A Denver man scheduled to stand trial on murder charges in November could soon be officially cleared of all charges, after the local district attorney asked a judge to dismiss the case based on a reasonable claim of self-defense. 

There's no dispute that Stephan Long shot and killed brothers Damon and Blake Lucas on a Denver interstate last June, but Long has maintained from the beginning that he did so because he was afraid for his life. Long was originally charged with two counts of first degree murder, but in a statement this week Denver D.A. Beth McCann said "evidence establishes a strong and valid self-defense claim."

Police reports stated that the Lucas brothers were in one vehicle and Long was driving behind them when the brothers stopped their vehicle in the right lane of traffic between the two exits. That's when one of the brothers exited the vehicle and approached Long's car and a confrontation happened with Long pulling out a gun and shooting one of the brothers. 

According to police reports, Long did not get out of his vehicle and tried to drive away when the other brother got out of the vehicle and grabbed Long's car. Long drove off the interstate and onto the 8th Avenue ramp while firing at the other brother, causing him to fall from the car. 

A Denver police detective heard the shots and followed Long. That's when uniformed officers stopped him at 13th Avenue and Meade Street a few minutes later and took him into custody. 

First-degree murder sounds like a reach even without taking Long's self-defense argument into account. Under Colorado law, murder in the first degree requires "deliberation and.. the intent to cause the death of a person other than himself" or "under circumstances evidencing an attitude of universal malice manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life generally," knowingly engaging "in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to a person, or persons, other than himself, and thereby causes the death of another."

When the two men stopped their car on the interstate and confronted Long, they became the initial aggressors. The Colorado Supreme Court has said there's no duty to retreat in state law, so Long wasn't required to try to drive away, though he allegedly did so after firing his first shots. The real question is whether Long had a reasonable belief that his life was in danger. 

Put yourself in Long's position: you're driving down the road when all of a sudden you're forced to come to a complete halt because the car in front of you has suddenly stopped in the middle of a busy freeway. That alone would cause most of us to put our guard up, and if someone then came up to your car and attacked you, I'd say it's reasonable to believe that they meant to do you harm. 

In fact, the D.A. dropped one of the first-degree murder charges Long was facing last October, but carried on with plans to prosecute Long for the second shooting until recently. My biggest question is why it took McCann another ten months for her to request the remaining charges be dropped when she now says the evidence demonstrated a "strong and valid self-defense claim"? That evidence was available all along, so why wait until now to clear the armed citizen of the charges that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life?