Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Country singer Chris Nagle found not guilty of domestic violence

Back in May of this year Chris Nagle AND Jennifer Tant were arrested after the police were called to Nagle's home on a domestic dispute. Both Nagle and Tant were alleged to be drunk at the time. The story they both told was that Tant struck Nagle in the head with a "weapon" i.e. umbrella and Nagle then pushed her away to protect himself from further abuse (for more of the story read my previous blog post on this in June). According to a July 25th article on a Live Daily blog, http://www.livedaily.com/blog/2359.html Nagle went to trial recently for the alleged domestic assault and was found not guilty. Two things played a major role in his acquittal. First, Tant plead the fifth at Nagle's trial, she refused to testify against him lest she incriminate herself and second, the police officer that was at the scene of the incident testified that Nagle told him that he pushed Tant to protect himself after she struck him on the head with the umbrella. Not surprisingly, the ADA (Jenni Smith) decided not to prosecute Tant and her case was dismissed. Comment: Pushing someone away who is hitting you with a weapon used to be called self defense. And hitting someone with a weapon i.e. umbrella used to be called domestic assault. If the situation were reversed and Tant pushed Nagle to protect herself after Nagle hit her with a weapon i.e. umbrella Tant would be defending herself and what Nagle did would be consider domestic assault...so how come it isn't in this case? Maybe I am belaboring this but I don't understand why the state is wasting tax payer's money prosecuting someone who defending himself against a domestic assault? Unfortunately I believe it happens more than we know...