Texas jury: Escorts who follow the law are thieves, and shooting AK 47’s in someone’s direction is not intent to harm

Lenora Ivie Frago was shot on Christmas Eve 2009 in a dispute over $150; the shooting paralyzed her, and caused her death several months later. Her killer was accused of murder, but was just acquitted; and not because the jury didn’t think he shot her, but because they thought it was ok to shoot and kill her.

Frago was an escort advertising escorting services on craigslist. This is legal in Texas, as long as “escorting” is defined as renting someone’s company, not sex; prostitution is illegal in Texas*. So I’m going to speculate that the escorting ad in question didn’t say that sex was included in the price, and therefore legally, it can’t be theft or breach of contract or whateverthefuck to pay $150 bucks and get an escort to spend time with you, rather than fuck you. Regardless of what you thought you were paying for; regardless of whether the woman was really just a date-for-hire or a prostitute trying to “upsell”; legally, the only thing you could have possibly paid her for was company, no sex. And yet, the argument of the defense hinged on the claim that Frago stole her murderer’s money by refusing to return it after no sex happened and she was ready to leave. The “theft” line of reasoning was necessary because Section 9.42 of the Texas Penal Code allows “using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property”, and the only way a payment to an escort can be still considered the payer’s “tangible, movable property” is if she was in the process of stealing it, rather than in the process of leaving after doing all that she’s legally allowed to do in her job.
So that’s the first bit of toxic bullshit: apparently following the law about escorting is theft now.
The second bit of toxic bullshit comes from the very fact that you’re allowed to shoot-and-kill anyone over a property dispute at all, but it is Texas we’re talking about.
The third and fourth bits of toxic bullshit come in when you actually read Section 9.42. The relevant parts read as follows:

(1) if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41**; and
(2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:
[…]
(B) to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property; and
(3) he reasonably believes that:
(A) the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means

So in order to use this particular defense, the defense tried to convince the jury not only that doing what escorts are legally permitted to do was theft, but also that a)deadly force was necessary to stop Frago; AND b)that there wasn’t any other means whatsoever of getting his $150 back (such as suing her for fraud or breach of contract or whatever)

There’s an alternative theory about why the jurors acquitted: this was a murder trial, which according to the Texas Penal Code requires that a person

(1)intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual;
(2) intends to cause serious bodily injury and commits an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual; or
(3) commits or attempts to commit a felony, other than manslaughter, and in the course of and in furtherance of the commission or attempt, or in immediate flight from the commission or attempt, he commits or attempts to commit an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual.

or, translated into English, murder is when you try to kill or severely harm someone on purpose, or you harm someone in the process of committing another felony. So. Dude claimed that he didn’t mean to kill, and was aiming at the tires of the car Frago was in, and (at least according to the defense) it looks like what ultimately killed Frago was a bullet ricocheting from another part of the car.

But

Dude shot an AK 47 at the car. An AK 47***. Doesn’t fucking matter what you were aiming at, there was an extremely high likelihood there was going to be injury, and on owner of an AK 47 should bloody well know that; because even I know that AK 47’s are ridiculously inaccurate weapons. If that’s not “intend[ing] to cause serious bodily injury and commit[ting] an act clearly dangerous to human life that causes the death of an individual” I don’t know what is.

So either way you look at it, and regardless of which bullshit argument convinced the jury that shooting at escorts with assault rifles is a-ok, the verdict is a pile of toxic bullshit: gun worship; misogyny; whorephobia.
– – – – – – – – – – –
*on a side-note, I find it… “interesting” that they felt they needed to draw a distinction between “sexual intercourse” (PIV), and “deviate sexual intercourse” (oral/anal)
**Section 9.41 is the one that specifies when you can use force in general (as opposed to deadly force) to defend your property; this is where the “theft” bullshittery comes in.
***who the fuck brings an AK 47 to what they think is going to be 30 minutes of screwing?! That’s first class toxic bullshit right there.