AKRON, Ohio — The attorney for one of three men charged in the fatal beating of a 17-year-old Akron boy offered a different take on the "Stand Your Ground" debate, arguing his client was doing just that when Ethan Liming died.
Liming is the teen who was beaten to death in Akron earlier this summer.
A grand jury indicted three young men in the case — not for murder, but for lesser charges, including involuntary manslaughter.
"What they're hearing is this,” said Jon Sinn, attorney for Deshawn Stafford, as he pulled the trigger on a toy gun to demonstrate the sound his client heard the night Liming died.
It is not the toy gun in the Liming case, but Sinn says it is similar to what police have as evidence.
“This firearm or this toy gun looks like a toy gun, but on this dark night, all the boys on the basketball court are hearing sounds,” said Sinn.
Deshawn Stafford, his brother Tyler and their cousin Donovan Jones are all charged in Liming’s death.
Deshawn Stafford is facing the most serious charge, a first-degree felony charge of involuntary manslaughter.
"It seemed pretty clear from the beginning of the case it was a self-defense case,” said Sinn.
Liming died in the parking lot of the I Promise School in early June. Detectives said he was repeatedly punched and kicked.
Police say Liming and a group of friends went to the school and at least one of them fired a water bead blaster at the three young men playing basketball.
"At some point, one of the boys figured out it was a toy gun or thought it was a toy gun, started yelling, 'It's a toy! It's a toy!' and the boys on the court tried to leave the court through the exit, and at which point the boys from the Kia all got out and tried to block their exit,” said Sinn.
Sinn wants the case dismissed, but if it does go to trial, he plans to claim self-defense under Ohio’s Stand Your Ground law.
"It does apply to them whether people don't like it or not. These boys are protected by the same law that protected Kyle Rittenhouse,” said Sinn.
Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted after claiming self-defense when he shot three people, killing two, in Kenosha, Wisconsin during unrest.
In the Liming case, Sinn says the three young men were minding their own business when trouble came to them.
News 5 Investigators asked Sinn: “But if they realized at one point it was a toy gun, were their lives no longer in immediate danger?"
"What we get to then is whether or not these boys used deadly force, and I think I might agree with you that at some point, if the threat of being shot was no longer a threat and the only threat coming at them was getting beat up, then they can't really respond with deadly force and they didn't. This was a punch, this was boys getting punched, boys punching back and the ground doing the damage,” said Sinn.
Sinn says Deshawn has a bullet in his hip from when he was shot as a bystander during a drive-by a few years ago, a detail Sinn says he can bring up to show his client’s perception.
"They don't really have to put on a great deal of evidence to support it, it's enough for them to say this was an act of self-defense,” said Case Western Law Professor, Mike Benza.
Benza says the new Ohio law shifted the burden to the prosecutor.
"Essentially what it requires the prosecutors to do is to convince the jury to not believe the defendants were not actually afraid,” said Benza.
Ohio law also no longer requires you to try to run from a situation first before using deadly force.
"In this case, it's going to be, I think, an issue about the degree of force used that wasn't probably deadly force, even though it resulted in somebody dying,” said Benza.
The three young men have pre-trials in late September.
The attorney for Tyler Stafford says he believes Ohio’s Stand Your Ground law will be an issue and a jury will have to decide if the prosecutors have proven his client did not act in self-defense.
News 5 received a statement from Liming's attorney, Brandon W. McHugh.
While we do not have detailed investigatory materials to comment on specific allegations, we understand that the Summit County Prosecutor presented the available evidence to the grand jury, and the grand jury made the decision to indict the defendants for various crimes, including involuntary manslaughter. In making this decision, the grand jury would have weighed a potential self-defense argument and reached the conclusion that the defendants instead engaged in an unreasonable counterattack. When the threat of force ceases, there is no longer a need to act in self-defense.
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