By: Shawn Vincent

Just after seven in the morning on December 30, 2019, 34-year-old Jeffrey Smith stopped for gas and coffee at a Clark gas station on M-24 in Lapeer, Michigan. As he pulled toward the exit, he met Arthur Kohn III, 33, whose pickup truck was turning in. Smith’s car was blocking the entrance, and the two men exchanged words through their windows. Then Smith drove off, leaving Kohn to bump his truck over the curb to get into the lot. Smith turned south onto M-24 and pulled into the shared driveway of a neighboring business. There, he turned his car around and drove back to the gas station.

 

Kohn saw Smith return and pulled his truck up alongside him. Surveillance video appeared to show Smith raise his arm, and prosecutors would tell the jury that this was the moment he drew a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson and pointed it at Kohn—before any blow had been struck. Kohn climbed out of his truck carrying a crowbar, swung it at Smith’s car, and pried open the front passenger door. As he did, Smith fired twice, hitting Kohn once in the left forearm and once in the chest. Kohn staggered away, collapsed, and died. A toxicology report later found he had been intoxicated and had cocaine in his system.

 

Smith was arrested and charged with open murder and a stack of related felonies. Before trial, prosecutors moved to introduce Facebook posts Smith had made in the months before the shooting. The trial court ruled them irrelevant and kept them out, but the prosecution appealed, and the Michigan Court of Appeals held that some could be admitted. The most damaging item was a Facebook Messenger exchange about a handgun—the .38 Smith had recently bought and would later fire at Kohn. Prosecutors argued the posts showed that Smith “was prepared to shoot someone during a verbal confrontation.”

 

Smith did not testify. His attorney argued self-defense because his client had been attacked in his own car by a man swinging a crowbar. The jury was not persuaded. In October 2023, after deliberating for about ninety minutes, the jury found Smith guilty of first-degree murder. The conviction carried a mandatory penalty, and Judge Michael Hodges had no discretion to soften it—life in prison without the possibility of parole. A man who had been attacked with a crowbar inside his own vehicle was now a convicted murderer, and the path that took him there ran almost entirely through choices he made before Kohn ever came at him with the crowbar.

Lessons for Armed Defenders

Don’t return to the fight (Lesson #16)

Smith had gotten away. When he pulled out of the gas station the first time, the confrontation was over, Kohn was behind him, and nothing required Smith to ever see the man again. But then he turned his car around and drove back. Returning to a confrontation is one of the most destructive things a defender can do to a self-defense claim.  The surveillance video showed Smith reach safety and then give it up. A defender who re-enters a fight they already escaped will struggle to convince anyone that, minutes later, they had no choice but to shoot.

 

Don’t be the first aggressor (Lesson #10)

According to the prosecution’s reading of the surveillance video, Smith drew his pistol first—before Kohn exited his truck with a crowbar. Don West, a veteran criminal defense attorney and CCW Safe’s National Trial Counsel, called the act “clearly a provocation,” one that made Smith “the initial aggressor” and left him with “no self-defense right at that point.” Once a jury decides the defender started the deadly phase of an encounter, the self-defense claim is, for all practical purposes, gone—no matter what the other man does next. 

Don’t get emotionally hijacked (Lesson #8)

Smith deliberately chose to return to the scene of a traffic dispute and brandish his firearm. Those are the actions of an angry man trying to win a fight, not someone with a reasonable fear of a potential threat. Smith allowed his pride to override his rational mind, and it caused him to create the opportunity for the fatal confrontation that followed.

Don’t assume an aggressor is rational (Lesson #13)

When Smith pointed his gun at Kohn, he likely assumed Kohn would see the weapon, understand what it meant, and back down. Smith didn’t know Kohn’s blood-alcohol level was nearly twice the legal limit and that he had cocaine in his system. By Smith’s own account, Kohn said, “Go ahead and shoot me. I’ve got nothing to lose.” A clear-headed person will often retreat from a drawn pistol, but a man who is drunk and high and down and out may respond unreasonably.

Don’t say foolish things (Lesson #33)

Months before he ever encountered Arthur Kohn, Smith sent an acquaintance a photo of his new .38 over Facebook Messenger and called it a “nice pocket gun for gas stations.” At the time, it was an idle remark, but after Smith shot a man at a gas station, it became evidence. Prosecutors fought all the way to the Court of Appeals for the right to put his social media in front of the jury. Don West said it was “probably enough right there to shift the momentum of the case.” A defender’s old words have a way of reaching forward in time. A careless line typed in a moment of bravado can hand a prosecutor the intent they would otherwise have to work to prove.