MURDERER OR HERO?

Jerome Ersland, 57, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel who is a disabled veteran of the Persian Gulf War, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Ersland, a pharmacist in civilian life, was working in an Oklahoma City pharmacy on May 19 when he and two women employees were confronted by two hold-up men wearing ski masks.

Ersland pulled a gun and managed to shoot one of the gunmen in the head. He chased the other one out of the store. Then he went back behind the counter, grabbed another gun, and pumped five more bullets into the stomach of the robber with the head wound who was lying unconscious on the floor.

The medical examiner ruled that the five stomach shots were the ones that killed 16-year-old Antwun Parker. The district attorney says that Ersland was justified in shooting the teenager in the head but that when he returned to shoot Parker again, he committed murder because the unconscious robber was no longer a threat to anyone.

This begs the question – is Ersland a murderer or a hero? Hundreds of people have come to his defense. They hail Ersland as a hero. An anonymous donor has put up his $100,000 bail. And, the district attorney has been getting a lot of flack.

You may wonder how I, as a retired professor of criminal justice, feel about this case. For starters, I do not feel sorry for the slain teenager. He got what was coming to him. I do have some sympathy for Parker’s family because they have lost a loved one.

What is really sad though is that a decent man, Ersland, has been ruined because of how he reacted at the time he became the victim of a life-threatening crime. Even if he never goes to trial on any criminal charges in this case, he will be wiped out financially by enormous legal bills. And on top of that, you can bet that bottom feeding lawyers are already crawling all over themselves to represent the Parker family in a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Ersland.

This case is somewhat reminiscent of the Joe Horn case in Pasadena, Texas. Horn, 61, shot two black Colombian illegal immigrants nearly two years ago who had just burglarized his neighbor’s home. Many hailed Horn as a hero for killing the two previously convicted criminals but, because the burglars did not constitute a threat to his person or property at the time he killed them, others were outraged and demanded he be arrested and tried for murder.

Horn was not arrested and a grand jury refused to indict him, but he was nevertheless ruined. Black activists charged that the shootings were racially motivated. Horn abandoned his home and went into hiding to avoid the daily hounding by protesters and he was sued by the "fiance" of one of the burglars. Like Ersland, Horn had been a decent man all his life prior to the shootings.

Of course, I agree that Ersland was not justified in shooting the unconscious robber again. However, had I been the district attorney in this case, I would have referred the shooting to a grand jury without arresting Ersland. I suspect a grand jury would have refused to issue an indictment against the pharmacist.

So, is Ersland a hero? You bet he is! By killing the teenager, he very likely prevented some other innocent person from getting killed by Parker during a future robbery. In my book, that makes Jerome Ersland a crime fighting hero!