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A Tucson man shot and killed a visiting doctor during a traffic dispute.

The shooter eventually acknowledged he made the wrong decision and pleaded the case down from manslaughter to negligent homicide.

Finally, on Oct. 6, the defendant, Jason Jameson, received a sentence — four years of probation. For killing a man.

While there is responsibility to go around, especially belonging to the Pima County Superior Court judge who delivered the sentence, the outcome rests significantly on Arizona’s forgiving self-defense laws. When a killer claims self-defense, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was not before they get to the question of guilt for the crime.

Also, while standard jury instructions tell jurors that the use of force must be reasonable and proportional, they are remarkably forgiving toward mistakes.

“The use of physical force is justified if a reasonable person in the situation would have reasonably believed that immediate physical danger appeared to be present,� the standard instructions read. “Actual danger is not necessary to justify the use of physical force in self-defense.�

That last sentence always stuns me. You can kill somebody and be considered legally justified in Arizona without any actual danger, as long as your fear is reasonable and the violence is proportional to the fear.

In the end, Arizona’s forgiving laws and system sometimes reward or forgive people who escalate conflicts into deadly violence instead of doing the smart thing and simply going away. If they are not forgiven by avoiding charges altogether, then they may be rewarded by winning acquittals, hung juries, or simply avoiding conviction for more serious charges and prison time.

Shot in the back

The most recent case is that of Jameson, who shot and killed Dr. Jeffrey Honer on March 15, 2024, during an incident on East Snyder Road. The two had a dispute at the door of Jameson’s pickup truck, and when Honer turned to walk away, Jameson shot him, claiming that he thought Honer was going to get a gun.

Honer was unarmed.

But cases in which a defendant claims self-defense happen relatively often. And it could turn out that the same laws and issues will become relevant in one of Tucson’s most notorious recent killings.

On Sept. 23, Enrique “Kix� Mercado was riding along the Loop with more than 100 bicyclists in the Tuesday Night Ride, when he was stabbed to death. The complaint filed in the case suggests a path to take for the defense attorney for accused killer Michael Francisco: Use the self-defense laws to fight the second-degree murder charge he faces.

Here’s how the probable cause statement filed by police describes that incident:

“The victim (Mercado) encountered a male suspect in the middle of the pathway (north of 455 E. Wetmore). The victim got off his bike and had an altercation with the male. According to witnesses both the victim and the male tried to punch each other. The victim got back on his bike and rode north for a few feet then stopped and got off his bike. He then realized he had been stabbed.�

Mercado later died of his wounds, setting off an outcry about public safety and the local street congregations of homeless or addicted people. But experience says claiming self-defense could help Francisco put prosecutors on the back foot.

Loosened self-defense laws

In the early 2000s, Arizona joined a wave of states that loosened legal permissions for committing violence in self-defense.

Arizona’s Legislature embraced “stand your ground� — the idea that people may kill in self-defense or defense of others as long as they are somewhere they are legally allowed to be, doing something they’re legally allowed to do, and the force was reasonable against the threat presented.

In 2006, Arizona made the change that has really complicated prosecutions of cases in which a person kills and claims self-defense. That’s when they shifted the burden so that the prosecution must prove to a jury that the defendant was not acting in self-defense.

“When I entered the practice of criminal law, self defense was an affirmative defense,� Pima County Attorney Laura Conover said. “The defense had to prove that self-defense was at play and was the justification for the actions of the defendant. And then the burden shifted.�

“The Arizona Legislature has chosen the right to bear arms and the right to defend yourself and property to such an extent that that our prosecutions are absolutely impacted,� she said.

The attorney who represented Jameson, Josh Hamilton, said Arizona’s laws are not particularly unusual and defended them.

“Arizona’s self-defense and justification standards are protective but they don’t differ much from other states in the South and in the mountain states,� Hamilton said. “There are other states that are even more protective than Arizona is.�

Some states, for example, require a hearing before a prosecution proceeds to determine whether a violent act was legally justifiable self-defense.

“The laws require that the use of force be reasonable and immediately necessary,� said Hamilton, who declined to comment specifically on the Jameson case. “It always comes down to the totality of the circumstances.�

Visiting doctor was teaching

Honer was visiting Tucson from Puerto Rico, where he lived, to teach local nurses about wound care for in-home patients. He was traveling with two nurses, driving at the back of a caravan of three cars, when they encountered Jameson.

The nurses told police that Jameson drove to the front of the three cars and braked hard repeatedly, slowing down to about 5 mph. Honer, who was driving at the back of the caravan, zoomed around to the front and stopped in front of Jameson in the middle of the road. Honer got out and went to Jameson’s window.

What happened there is in dispute, but from the totality of the accounts, it appears they exchanged words, Jameson spit on Honer, Honer reached into the car and grabbed or hit Jameson, and Jameson reached out and grabbed or struck Honer, who then turned to walk away.

That’s when Jameson shot him.

Jameson told police that Honer had said something about killing him or getting a gun before walking away. It’s one of those claims that, of course, cannot be checked because the man who allegedly said it is dead and there is no recording. It’s also, of course, self-serving.

Crucially, though, Jameson also called 911 to report the shooting and helped treat Honer by putting pressure on a wound until Pima County Sheriff’s deputies arrived. That, along with Jameson’s clean record and U.S. Navy service, probably spared him prison.

System set up to fail victims

It wasn’t just the probation-only sentence that stunned Kenneth Honer, who is Jeffrey’s older brother, and other family members and friends. It was the way that the system seemed set up to fail any victim of a perpetrator claiming self defense.

First, is the fact that the laws are protective of those who claim self-defense in killing someone else, someone who is unable to speak for themself.

Then there is the fact that many current prosecutors are inexperienced. Honer said that, in his brother’s case, an experienced prosecutor was handling the case, left the office, and was replaced by an inexperienced one. The plea offer, he said, went from manslaughter to the lesser negligent homicide, which was eventually accepted.

Finally there are the precedents. Case law and unfavorable verdicts have left prosecutors with an increasingly narrow pathway to get a conviction or a significant sentence in cases where a defendant claims self-defense.

Honer would like to see self-defense claims limited in cases like his brother’s.

“My proposal is, that if someone’s unarmed — and that’s no knife, no bat, no gun, no weapon — and they’re shot, then you (defendants) can’t just fall back to ‘I claim self-defense, and therefore you have to prove it’s not, and you have to assume that I’m being reasonable.’�

Violent-crime prosecutor Ryan Gant noted another issue for prosecutors — if there is a “scintilla� of evidence that self-defense was at play in a case, the self-defense jury instructions must be given. The Pima County Attorney’s Office has lost three jury trials in the last two years in which juries were given those instructions, he said.

That makes them more cautious in subsequent cases, forcing them to aim low like toward a negligent-homicide plea. In Jameson’s case, the pre-sentence report showed a range of 1 to 3 3/4 years in prison, with a presumptive sentence of 2 1/2. But , both decried gun violence in delivering his sentence and settled on no prison at all.

As these precedents build on each other, the path to justice seems narrower for whoever is victimized by those claiming self-defense.