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Criminal Justice

Lawyer convicted in fatal shooting of man who attacked him in law firm parking lot

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 10, 2025, 10:07 am CDT

A Connecticut lawyer was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter Friday for fatally shooting a man who attacked him in the parking lot of his law firm.

Robert L. Fisher Jr., 78, of Connecticut was convicted after jurors deliberated for three hours, report Law360, CT Insider and the Register Citizen.

Connecticut law imposes a “duty to retreat” before using force that can cause death or serious injury, according to the Register Citizen and a previous Connecticut Insider story. The duty applies only when a person can safely retreat and is outside the home or the office.

The state does not have a stand-your-ground law, which allows the use of deadly force without a duty to retreat, even outside the home or the workplace, when a person reasonably thinks that it is necessary to prevent death or serious injury.

The June 2021 incident began, Fisher had testified, when Matthew Bromley pulled him from his car and began punching him, claiming that the lawyer had “ruined my life,” according to CT Insider. Then Bromley spit in his face, according to Fisher’s testimony, described by CT Insider.

“I was in fear,” Fisher said. “He was so impossibly angry his face was contorted with rage. I have never seen anything like it. I undid my seat belt and kicked him, so he would be farther away. … I got out of the car to face him. … He charged me in the chest. He was shouting. ‘I am going to kill you.’”

Fisher, who was 74 years old at the time of the incident, said he fired his gun when Bromley charged toward him and reached for his arm. Prosecutors said Fisher could have retreated to his car and locked the door, rather than shoot Bromley.

Prosecutors had cited eyewitness accounts that Fisher stepped forward from his car’s open door before shooting. The forward step showed that the shooting was in revenge for the attack, rather than self-protection, the prosecution claimed.

In his closing argument, Litchfield County State’s Attorney David Shannon described what he thought that Fisher could have been thinking, according to Law360.

“How dare this little man in his beat-up old Saab, wearing his wife beater tank top and his cargo shorts, assault him?” Shannon said. “How dare he [Bromley] do that? He [Fisher] was going to refuse to be a victim. That’s what happened here.”

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