Glassnoser
5mo ago
Assault with a deadly weapon is by definition a threat of bodily harm! That's what the word "deadly" means!
Assuming you mean severe bodily harm, which is what is necessary to justify responding with deadly force, no, it isn't. A deadly weapon can be used in a way that isn't deadly. If I hit you on the leg with a gun with moderate force, that is not a threat of severe bodily harm. To claim that killing me was self-defence, you need to have reasonably feared that I was going to commit severe bodily harm.
A lot of these arguments seem like attempts to find loopholes to find excuses to justify killing people. That's not how the law works. You can't say that technically a car can be used to kill someone so technically if someone does something that is technically assault, that somehow all adds up to a justification of killing the driver, even when no rational person would think that was necessary to protect the person being assaulted from severe bodily harm.
That's not to say this is as clear cut a case, but you absolutely do need to be able to show that in this particular situation that there was a significant risk of imminent severe bodily harm. If the car was not going very fast, and at the moment the shots were fired was turning away while the officer was clear of the car's path, then it is not an imminent threat of severe bodily harm.
Placing someone under arrest is not grounds for that person to assault a police officer, no matter how much that person feels they have been provoked, because police are legally entitled to arrest lawbreakers.
I didn't say it was. You're missing the point. If the cop unreasonably escalated the situation and put himself in harms way, then he can't claim self-defence even if there was an imminent threat of severe bodily harm. You are simply ignoring the elements that are required to make a self-defence claim, assuming the right is much broader than it really is.
Correct, the law permits you to resist an offense that you reasonably believe exposes you to death or great bodily harm. Landing an aircraft is not an offense. Intentionally driving a car into a police officer is an offense.
OK, suppose the aircraft were committing some minor offence like landing without permission. That wouldn't change anything.
The car did not move until he had already been in front of it for several seconds, and he was seen by the driver (thanks to new footage released today). He did not place himself in front of a moving vehicle.
He started walking towards before it started moving. Before he got to it, it started backing up. He went in front of the car after it had started backing up. He continued to walk across the front of the car and stopped the moment the car stopped backing up, turning to face the car. He could have avoided this by not walking in front of the car while it was backing up, as police officers are trained to do. After making the mistake of going in front of the moving car, he could have kept walking to get out of the way, instead of stopping in front of the car.
Because he is a human being and human beings do not process information instantly. The three shots were all fired within half a second, well within the amount of time it actually takes a human being to process a change in the situation.
I just don't buy that it takes that long to notice that the car is no longer in front of you. I think that's plenty of time, and as a police officer, he should be trained to react quickly. If he can't manage that, he has no business pulling out his gun. It's his responsibility to assess the situation and determine whether he is capable of managing the situation with a gun.
He switched his phone his phone before walking in front of the car, seemingly preparing to pull out his gun. Then he stopped in front of the car and turned to face it while pulling out his gun before the car started moving. So he made the decision that he would use his gun to stop the car if necessary ahead of time. If he thought he wasn't sufficiently skilled to decide moment by moment whether it was appropriate to shoot, as the law requires, then he shouldn't have put himself in that situation, which again, goes completely against police training.
If he hadn't been standing in front of the car, there would have been no risk to himself, and there would have been no perceived need to kill her. So the fact that he felt threatened was his own fault.
He stopped firing when he realized the threat had passed.
That's not the legal standard. The legal standard is whether he stopped firing when he should have realized the threat had passed, which was before the first shot and certainly before the second and third. Remember, the car was already clear of him after before the first shot. He had to lean forward and to the side to maintain his line of sight. Had he just stood upright, he wouldn't have even had a clear shot through the windshield.
Courts do not require independent legal justification for multiple shots within a small amount of time for this reason, the three shots would be treated as a single event in court because to a human being, they are.
I don't think that's accurate. What I've read says that each shot must be individually justifiable.
Because the law says you are permitted to use lethal force to resist an offense you reasonably believe exposes you to death or great bodily harm.
