It’s truth way stranger than fiction, and way worse: in Texas, if you shoot a woman you’d planned to have sex with after she declines, it’s OK. You were just trying to get your money back. Excuse me?
The San Antonio Express-News reported it thus: “A Bexar County jury on Wednesday acquitted Ezekiel Gilbert of murder in the death of a 23-year-old Craigslist escort.” (Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Jury-acquits-escort-shooter-4581027.php#ixzz2VaVAo7rQ)
How does she wind up dead — though initially only paralyzed, she died 7 months later — while he walks free? Well, you see, he figured sex was part of the package when he signed up for her escort services, so he was just trying to recover the $150 that was rightfully his. That was the argument for the defense, and it worked out well for Gilbert. Not so well for the escort, Lenora Ivie Frago. She may not have been a paragon of virtue but dead seems a high price to pay for refusing sex.
I did not follow this saga and certainly don’t know the details. But it doesn’t say a lot about the value of a woman’s life, or the blessings of easy access to guns in the great state of Texas.