A black-clad man scrambles in, and while he does, you exercise your right to defend your house and shoot. The man dies.

In a free society, this would be an acceptable, indeed, admirable, use of force in defense of your home and family. There's only one catch: the man you shot is a cop. In a free, sane society, the benefit of the doubt would be given to you. You saw a masked thug climbing into a broken window, and for all you knew, intended to kill you and your family. You used justifiable deadly force to repel an attack against your home.

The fault would lie with the team of officers who attempted a highly dangerous operation that got a fellow officer killed, and they would be punished accordingly for acting so stupidly. Amiright? BUT, we don't live in a sane society do we? We live in a 50k SWAT raid-per-year society, a society that worships police and when something like this does happen, the police are given a pass and the man defending his home from an unknown threat is charged with murder.

Killeen, Texas resident, Marvin Louis Guy, is just such a man, in just such a situation. You see, the Killeen SWAT team thought it would be a grand idea to execute a no-knock raid on Guy's house at 5:30 in the morning. As they were breaking through his window, Guy opened fire on them, killing Charles Dinwiddie and wounding three other officers. They were acting on a bogus tip from an informant who promised that bags of cocaine would be found. Nothing of the kind was recovered. Charges against Guy do not stem from any drug crime, but solely from his successful attempt to fend off an attack on his home.

From KDH News: In Texas, anyone who kills a peace officer who is acting in the lawful discharge of an official duty can be charged with capital murder and could face the death penalty, if convicted.

Texas officials should be far more concerned with the lawfulness, and wisdom, of allowing officers to engage in this type of behavior than whether to sentence Guy to life or the needle. Stories like this always bring the mind back to the senseless, artificial nature of the Drug War. The Drug War paved the way for Dinwiddie to meet his demise on that early morning. Without the Drug War he would still be alive. Guy's life wouldn't currently be hanging on the slender threads of fate in Texas. The Drug War is the most reality-denying public policy being pursued today, and the body count daily climbs higher as it is allowed to continue.