Acquitted for Shooting a Man, Convicted for Hitting a House

Can you be convicted of a crime when you act in self-defense but an errant shot strikes a home or another person? The answer may vary from state to state, and even from case to case, as the Ohio Supreme Court recently decided.

This particular case involves a man named Timothy Bradley, who was originally charged with a variety of crimes after shooting a contractor named Zachary Burch at Bradley’s home in 2024. Bradley had hired, and then fired Burch, and the pair started arguing when Burch showed up to collect his tools. 

Video and audio of the encounter were captured by a neighbor’s security camera. Burch was armed when he entered the house, and during his return to collect more of his tools, Bradley alleged that Burch made a motion with his arms indicating he was going to grab his gun. The video showed that Burch did not touch his gun during the incident, but the audio recorded Burch threatening Bradley.

Bradley fired six shots at Burch, hitting him five times. Two of the bullets crossed the street, striking two homes. Neighbor Jessi House testified that a bullet hit her house, but no one from the other house testified at Bradley’s trial. House said she witnessed the aftermath of the shooting and saw Bradley standing in the street holding a gun, and Burch running to a neighbor’s porch two houses away.

At trial, Bradley was acquitted of felonious assault, but the jury convicted him on two charges of discharging a firearm into a habitation without privilege to do so, which is a second-degree felony in the Buckeye State. 

Bradley appealed his conviction and the Seventh District Court of Appeals ruled in his favor. In the appellate court’s opinion, the lower court did not explain that the “privilege” of self-defense applied to all of the charges that Bradley faced, not just the felonious assault charge for shooting Burch. 

The Ohio Supreme Court, however, reversed the appellate court’s decision this week and upheld Bradley’s conviction. 

Writing for the Court majority, Justice Joseph T. Deters noted that Bradley had not requested the trial court to instruct that the privilege of self-defense transferred to other offenses. Justice Deters explained that the Court had never ruled that the privilege transferred and that Bradley had not shown that the outcome of his trial would have been different had the instruction been given.

Even if the Court were to adopt the theory that the privilege of self-defense transferred to another charge, Justice Deters wrote, “We cannot say that the trial court’s failure to give the instruction sua sponte in this case was a clear error under current law.”

Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy and Justices Patrick F. Fischer, R. Patrick DeWine, Daniel R. Hawkins, and Megan E. Shanahan joined Justice Deters’ opinion.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Jennifer Brunner stated the trial judge made an obvious error by not adequately explaining to the jury the charge of discharging a firearm into a habitation without privilege to do so, under R.C. 2923.161(A)(1). She wrote that self-defense is a privilege and a right under the law. The jury should have been told that self-defense is a privilege, which, if found by the jury, would nullify the criminal charge. She agreed with the Seventh District that the explanation would have provided the link needed to acquit Bradley.

I’m surprised to see Deters actually wrote this opinion, since he’s historically been very supportive of the Second Amendment during his time in the Ohio legislature and on the bench. 

The “privilege” of self-defense should absolutely apply to every round that’s fired in response to a threat against someone’s life, and if the rounds that hit Burch were justified, then the rounds that missed should be justified under the law as well. 

It’s also pretty crazy to argue that even if the jury had been instructed that the errant round could still be justified by self-defense that Bradley hadn’t shown the outcome of the trial would have been different. He was acquitted of felonious assault after asserting self-defense, strongly suggesting that the jury concluded the state had failed to disprove that he was lawfully defending himself. It defies logic to believe the jury still would have concluded the missed shot constituted a felony offense if they had been instructed that self-defense could apply to that round as well. 

To be fair, the jury wasn’t entirely left in the dark. The trial judge told jurors that Bradley was claiming self-defense on all three counts and defined “privilege,” while Bradley’s attorney explicitly argued that his self-defense claim applied to the rounds that struck the homes. What jurors didn’t receive was a specific instruction explaining how the privilege of self-defense applied to those errant shots.

To me, that actually makes the split verdict harder to understand, not easier. Bradley fired six rounds during the encounter. The jury acquitted him of felonious assault after hearing his self-defense claim, yet convicted him because some of those same rounds missed Burch and struck a house. If the jurors had been explicitly instructed that a lawful privilege to fire in self-defense could also apply to those errant rounds, there’s every reason to think the result could have been different.

Justice Brunner’s dissent gets it right. The statute criminalizes firing into a habitation without privilege, but self-defense is a privilege, and therefore there’s nothing that needs to “transfer” in the first place.

This is an extraordinarily disappointing decision, and not just because a justice endorsed by the Buckeye Firearms Association penned it. Deters says the Ohio Supreme Court has never ruled that a self-defense claim transfers to other offenses. If the majority was unwilling to adopt Justice Brunner’s common sense viewpoint, this still would have been the perfect case to conclude that self-defense does transfer to charges of discharging a firearm into a habitation. Instead, the criminal justice system has determined that Timothy Bradley could lawfully fire at Burch in self-defense, but can still be branded a convicted felon and lose his right to possess a firearm because two of those shots missed their intended target.

That’s the legal opinion of the Ohio Supreme Court, but I can’t call that “justice” with a straight face. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun-grabbing schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.