“So how do we decide whether somebody is justified in using deadly force?” the defense lawyer asked.
“You must consider the circumstances at the time the force was used – all of it. The fact that she’s in her home. She’s alone. It’s nighttime. Her knowledge of Ajike Owens and her past interactions with her. The noise level, with the pounding and the screaming of the profanities.”
Lorincz decided to not testify at her trial
While the defense has maintained Lorincz had “no choice” but to shoot, Buxman countered that line of reasoning Friday morning, saying in order for the defendant to lawfully use deadly force, the threat to her life “must be imminent.”
“It had to be ready to happen. It had to be staring her in the face such as she had to act at that moment to protect her life,” the prosecutor said in his closing remarks.
“If Ms. Owens would somehow have managed to bust through this locked, dead bolted metal door, enter her house and start coming at her, the defendant may have had a right to shoot … but that’s not the situation we have here.”
On Thursday, Lorincz told the court, after consulting her attorneys, she had decided not to testify. The defense rested after calling expert witnesses on ballistics and police training who testified about where Lorincz was standing when she opened fire and her state of mind at the time of the shooting.
A day earlier, jurors heard testimony from Marion County Sheriff’s Detective Ryan Stith, the lead investigator in the case. Prosecutors asked Stith to read a letter Lorincz reportedly wrote to Owens’ four children after he informed her she would be charged in Owens’ death.
“I am so, so sorry for your loss,” Stith read to the court. “I never meant to kill your mother. I was terrified your mom was going to kill me. I shot out of fear.”
Outside the courthouse, Dias told reporters before the verdict was announced she struggled to maintain her composure throughout the trial.
