On November 5, 2021, Kyle Carruth fatally shot Chad Read in the chest in a child custody-associated dispute taking place outside Carruth’s Texas home.

On March 31, 2022, news media announced that a special grand jury convened in this case returned a “no true bill,” meaning they declined to indict Carruth on any criminal charges for his having killed Read. Accordingly, it appears that Carruth will face no criminal liability over this event (although he continues to sued civilly over his killing of Read). //

At the moment that Kyle Carruth shot Chad Read in the chest with a rifle, Read was standing entirely still some dozen feet away, not presenting as an imminent deadly force threat to anybody nor as an imminent threat to any property. A killing cannot be justified in the apparent absence of any such imminent threat, and therefore the killing of Read by Carruth in the absence of such an apparent imminent force threat cannot be legally justified. //

(If you’re wondering why I’m suggesting this looks like manslaughter, and don’t go all the way to full-blown murder, it’s because the immediately preceding heated physical confrontation between the men strikes me as the kind of “adequate provocation” and “hot blood” that would typically mitigate what would otherwise have been murder to voluntary manslaughter.) //

MajorWood | April 8, 2022 at 10:52 pm
My takeaway has always been that the mom orchestrated a situation to get her ex killed. she provoked the ex by not having the child where he was supposed to be and at the new “highly aggitated” boyfriends house. I just feel bad that the victim took the bait in the heat of the moment. //

when the deceased stepped onto the porch and committed an assault, that was burglary under TPC 30.02. This is the key to this case. (Again, other states’ definition of burglary may be different, but here you have to address Texas law as it exists.)

Ergo, the deadly force analysis is be under TPC 9.42(2)(A) — was deadly force reasonably necessary to prevent / stop the commission of burglary (which, because the deceased was still on the porch when shot, will boil down to whether the shooter reasonably believed that the deceased was going to continue to commit assault).

Just as Texas law allows deadly force to prevent/stop “theft at nighttime,” it also allows deadly force to stop the commission of burglary as defined in the TPC. This doesn’t require an imminent threat to the person — which makes it different than most other states.