Texas man gets 40 years for stand-your-ground murder case

Houston A man who claimed Texas' version of a stand-your-ground law allowed him to fatally shoot a neighbour after an argument about a noisy party was sentenced Wednesday to 40 years for murder.

Raul Rodriguez, 46, had faced up to life in prison for the 2010 killing of Kelly Danaher.

Rodriguez, a retired Houston-area firefighter, angry about the noise coming from a birthday party at his neighbour's home, had an argument with 36-year-old elementary school teacher Danaher and two other men at the party.

In a 22-minute video he recorded on the night of the shooting, Rodriguez can be heard telling a police dispatcher "my life is in danger now" and "these people are going to go try and kill me." He then said, "I'm standing my ground here," and fatally shot Danaher and wounded the other two men.

Rodriguez's reference to standing his ground is similar to the claim made by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood-watch volunteer who is citing Florida's stand-your-ground law in his defence in the fatal February shooting of an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin. Rodriguez's case, however, was decided under a different kind of self-defence doctrine.

Prosecutors called Rodriguez the aggressor who took a gun to complain about loud music and could have safely left his neighbour's driveway in Huffman, an unincorporated area near Houston, any time before the shooting. Defence lawyers argued Rodriguez was defending himself when one of the men lunged at him and he had less than a second to respond.