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Trial Begins in Husband vs. Bear Mistaken Identity Case

By Eric Lipman

You can't make this stuff up. Well, maybe you can, but I'm too tired. Trial began today for a Pennsylvania woman who shot and killed her husband while on a hunting trip in Canada in 2006. Her defense: "I thought he was a bear." The woman, Mary Beth Harshbarger, is charged with "criminal negligence causing death," on the theory that, at the time she fired the fatal shot, it was too dark to shoot safely. Perhaps a difficult theory to defend against, since Harshbarger will have to admit that it was at least dark enough for her to mistake the father of her two children for something that looked like this: The first witness, the hunting guide who was with the Harshbarger family on the trip, testified that Harshbarger, after realizing she had killed her husband, "danced around the road" hysterically, saying "'I shot my husband. I shot my love.'" Looking forward to the testimony of the other 15 witnesses the prosecution reportedly intends to call. Call me insensitive, but I can't help but think of this as the reverse of the scene in "Vacation" where Ellen knows there's a "wild animal" outside the tent, but Clark thinks she's just...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on September 13, 2010 (boomark / email).