, that’s what it appears to me when I’ve talked with them.

But look at the article/study.  The effects of murder on your brain have some surprising new effects that research has uncovered.

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What is profiling?  Is it really bad?  Here are four thoughts from all the years I’ve worked as both a prosecutor and Public Defender.

Profiling means that citizens are stopped by law enforcement—not because of suspected criminal behavior, but instead because of the person’s race, gender, or the way they walked.  For years, courts and legislatures have allowed police to stop suspects if the police “have a factual basis to think a crime has been committed.”  A good example is a cop who follows a car that weaving from side to side in the lane.  The cop can suspect that the drive may be intoxicated and therefore, can legally stop the driver to investigate.

1.  We all do it.  All of us do our own “profiling” every day.  It’s based on a life time of experience and learning.  Often, it helps us avoid dangerous situations—or dangerous people.  TSA screeners use profiling all the time at airports.  The difference when law enforcement uses profiling is they have state-sanctioned power to arrest people.  None of the rest of us have that power.

2.  Racial profiling.  Statistically, it’s been shown that people of color (and heavily male) are stopped much more often that while males—even though the same statistics show that people of color don’t commit any more serious crimes than whites.  Clearly, there’s some amount of racial profiling going on with law enforcement.

3.  High crime areas.  Many residents of high crime areas ask for more police presence.  And they also support more arrests for “nuisance” crimes.  (These are petty offenses like loitering, disorderly conduct, curfew violations, etc.)  This law enforcement profiling has the effect of cleaning up the streets by getting bothersome people out of the neighborhood—who may commit more serious crimes.  Gangsters, drug sellers, etc.  People in these high crime areas fully accept law enforcement profiling as they feel it helps keep crime down.

4.  White don’t know.  Some people have been surprised at the length and intensity of the protests that have occurred across the country against police violence.  Although populated with white people as well as people of color, I don’t think us whites can fully understand the fear, humiliation, and stress that profiling causes to many of our citizens.  Almost every middle-class black male I know has told me horror stories about being stopped and the fear they felt, not knowing what might happen to them—simply because of the law enforcement profiling.

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