The kid was not 21. However, I had a meeting that night (I'm the President of the Inter-Fraternity Council), by the time I got there this kid was wasted and I personally flagged him and last night I was also told that he was smashing glass bottles in the house before I got there and was told to stop or he was getting kicked out. While it was not my house, it was my fraternity's house. I'd rather not drag my President into this matter if I don't have to.
But like Blanco said, I'm preparing. I have a handful of people that are going to give me statements of what happened, I'll have the police report, and hopefully statements from the arresting officers. I also have scheduled a meeting with a professor of mine who is also a lawyer to get his prespective on this.
Should I also get statements from people on my character? Most of my friends know that my fuse is rather long and to illicit this type of response must have taken some serious issues.
To be clear, I was not defending a girl's honor, flexing my power, or stomping a weak little kid. I was handling a risk management situation. If he had stayed, a fight would have started in the house. Like I said in my original story, I stopped multiple people from punching this kid while we were in the house. Once we were outside I followed him down the driveway to make sure he left. No one was in the house next door when he entered it, my pursuit was also a form of risk-management. Calling out to him that I saw him hiding was to make him leave. He probably thought I would go back in the house and he could sneak into my house or the house he had just ran through(my friends and I rent three houses in a row, because of the heavy traffic through all three, the doors are rarely locked).
And just to go off of what Blanco said, if I went inside and shut the door, he would have stood outside yelling, banging on the door, and could have broke a window or something. We had to make sure he left. "Well then call the cops", the cops aren't our personal security for parties and such. The surrounding area isn't the best, the cops have more pressing issues to deal with. We try to handle situations without getting them involved as much as possible. My fraternity is viewed as the best on campus, as far as police are concerned, when it comes to control and risk management. They have told us this. We have also been told by the student body that while our parties are the best, we don't take any shit. For the most part we run a tight ship, this event was a slip-up. Did it end poorly, absolutely. That was not the end I had sought out looking for. But to rationalize it, he got hit because he tried to hit me. He got knocked out because I warned him not to come back on the property and he did. It's the fact that I did mount and punch him that worries me. Like Blanco said, I crossed a line.
I don't view this as open and shut. Do I think there is a high possiblity of this case being dissmissed? Yes. Do I see myself possibly doing jail time? Yes. I could get a judge that sees my side of the story and dissmisses this or I could get a judge that sees me as a bully and gives me what he thinks I deserve. I will say this, if this goes past this first court date, I'm filing assault charges on him for swinging at me first, and both houses say they will be pressing trespassing charges and breaking in and entering charges.
Another question, if this does in fact go to trial and then I get cleared, could I file defimation of character charges on him? While it seems petty, if this goes to trial this will be on my record forever, win or lose and will make getting a job very hard.