"If God Threatens Me"

"Your Honor, my client pleads guilty of killing the 'thing' -- his word, Your Honor -- due to mistaken identity . . ."
"Counselor, are you saying that your client meant to kill someone else?"
"No, Your Honor, my client, as you can see, is elderly, uses a wheelchair, is a veteran of World War II, his eyesight and hearing are failing and he carries wounds from that cruel and inhuman march known as the Bataan March forced on American soldiers by the Japanese . . ."
"My God, Counselor, I, too, fought in that war that saved the world from Nazism, and although I fought in Europe, I, as the rest of the world, know of the torture suffered by our American soldiers during that Bataan March and in those concentration camps."

"Your Honor, my client is now 93-years -old and can no longer defend himself . . ."
"Counselor, it says here that he thought he was being attacked by this 'thing' he calls it . . ."
                                                                           
"Your Honor, he, like anyone who watches TV news, watched in horror as these 'things' as he called them, ran into stores ripping merchandise off of shelves, throwing it to the floor, taking other merchandise, especially beer, wine and whiskey, out of the store, setting businesses on fire, and he saw similar 'things' going about the streets knocking people down -- things he didn't believe that intelligent people would do -- and he convinced a Judge to allow him to carry a gun to defend himself . . ."
"Why does he call them 'thing?' Does he dislike them and is it profiling --?"
"As I said, Your Honor, his eyesight is failing and he can't distinguish their features so easily -- in fact, the one thing that enables him to recognize them is that they wear their britches down around their knees, exposing their butt in public and he associates that with dumb jungle animals that don't wear britches -- and he was wheeling down the sidewalk and saw this object running and jumping toward him blabbering who knows what and wearing its britches around its knees, he immediately thought of people who put britches and skirts on dogs and cats and other dumb animals and he believed that that thing coming toward him might be somebody's dumb pet animal that had gotten loose and he concluded, 'If a thing makes sounds like a dumb animal, acts like a dumb animal, it's a dumb animal and dangerous!"

"My God -- may God be my witness this day, Counselor.  You tell your client that whether I get removed from this bench, whether ignorant, lying mobs run through the streets screaming NO JUSIICE NO PEACE and HANDS UP  and even if God threatens to burn me in Hell for this ideating I shall not dishonor a single American soldier who suffered or died defending the world against evil.  Tell him that I sentence him to one second in jail and I suspend the sentence!  Get back out there, soldier -- and keep your gun-hand ready!"