But it's not resisting if it doesn't help stop the threat. The use of force itself has to be reasonable given the situation. This is precisely one of the reasons cops are told not to do this, because it's well known that it doesn't work. The law does not allow police officers to gratuitously kill people for no benefit just because they are threatened. That would be absurd.
The law does not require you to spend what you reasonably believe may be your last moments on earth basing your decision to resist your death on whether it in retrospect might be futile or not. It permits you to resist by whatever means are available to you.
That isn't accurate. It absolutely does require you to base your decision based on what a reasonable person would do in that situation. Of course, it allows you to make mistakes that are reasonable given the limited time to make a decision. But if you're doing something police officers are told not to do and that any reasonable person would intuitively understand isn't going to work, that is going to severely undermine your self-defence claim. The basic concept of inertia is not alien to the reasonable person. It's not unreasonable for a police officer to except a large moving vehicle to continue forward due to momentum. This is common sense. It doesn't require a degree in physics.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
This is all a bit moot now that we have bodycam footage showing that the officer was walking across the front of the car to get to the other side, and the driver looked straight at the officer while accelerating.
It's not bodycam footage. It was taken with his cell phone.
Why does this make the argument moot? Even if you're arguing that she saw him, which I don't think this proves, that doesn't mean he didn't unnecessarily and wrecklessly put himself in harms way. Nor does it mean it was reasonable for him to think that she was going to run him over. Nor does it mean that shooting her helped prevent his death.
I assume that "don't ever walk across the front of a car in case they suddenly try to run you over/knock you out of the way" isn't something we can realistically ask of police.
That's not a good assumption because we do, in fact, already instruct police officers not to do this.
What does this even mean? Police are trained not to shoot people? Yes, they're trained not to shoot people outside of particular circumstances where that person is posing a danger to others, which she was.
They are specifically trained not to try to stop vehicles by shooting at them.
The protest (news reporting on this seems terrible, but seems like a spontaneous thing in response to an ICE arrest) was down the road and she was blocking one of the routes out.
She wasn't blocking the road though. The road had two lanes. One was free.
Standing in front of the car or not, they had every right and reason to either get her to move or to detain her on the spot.
Yes, I'm not arguing otherwise.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
Which would be worth about $200,000 per person in net present value.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
If it's anything like Nunavut, the cost of living there is extremely high.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
There is hardly anywhere on the planet that that isn't the case.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
Inuit is already plural. The singular is Inuk.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
Why can't the US launch satellites from Danish territory?
Glassnoser
5mo ago
That video appears to be sped up a bit.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
He doesn't go down in this video either.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
I don't see how the video clarifies why she was there. We see her wife out of the car, yelling at the officers. We don't know why. Then we see her drive away, ignoring their commands to get out of the car. She could have been there for a legitimate reason and then gotten into some kind of argument with them. We would need to see video or get eye witness testimony from before the videos started to know.
She could clearly see the agent in fromt of her car when she drives into him.
When she drove towards him (into him seems presumptuous). That was never seriously in dispute. The question is still whether she knew he was standing there when she started. The vehicle starts moving with the wheels turned towards him. That was used to argue that she intentionally drove towards him. But then the wheels quickly turn to the right. It's hard to tell how exactly that turn intersected with the ICE agent. We don't know how much contact was made.
She likely saw him as he starting walking across the vehicle, but he stops while she looking down. She may have assumed he kept walking. She also may not have actually noticed him with the first glance.
He was not deliberately using his body to block her car, just circling it.
No, I think that's conclusively disproven by the other videos. He clearly stops walking and turns and faces her right as she finishes backing up.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
She glances up twice. Once while backing up and a second time right before she starts driving forward. The first glance occurred while the police was quickly walking across the front of the car. Had the police officer kept walking, he would have been clear of the car when she stopped backing up. But while she's looking down, he stops right in front of her on the driver's side, which means she likely only knew where he was standing after looking up the second time and may not have expected anyone to be in the way.
