i'll also add that this article is the first I've read on this case where it mentions the old dude getting rocks chucked at him. I was under the impression they were all mouthing/threatening him.
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There has to be a joke somewhere in this about a guy taking a leak at a bar...

Can the owner fence off the sandbar? Assuming property extends halfway across the water...

I doubt it, even if the bolded part were true...

but the bolded part may not be true ( I personally don't think it is true....but it definitely a gray area fraught with legal problems)

Based on appearances alone I would convict after seeing that picture.

I like this perspective on TM

Yeah, they're going to have a bias, sure.

But who's more likely to lie here? The friends of the dead guy that have literally nothing on the line (and could potentially be subject to civil liability if the shooter walks and finds a creative plaintiff's attorney) or the dude who's going to jail for the rest of his life?

It's about weighing respective credibility at that point. If you have to choose one party or the other that's more likely to lie, aren't you going to go with the shooter? He damn sure has more riding on it.

The Jury's going to look at it initially just as you are - that's why the prosecutor has to rehab their credibility without overtly doing so.

In a he said/she said kind of case, it's all about relative biases. Is it enough to convict? Probably not - but given that there's unquestionably a dead guy and the shooter unquestionably shot him, the order of the story is all that's going to matter here. As such, determining the credibility of those witnesses is going to be the key thing for the jurors and the major job of the prosecution.

I canoe the rivers of southern MO a couple of times a summer. I've got my son with me, and we are fishing, so were pretty tame as floaters go. We do stop on sand bars all along the river to fish from them, eat lunch, or swim a bit. I've only once had a man come down and tell me that technically, I was on his land, but he didn't care.

I'm guessing the story lies somewhere in the middle, but it'll be a he said/he said type of thing where only the people there will really know what happened.

If a guy starts shooting at my friends and I, I'm not picking up rocks and throwing them at him, I'm running my ass away in a serpentine path.

I'll bet the drunk floaters didn't want to be told that they can't be there, argued, it escalated, stones got thrown, and he shot at them.

I'd probably acquit him based on the story above.

He came down to chase off some boaters that were taking a leak with a gun. There's only one reason you take a gun and aim it at someone taking a leak on your property.

Gun vs. Rocks.
Gun win!
Who knew?

I’m sure he could but how? Ever drive on a gravel bar, dig a hole in one? The water lever is just below the surface, that’s what makes river gravel one of the slickest substances to get stuck in.

I was just thinking that if thousands of people each year use that waterway for canoeing and rafting is that a new phenomenon or did it start after he had bought the property? I suspect it has been happening for a very long time prior to his arrival as owner. Maybe he should have considered that before the purchase..?? I also wonder if a single person has been ticketed for violating property rights around there for rafting in that waterway..?? Pertinent questions one would think..

Where were they supposed to take cover? In the river?

This is really a tough case. I'm glad I'm not on the jury.

If you're a landowner, it's got to be extremely frustrating when drunk people are repeatedly coming onto your property and messing it up. And after a moment's thought, I see the point where you should be able to take a gun with you to fend off trespassers.

But it seems like there should've been a better solution than shooting a guy. The odds that he was coming onto your property to intentionally cause harm is quite low.

You can't really fence off the property. He had signs posted, and that didn't work. You can't booby trap the place. Maybe you could install a water cannon or something, but that would undoubtedly cause escalation. The only thing I can think of is to inform them that you're videoing the area and will show their small genitalia on the Internet.

I initially thought this guy has to get convicted, but the more I think about it, self-defense could be a quite viable defense.

The real problem here is people getting drunk and not respecting property. If you could enforce that, you wouldn't have this problem. But there's not anywhere near the law enforcement manpower you'd need to enforce public drunkenness on the river in that part of the state.

plus, even if you did, the first time you had a small flood it'd wash it all out.
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Don't know about MO but it is most definitely true in Kansas, been through this argument with law enforcement officers.
In fact if the land owner owns the property on both sides of the river that section of the river belongs to them.