Author of Texas' 'Castle Doctrine' self-defense law says it wasn't designed for defendants like Amber Guyger.
The former Texas lawmaker who wrote the state's "Castle Doctrine" self-defense law said it"wasn't designed" to be used to defend people like former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, who was convicted of murder Tuesday for fatally shooting an innocent man in an apartment she thought was her own.
"It was designed for you in your home. It wasn't designed for this kind of circumstance that existed in this Dallas case," Wentworth, now a justice of the peace in San Antonio, told ABC News following Guyger's conviction on Tuesday. "Clearly, I don't think anybody anticipated, I certainly did not, that someone would shoot and kill someone in their own house believing that they were in their own," Wentworth said."I mean that's just a circumstance I don't think anybody had thought of. I can say that I didn't foresee this kind of situation. No."
He said he wrote the legislation after reading a newspaper article about former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signing that state's"stand your ground" law. "Over the years, either through legislative action or court cases, we had lost that right to defend ourselves in our own homes and that, in fact, we had a duty to retreat," Wentworth said."That just genuinely offended me because, you know, if I'm sitting with my family in my house watching the news at 10 o'clock at night and somebody's bashing in the front door with a crowbar, I shouldn't have to have a duty to retreat.
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