Let's say that Good was intentionally trying to run over the ICE agent and that the ICE agent legitimately believed in he was in mortal danger and shot someone he thought was trying to kill him. I don't think either claim is likely, but let's grant them for the sake of argument. I still don't think that justifies the shooting for two reasons, each of which is enough on its own to make a self-defence claim untenable.
The first is that shooting her could not have reasonably been expected to stop the car. He's right in front of it and as we saw in the other videos, it already had enough momentum to continue until she crashed into another car. That's only the first shot too. The second and third were fired from the side. He's not justified in shooting her to stop an imminent threat if it is unreasonable for him to think the shots might stop the imminent threat. And if I understand the law correctly, each shot has to be justified on its own. The second two shots cannot be justified on the grounds that the firing started when there was an imminent threat.
The second reason is that he went against his police training and placed himself in harm's way. I believe this goes against the training provided by the Department of Homeland Security. My understanding of the law is that you lose your right to claim self-defence if you wrecklessly put yourself into the dangerous situation that left yourself no option but to use deadly force.
It seems to me that any self-defence claim has to argue that it's reasonable for the ICE agent to make a poor split second decision about the risk the car posed because of how little time he had to think about it, while somehow not undermining the claim that it was reasonable for him to walk in front of the vehicle that he had so much trouble assessing the danger of. If it's inherently difficult to make a split second decision about whether the vehicle poses an imminent threat sufficient to justify killing the driver, that makes it all the more unreasonable to walk in front of the car in the first place. If it was reasonable to walk in front of the car and pull out his gun when it started moving, then he had to have been confident in his ability to make split second decisions that accurately determined the risk posed by the car moving towards him.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
There isn't that much new information. We find out what the police officer saw the suspect doing, such as where she was looking, and we get a better sense of how close he was to the car when it started moving towards him.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
But it is, in fact, the law. The police cannot shoot someone to stop them from fleeing. Yes, that makes it more likely they'll flee. But there are good reasons we don't just allow the maximum punishment for all offences in order to minimize crime.
This interpretation is inconsistent with what we know from the other videos. Keep in mind that you are seeing this from his cellphone. It's not a bodycam. It's in his hand and not tracking his body perfectly.
There is another video from the front of the car where you can see that he was walking across the vehicle and then clearly stops in front of her. We also know from multiple other videos that he does not go down. What it looks like, but it's not clear, is that his upper body somehow ends up leaning on the hood of the car.
You can't tell from this video that he stops in front of the car because the phone kept moving even though his body stopped, but it's absolutely clear from the other videos that he stopped and turned and faced her. It's also still not clear whether he was hit because we already knew that he stretched out his left hand (which must be holding the phone since the gun was in his right hand) and placed it on the hood of the car. I don't know how this confirms anything other than the fact that the hand holding the cellphone hit the car.
it appears to me that the driver looks directly at the ICE agent before driving forward. From this bodycam angle, her face is clearly shown looking directly ahead where the officer is seconds before she moves her car forward.
Yes, but keep in mind that at that point, he's still walking briskly across the front of the car. Had he continued, he would have been well clear of it by the time she finished backing up. So while she probably noticed him walking across the car, she wouldn't have known he had stopped until she looks up the second time and starts driving forward.
At the very least, maybe reasonable people can agree that the cop did not shoot the driver in cold blood from the side window.
We can clearly see that he did do that from the other videos. This video doesn't show the shooting itself. All three shots were taken when the camera was facing the sky.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
Walking in front of you car does not represent any danger to you.
Then why was he so afraid for his life that he shot and killed her?
And she should not be driving anywhere while the police instructs her to stop.
That being true doesn't give the police the right to kill her. The police cannot kill you for disobeying them.
You are fishing for excuses to justify the situation which she entered voluntarily,
I did not justify anything that she did. It's possible for the police to encounter someone who is doing something unjustifiable and still not have the right to kill them.
