DALLAS - If the man wounded by Dick Cheney dies, the vice president could — in theory at least — face criminal charges, even though the shooting was an accident.
Dallas defense attorney David Finn, who has been a state and a federal prosecutor, said Wednesday that a Texas grand jury could bring a charge of criminally negligent homicide if there is evidence the vice president knew or should have known "there was a substantial or unjustifiable risk that his actions would result in him shooting a fellow hunter."
"The risk must be of such a nature and degree that it got to be pretty outrageous — that a reasonable person would have to say, `I am not pulling the trigger because this other guy might be in front of me,'" Finn said.
The charge carries up to two years behind bars, but with no previous felonies Cheney would be eligible for probation, the former prosecutor said.
Mark Skurka, first assistant district attorney of the three-county area where the shooting took place, said prosecutors did not have an investigation under way.
"If something unfortunate happens, then we'll decide what to do, then we'll decide whether we're going to have an investigation or not," Skurka said.
You know, something tells me that Cheney realized he did a collossal screw-up in shooting Whittington, and then thought he could control the flow of information to the public, by leaking this story through the local press in Corpus Christi. The last thing that Cheney wants is a grand jury investigation into the death of Whittington, or charges of criminally negligent homicide brought against him. There have been rumors swirling in the blogosphere that Cheney may have been drinking beer on the day of the hunting accident. According to this Yahoo News story, titled Cheney, "A Beer or Two" and a Gun:
Katherine Armstrong, the wealthy Republican lobbyist who is a member member of the politically connected family that owns the ranch where Cheney blasted his hunting partner, acknowledged to a reporter from the NBC investigative unit that alcohol may have been served at a picnic that was served Saturday afternoon on the dude ranch where Cheney shot Harry Whittington.
According to the report, which appeared briefly Tuesday on MSNBC, Armstrong peddled the line that she did not believe that alcohol played a part in the shooting accident. But, she admitted, "There may be a beer or two in there, but remember not everyone in the party was shooting."
The MSNBC story, which appeared only briefly before the website was scrubbed for reasons not yet explained, has been kept alive by the able web investigators at TheRawStory and other progressive blogs. And so it should be, as the prospect that alcohol may have been involved in the Texas incident takes the story in a whole new direction.
By any reasonable measure, Armstrong's attempt to downplay the presence of "a beer or two" raises more questions than it answers about an incident involving a Vice President who, like George W. Bush, was a heavy drinker in his youth, but who, unlike Bush, never swore off the bottle.
As with her over-the-top efforts to blame Whittington, the victim, for getting in the way of Cheney's birdshot blast, Armstrong's line on liquor smells a little more like an attempt to cover for the Vice President than full disclosure.
This is where the hunting accident "incident" becomes a serious matter. The role played by the Secret Service in preventing questioning of Cheney on the evening of the shooting takes on new significance. If Cheney was in any way impaired at the time of the shooting, it was certainly to the Vice President's advantage put off the official investigation until the next morning.
The Raw Story has complete coverage of the missing "beer" details from the MSNBC story. If Cheney did shoot Whittington while intoxicated, then there is certainly enough to warrant a grand jury investigation against Cheney--especially since the Secret Service also did not allow the local police to interview Cheney until the next morning--plenty of time for the alcohol to pass out of his system.
If it smells like a cover-up, more than likely, it is. Only in this case, it is a CYA cover-up for Cheney's own drunken, reckless behavior.
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