Whose gun was used in the shooting in Monster?
The irony of this case is that the victim was killed by his own gun, a legally-owned gun no less. Bobo and James did indeed enter Mr. Nesbitt's drugstore with the express intention of robbing him, but they didn't brandish a weapon, or rather didn't get the chance to because Mr. Nesbitt drew his gun first.
In the ensuing melee, the gun went off and Mr. Nesbitt was killed. Even though Bobo and James didn't intend to kill him, the law still regards it as an act of felony murder, for which they are both charged. In an attempt to save his own skin, Bobo throws James under the bus when he takes the witness stand, insisting that the gun's going off was no accident, and that James said that Bobo had to shoot Mr. Nesbitt, otherwise the old man would beat him up.
On December 22nd, James King and...
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Richard "Bobo" Evans entered a drugstore owned by an immigrant named Alguinaldo Nesbitt to carry out a robbery. During the robbery, Alguinaldo Nesbitt took out his pistol and the two men wrestled the gun from Nesbitt's hand.It is not clear who actually shot Mr. Nesbitt, but the prosecution knows that Alguinaldo Nesbitt's gun was used in the shooting. When Richard "Bobo" Evans testifies in order to receive a plea deal from the State, he says that James King wrestled the gun off of Nesbitt and shot him. The investigators also testify that Mr. Nesbitt legally owned the gun and used it as protection for his store. At the end of the murder trial, James King is sentenced to twenty-five years in prison and Steve Harmon is found not guilty for the robbery and murder of Alguinaldo Nesbitt.
Who is the owner of the gun in Monster?
As the prosecuting attorney Sandra Petrocelli points out, the gun used in the robbery and murder of Mr. Nesbitt belonged to Mr. Nesbitt himself. Yet she’s quick to point out that this does not mean that he committed suicide. His death was a direct result of the robbery committed at his store, and Mr. Nesbitt was murdered by his own weapon. And the murderers, she submits, were James King and Steve Harmon.
As it turns out, Mr. Nesbitt’s gun was legally registered. He’d applied to have a license for a gun on the premises in August 1989, and the license was still in effect when the robbery took place. Though in the event the gun didn’t actually protect him, it’s safe to assume that Mr. Nesbitt applied for a gun license because he was worried about being robbed.
That, certainly, is the conclusion drawn by Allen Forbes, a city clerk, while on the witness stand under questioning from Petrocelli. She wants to make it clear that there was nothing either unusual or illegal about Mr. Nesbitt’s ownership of a deadly weapon. She does this because she wants the focus of the trial to be on the defendants and their alleged guilt rather than on anything the victim may have done.