The legal fate of James Patrick Wonder, the Miramar man accused of manslaughter in the shooting death of federal agent Donald Pettit, is in the hands of a Broward judge.
Assistant State Attorney Michelle Boutros and defense lawyer Frank Maister delivered closing arguments in Wonder's Stand Your Ground hearing Thursday, asking Broward Circuit Judge Bernard Bober to decide whether Wonder, 69, is entitled to immunity from prosecution.
Wonder admits shooting Pettit, 52, in the parking lot of a Pembroke Pines post office on Aug. 5, 2008, but claims he acted in self-defense as Pettit, a special agent with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, was charging at him following a road rage incident. Older, smaller and more frail than the agent, Wonder said he was worried that any physical confrontation would put his life in danger.
A dialysis patient, Wonder has a surgically placed fistula in his left arm that could burst if handled carelessly. While he mentioned the fistula when he was arrested the day after the shooting, he did not explicitly tell the detective interviewing him that he was afraid Pettit would kill him.
"I just can't take a punch in the mouth no more," he said. "I just can't take a punch anywhere."
Boutros has argued that Wonder was as angry as Pettit the day of the shooting, but where Pettit committed no crime and issued no threat when he confronted Wonder, the defendant seemed prepared to use deadly force before Pettit got out of his car.
According to Wonder, Pettit charged at him "like a football player," crouched with his head down, when Wonder opened fire. But drawing his weapon, disengaging the safety, aiming and firing would have taken longer than the time it would have taken Pettit to run 12 feet from where his car was parked to where Wonder was standing, Boutros said.
"He had his gun out, he took the safety off, and he was ready," Boutros said. She characterized the shooting as the overreaction of an angry man, not the reasonable response of someone who felt his life was in danger.
Maister presented Pettit as the only angry one, itching for a fight over a minor traffic dispute, ignoring the needs of his 12-year-old daughter, who was in the car with him, and disregarding his training as a federal law enforcement officer.
"There was only one of these two men who wanted to have a confrontation in that parking lot that day, and it wasn't James Wonder," Maister said. "This guy [Pettit] is fuming! He's lost it! At what point is [Wonder] entitled to defend himself? Does he actually have to take that first punch?"
Bober said he would issue a written ruling. While he did not say when it would happen, he set a court date for Nov. 29 — Wonder's birthday, coincidentally — with a promise that the ruling would come before then.
Either side can appeal Bober's eventual ruling.
raolmeda@tribune.com
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