Tuesday was a bad day for junk justice in Arizona.

According to ABC News:

A judge has declared a mistrial in the criminal case against 75-year-old Arizona rancher George Alan Kelly, accused of fatally shooting a migrant on his property near the U.S.-Mexico border, the court confirmed Monday night.

Jurors had been deliberating since Thursday afternoon.

Kelly was charged with second-degree murder and aggravated assault in the Jan. 30, 2023, fatal shooting of Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, 48, a migrant who lived across the border in Nogales, Mexico. He had pleaded not guilty.

Law enforcement officials said Cuen-Buitimea was traveling with a group of migrants who ran when they saw border patrol agents in the area. Cuen-Buitimea and another migrant were allegedly heading back to the southern side of the border when they passed through Kelly's cattle ranch.

It's then that prosecutors alleged Kelly recklessly fired his AK-47 from a distance of about 115 yards, fatally striking Cuen-Buitimea in the back.

Left unsaid in the report, Kelly's ranch on the U.S.-Mexico border had become a free-for-all for cartel criminals of the worst kind, the kind that smuggle drugs, guns and human cargo, running from the Border Patrol whenever they are seen. The man Kelly apparently shot was a known criminal. As his defense argued, just the fact that he was on the property was an obvious threat, as these are not just illegals looking for free stuff, but hardened criminals affiliated with Mexico's monstrous cartels, the kind who grind up their opponents in vats of acid and hang their enemies partially dismembered from freeway overpasses.

Anything could have happened with those people on his property and he had to assume the worst. That he fired warning shots at some and may have hit one. (This was never proven, by the way, I wonder if the criminal shot himself with his own gun and a confederate made off with it in the melee.) But even if he did, the criminals traversing his property was an inherently threatening situation and to ignore it and allow them to build a base or use the ranch as a crossing point for body-burying or whatever crimes they were doing is unthinkable.

He was an old man and had an elderly wife to protect.

And that brings up the real problem here: That the criminals should have never had even the opportunity to access his property. The federal government failed to do its job and decided to let the old man with the ranch take the consequences. If that isn't the real outrage here, nothing is.

Apparently the federal government, which failed to do it job, and the local government, which brought the charges, wanted him to just let it go that cartel members were operating on his property and too bad if anyone got hurt. That's a violation of the man's property rights and his right to live in peace without bothering anyone.

It was clear this man was no criminal from the start, and bringing charges was an outrage. Bandits understand the law of the Wild West and know where not to go based on the kinds of consequences for them. That a D.A. sought to bring charges anyway sends a terrible message to bandits that while they will never be picked up for their crimes, anyone resisting them will be.

This is what things have come to in the world of Joe Biden's open borders, two-tier justice where the law-abiding rancher pays for defending himself, and the illegals breaking every law under the sun run free.

While the local lawmen still have the opportunity to try the old rancher again, it's obvious that this prosecution is unpopular with the general public. They should drop the matter as a case that never should have been brought in the first place and move on to real crimes with real criminals. I can't say if they will based on what is known now, but that would be the only just resolution.

Image: Screenshot from Fox10 video, via YouTube