National opinion: When self-defense laws protect the guilty

The man who shot and killed my brother, Dr. Jeffrey Honer, in a road-rage incident last year in Tucson, is about to walk away with a slap on the wrist. Originally charged with second-degree murder, he accepted a plea deal reducing the charge to negligent homicide. For taking the life of a doctor, husband, father, and brother, he may serve only probation.

My brother was unarmed and shot in the back as he walked away from the killer’s car. He was making a house call, training two nurses, when this injustice occurred. That his killer will likely avoid serious jail time is not just a failure of Pima County’s justice system; it’s an indictment of Arizona’s deeply flawed self-defense laws.

Arizona’s self-defense law problemArizona is one of a handful of states where, if someone claims self-defense, the burden of proof shifts entirely to prosecutors. They must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was not self-defense — even when the victim was unarmed, even when the victim was shot in the back.

I asked the prosecutor: how can you possibly prove that in cases with no witnesses or video? His answer was chilling: “That would be problematic. Frequently, we just wouldn’t press charges.” He added, “The killer could literally sit in the courtroom and read a book while the prosecution tried to prove it wasn’t self-defense.”

In other words: if someone shoots you and no one sees it, the law protects the shooter rather than the victim.

The law also presumes justification if a shooter claims their “protected space” was violated — for example, if someone reached into their car. In my brother’s case, the shooter claimed exactly that, despite not having any marks on him and eyewitnesses saying my brother was walking away when shot. Prosecutors told me that if even one juror believed that story, acquittal was virtually guaranteed.

This is not a balanced system — it is tilted toward killers.

What I am — and

am not — asking forI am not asking for sweeping gun control. Stricter ownership rules wouldn’t have stopped this tragedy. Nor am I asking to take away the right of people to defend themselves when they truly face danger.

What I am asking for is far more modest:

If the person who was killed was unarmed — no gun, no knife, no bat — the shooter should have to explain why lethal force was necessary.

That’s it. That one change would prevent killers from hiding behind a self-defense claim when the victim had no weapon.

We already trust juries to distinguish between a frail elderly shop owner protecting herself from a larger assailant and someone inventing a story to cover a crime. A jury would have no trouble believing her. But in cases like my brother’s, where an unarmed man was shot in the back while walking away, the law shouldn’t reward fiction over fact.

A minimum standard of justice

Every American should expect a minimum standard of justice: that if they are unarmed and killed, their family shouldn’t be forced to watch the killer walk free on probation.

Lightning struck my family twice. My father was murdered years ago in Costa Rica during a home invasion. His killers were caught, tried, and sentenced to 50 years in prison. Justice wasn’t perfect, but it was recognizable. Shouldn’t Americans expect justice at least as strong?

Time for change

Arizona lawmakers could fix this by reforming the state’s self-defense statutes. The prosecutor in my brother’s case told me he wished Arizona law resembled other states where the burden is more balanced.

This isn’t a partisan issue or about guns. It’s about whether the law values the lives of unarmed citizens enough to demand accountability from those who take them.

My brother dedicated his life to saving lives. He deserved better. His daughters, just 9 and 11 at the time, deserved better. Every family deserves better.

It’s time to change the law so that no other family has to endure what mine has: the loss of a loved one, followed by unbearable injustice.