If Yantis' killing was not a crime, what was it?

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden says the shooting death of a Council rancher last November at the hands of two Adams County Sheriff's deputies was not a crime.

Not a crime in a legal sense, perhaps. But Jack Yantis was minding his own business, eating dinner with his family Nov. 1 when law enforcement summoned him to his doom.

Near his home along U.S. Highway 95, a car had collided with Yantis' 2,500-pound bull. Deputies wanted the rancher to put the animal down before it hurt anyone.

As Wasden and Idaho State Police sifted through the clues, they faced conflicting accounts about what happened next.

Deputies Cody Roland and Brian Wood said they intervened because Yantis was preparing to shoot the bull with a .204-caliber rifle in such a way that the round might pass through the animal's head and strike someone else. The deputies said Yantis was pointing his rifle toward them, a round went off - and the officers' training kicked in.

Yantis' wife Donna and nephew, Rowdy Paradis, describe a pair of reckless deputies - one of whom grabbed the rancher's arm and jerked him back. They say Yantis never raised his rifle before the gunfire began.

It was over in a second or two. Twelve slugs were recovered from Yantis' body.

North central Idahoans already know the deference the laws and the courts extend to cops in shooting cases. Three years ago, Magistrate Stephen J. Calhoun dismissed voluntary manslaughter charges against Nez Perce Tribal officer Robert S. Wall - even though Wall was seen on videotape shooting unarmed suspect Jeffrey Flinn about six seconds after Flinn had surrendered outside Ferdinand after a car chase in 2011.

The Yantis case was far more ambiguous. There was no video. Witness accounts conflicted wildly - and as a rule, testimony can be enormously unreliable. What little forensic evidence that's available tends to corroborate Roland and Wood:

• Yantis had a blood-alcohol content of .104 percent - well above the legal drunken driving standard of .08 percent.
• In the chamber of Yantis' rifle was a spent shell casing. "This is likely the most critical piece of physical evidence since it indicates Jack actually fired his weapon," wrote Jason Slade Spillman, chief of Wasden's prosecution section.
• Technicians verified the presence of gunshot residue on Yantis' hands.
• In the melee that followed, bullets shattered the forestock of Yantis' rifle. The little finger on Yantis' left hand was shot off. His right arm was hit five times. The pattern suggests Roland and Wood were shooting at a rifle pointed at them.

Who knows how differently this case would have proceeded had a video record of it existed? In this cynical age, body cameras as often as not exonerate the cops. But Wood's camera had a full memory card and was not recording. Roland didn't believe a traffic accident warranted turning his camera on.

The technology is both expensive and imperfect. But the Yantis case - and the public reaction to it - cries out for more body cameras.

For Wasden to argue that he could not file charges where reasonable doubt exists sidesteps a key question: Was the shooting justified or not? Someone needs to answer it.

And what was Yantis doing there in the first place?

Either because they lack the training and/or the authority, cops usually do not dispatch wildlife and livestock that have been injured in automobile collisions. So they called Yantis to the scene.

In other words, it was the cops who inserted Yantis - an agitated, intoxicated and armed man - into a chaotic situation that turned violent and deadly, all within five minutes.

Law enforcement, not civilians dragged from their dinner table, should be responsible for injured livestock on Idaho's highways.

If this ever happens again, blame a Legislature that refused to clean up the

laws. - M.T.