Signs are a bad idea from a legal standpoint. While they won't make a good shooting into a bad one, if you are involved in a shooting that isn't crystal clear or that involves a minority, that sign could be the tipping factor in turning a no true bill from the grand jury into an indictment. It's marketing. You don't want folks to think that you are looking for a chance to shoot someone.
No, I can't show you a case on that. Grand juries don't publish opinions and their deliberations and not supposed to be public. All I can cite is not quite 30 years of taking cases to trial and being amazed by the things that a jury finds important. Some times that amazement is pleasant, sometimes it is unbelievable depending on whose client it is hitting in the face. Don't laugh but way back when in the days that I was an insurance defense lawyer, I actually had a case where the guy who got rearended had a bumper sticker that said "Hit me, I need the money" on his back bumper. In looking at the photos of the property damage I saw the sticker, figured it out and had the photo blown up so that you could read it easily to use as a trial exhibit. Now everyone knows that the guy was trying to be funny, not inviting someone to hit him. I settled his case for about $.50 on the dollar of what it should have been worth at trial because of that bumper sticker. Showing his lawyer the blow up just absolutely ruined his day.
There really is a lot of marketing in jury trials whether they are civil or criminal. Shouldn't be that way but they are. That's reality.
Jim Keene
Law Office of James W. Keene
San Antonio, Texas
