A Tennessee man who’s built an online following for livestreaming himself insulting and trying to provoke African Americans by, among other things, asking if they’re going to “chimp out” after he hurls racial slurs at them is now facing a slew of criminal charges after shooting a man outside of the courthouse in Clarksville, Tennessee on Wednesday.
Dalton Eatherly, who goes by “Chud the Builder” online, is accused of attempted murder, employing a firearm during dangerous felony, aggravated assault, and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon in Montgomery County after the shooting incident.
Eatherly livestreamed himself speaking to first responders after the incident, saying “I had to defend myself by shooting him.”
He recounted walking past the man who, among others, were “laughing” and “pointing at me.” After approaching them, Eatherly said the unidentified man told him to walk away before coming back to him, saying “I have PTSD.”
There are reports that Eatherly did use that phrase before a man named Joshua Fox allegedly punched him, which in turn led to Eatherly pulling his gun and shooting him (as well as grazing himself). If that turns out to be the case, then Eatherly’s self-defense argument may become much more difficult to use in court.
In 2020, the Tennessee Supreme Court issued a ruling in a case that has some similarities to Eatherly’s. In that case, a man named Antonio Benson was charged with first-degree premeditated murder.
The evidence presented at trial suggested that he and the victim became involved in a physical altercation, during which the unarmed victim punched the defendant and caused his nose to bleed. In response, the defendant shot the victim five times. At trial, the defendant argued that the jury should be allowed to consider whether he was lawfully defending himself. The trial court found that nothing in the proof at trial raised the issue of whether the defendant lawfully used deadly force in defending himself against a punch in the nose by a petite, unarmed woman. The trial court, therefore, refused to charge the jury on self-defense. The defendant was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
An appellate court reversed the murder conviction after concluding that the trial court erred in not allowing the jury to decide whether the defendant lawfully defended himself with the use of deadly force. The Tennessee Supreme Court, however, overruled the appeals court.
In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court held that the trial court, not the jury, must make the threshold determination of whether self-defense has been fairly raised by the proof. The Court determined that the trial court properly exercised its gatekeeping function in this case and was not required to charge the jury on the issue of self-defense because the evidence, when viewed in the light most favorable to the defendant including all reasonable inferences that could be drawn, did not fairly raise an issue of whether the defendant was lawfully defending himself when he used deadly force. The Supreme Court reversed the holding of the Court of Criminal Appeals and reinstated the judgment of the trial court.
The trial court noted, and the TN Supreme Court agreed, that Tennessee case law “generally holds that self-defense is not available to a defendant who provoked or consented to the danger.”
The trial court found that, even taking the defendant’s statement to the police as wholly true, there was no question that the victim was unarmed at the time she was killed, and there was no indication that the victim ever threatened or attempted to use unlawful deadly force against the defendant or caused or threatened to cause serious bodily injury to the defendant. The trial court further concluded that getting punched in the nose is not “serious bodily injury.”
If eyewitness testimony and video shows that Eatherly tried to provoke Fox before punches were thrown and shots were fired, he might not even be able to raise a self-defense argument if his case goes to trial. And based on the state Supreme Court’s ruling in Tennessee v. Benson, it would be up to a judge, not a jury, to decide whether Eatherly has a valid claim that he was acting in lawful self-defense by using lethal force to defend himself against Fox’s punches.
Granted, Fox isn’t a “a small, unarmed woman,” and Eatherly isn’t accused of shooting Fox in the back long after any physical threat had dissipated, unlike the defendant in Benson. I’ve also seen some folks suggest that Fox indicated on social media that he was planning on assaulting Eatherly at the courthouse, though I’ve not seen that verified by any official sources. If it turns out to be true, then that would paint Fox as the initial aggressor, and would bolster Eatherly’s argument that he was acting in self-defense
For now though, based on what’s been released to date by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office and local news reports, Eatherly’s self-defense claim isn’t as cut-and-dried as some have claimed, and unless there’s some evidence showing that Fox was planning on attacking the streamer, the judge overseeing Eatherly’s case may very well conclude that it’s an argument that can’t be used by his attorneys going forward.
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