She constantly made the choices that drove her towards the ending that happened.
Let's say that she had run over the police officer and we were arguing over whether that were justified. You could say the exact same thing about the police officers actions. He went against his training and did something stupid and walked in front of a moving vehicle and didn't get out of the way when it started moving towards him. Would that justify her actions just because he did something wrong?
No, it's possible for two people to both be doing things they shouldn't be doing and to both contribute to the outcome.
She knew why the officers were there, there were no "moving vehicles" except her
You need to watch the video taken from the front. He walked in front of the car while she was backing up. People don't look forward when they back up, so it's unlikely she saw him. Then he stopped in front of her just as she was about to start driving forward.
The police does not owe her - a criminal - the duty to run away from her.
Even if she isn't allowed to drive away, the police officer legally cannot deliberately place himself in the path of her vehicle and then claim self-defence.
moving the vehicle in a way that endangers the people is initiation of violence, thus justifying the response.
This is an absurdly loose definition of violence, but even initiation of actual violence doesn't justify killing someone in self-defence if it doesn't amount to an imminent threat of severe bodily harm, and driving wrecklessly does not rise to that level.
If the police encountered someone speeding on the highway, do you think they'd be justified in shooting the driver just beause they had "initiated violence" by endangering others?
Glassnoser
5mo ago
He shot to stop the threat.
That might have been the intent, but it was unreasonable because it could not have stopped the threat.
Once the threat was over, he stopped shooting.
No, he didn't. He fired two shots from the side of the car when he was completely clear of its path and it was moving away from him.
Once deadly force is authorized, you are allowed to keep using it until the threat has passed.
But it never was authorized and he continued after the threat was passed.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
Ah, yes, "mostly". Not enough to, you know, not hit him.
I don't think you can tell from the videos whether he was hit. It looks like he leans towards the car as it approaches him and reaches out with his left hand. Then it pushes his left hand toward his chest and he is either pushed or pushes away.
It was enough not to hit him because he could have gotten out of the way instead of staying where he was in order to pull out his gun and then start moving.
Either way, this is beside the point. If he was hit, he didn't suffer severe bodily injure and I don't think it's reasonable to think that was a possibility. The car was moving slowly and it was at worst a glancing blow. You can't kill someone over that.
Clear to who? Certainly not to him.
We don't know his state of mind. What matters is what should have been clear to him.
He did no such thing. He was walking in street to the right of the stationary car's forward path when she started to make a K-turn, backing up and turning to point the nose of the car at him, then going forward.
How does that contradict what I said? The car was moving and he walked in front of it. He should not have done that. When she started backing up, he was not in front of the car. He kept walking and then got in front of the car and then when she stopped, he stopped in front of the driver. After making the mistake of walking front of the moving car, he then had an opportunity to keep walking to get out of the way. He chose to stop right in the way and turn and face her.
Then when she started moving, he had the opportunity to move to his right. Instead, he chose to pointlessly draw his gun.
As it turns out she kept turning, but he didn't know she would at the time.
He should have assumed that she would. At that point, he didn't have the right to go to such precautionary lengths to save his life, because he created the dangerous situation and needed to give her the benefit of the doubt and shooting her never had any possiblity of eliminating the threat.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
A court order to prevent deportation does not mean that you are in the country legally. When Kilmar Abrego Garcia entered the country in 2012, he did so illegally. The court order to return him to the US was only over due process concerns. It does not mean that some judge magically granted him citizenship and he is now in the country legally.
I'm not saying he was granted citizenship. I'm saying he was granted the right to stay in the country. Lots of people enter the country illegally who then win the right to stay.
What else should it mean to "be in the country legally" if it doesn't include a situation where a judge has said you can't be deported? In the context of talking about people being unfairly deported, the implication of saying they aren't in the country legally is clearly meant to convey the idea that they're supposed to be deported. A judging ruling that they cannot be deported clearly contradicts that.
I'm not sure by what stretch of the imagination you assert that Neiyerver Adrian Leon Rengel was "invited into the country" for an immigration hearing. What he actually did was use the CBP One app to schedule an appointment at a port of entry about an asylum claim. Presumably he made some plausible claim to asylum that was later found to be false, because DHS asserts that he entered the country illegally.
It isn't illegal to try to enter the US at a port of entry and make an asylum claim, and even if it were, then they shouldn't have scheduled an appointment with him to do so.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
If they arrest someone and don't bring them before a judge upon request as they are legally required to do and don't allow them to contact anyone on the outside and don't tell their family members where they are when asked, that is disappearing people, even if they eventually show up again.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
Glassnoser
5mo ago
That doesn't change the fact that she was clearly not trying to injure him. He should have known that she likely had no idea he was there when she started moving forward. He had just stopped there less than a second before while she was backing up.
Then when she started moving forward, he drew his gun, but she was well into her turn by the time he fired. His body was mostly out of the way and would have been completely out of the way had he not leaned forward and to the left to get onto the roof of the car. Even then, he was way off to the side. He got out of the way at the end with just a rotating motion, proving that his life was not at risk at that point. She also wasn't going that fast.
If he really thought she was trying to kill him, why did he stop in front of the car and why wouldn't she have just gone straight? Why would she have turned away?
Glassnoser
5mo ago
Sure, if you're basing your acceptance of the argument on who said it. But you also have the option of actually addressing the argument itself and seeing if it makes sense on its own terms.
Glassnoser
5mo ago
None of this is true. All of these crimes require other elements which you are ignoring. It is not as simple as this.
Murder doesn't require intent to kill, but attempted murder does.
Killing someone while committing a felony is not necessarily felony murder.
It is not enough for there to be a reasonable belief of an offence which exposes the actor to great bodily harm or death. The killing must be "necessary in resisting or preventing the offence".
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.065
That isn't true. The person must continuously evaluate whether the threat is still there. Everything is based on the reasonableness standard. If the time was so short that it the person did not have time to reassess and notice that the car had passed, then he would not be guilty, but the permissibility of the first shot doesn't automatically excuse all subsequent shots. One second is enough time for him to notice the car passing. He had to be looking where he was shooting, especially as a police officer and would have to have seen that he was shooting through the side window. He had to turn his body to track her in order to aim the second and third shots at her. If he can process all that enough to successfully land those shots (assuming they contributed to her death), then he can make the conscious decision to stop shooting. He doesn't have to think about it carefully to figure out that a car driving away from him isn't a threat. It should be intuitive.
It's not as though the car had gone from heading right at him during the first shot to turning away within one second. Before he took his first shot, I would say about half a second, the car had already started turning away. He took his first shot from the side of the car, with most of his body well out of the cars path.
By the way, it does not appear that he was hit by the vehicle. There are a couple videos where it seems like he might have been. There is a low-quality video from far away where it's hard to make out what's going on where it appears he might have been pushed by the vehicle. But if you line it up in timing with the video from back of the car, you can see that that can't be what happened because at that moment, his torso well to the left of the car. It's already passing him by. What must be going on is that he's farther back than it appears he's pushing off with his hands. You can see in another video that he leads forward and onto the roof of the car, but that his torso is largely clear.
The cell phone video makes it look like he was hit, especially if, like many people, you think it's body cam footage. But you don't actually see anything at that point. You hear the car collide with the phone. It's probably just his hand holding the phone landing on the car. There is actually no way to tell from this video whether his body and the car make contact, because the phone is facing the sky at that point.
It absolutely would. Police officers are specifically trained not to deliberately put themselves into situations where lethal force is the only option. If a police officer goes against his training and then decides to use the time he could have used to get out of the way to pull out his gun, then he is not acting reasonably.
https://law.justia.com/cases/minnesota/supreme-court/1967/40004-1.html
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