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Not really. The standard is reasonable belief of an imminent deadly threat which can only be stopped through deadly force.
The most obvious way in which this was violated is - where was the imminent threat when the shots went through the side window?
I'm not sure about other states, but in Minnesota the law states that lethal force is permitted to resist an offense that you reasonably believe exposes you to death or great bodily harm. Nothing about this requires that the offense can only be stopped by lethal force, it simply permits lethal force under any circumstance where you reasonably believe your life is threatened.
It is absolutely unreasonable to demand a separate legal justification for every individual round fired mere fractions of a second apart, and I'm not aware of anyone who actually tries to hold human beings to that standard. The simple answer is that he stopped firing when he realized the threat was over, which is going to be some measurable amount of time after the threat was actually over because he is a human being and human beings are not capable of instantly processing information and making decisions about it. The law does not make it a felony to have human limitations, that would be stupid.
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not really; there are a maximum of five legal elements of defensive force in any state in the United States and the federal government:
your quick summary has at least 2 errors: one, it can be threat of death or serious/great bodily injury, and two, it is not a requirement the threat can only be stopped with deadly force
the cop was attempting to effectuate a lawful arrest of a woman obviously committing obstruction, the woman accelerates the suv which you can tell with the spinning tires turned towards the cop, hitting or about to hit someone with a car is a deadly force threat, cops do not have a duty to avoid but even if this was a regular person they could not retreat from an accelerating vehicle a few feet away from them in complete safety, and a person in that cop's circumstance could have both a subjective and objectively reasonable belief he's about to be run over
every single element is pretty cut-and-dried satisfied in this scenario and remember a prosecutor would need to disprove the above beyond reasonable doubt
Technically yes, in practice this is the same thing.
I believe this is incorrect; you may not use lethal force to stop a threat if it is obvious a non lethal force would suffice.
Although neither of these points seem relevant to this specific example. The problem the shooter will have, is that the moment he is alongside the car there is no longer any threat of any kind of injury to himself, yet he keeps firing. This will not be impossible to overcome but his defence would have their work cut out for them.
This is somewhat undermined by the fact that he actually did retreat in complete safety.
For the front shot, sure. That’s a plausible defence. Once the cop is alongside the car, however, the idea that he would be afraid of “slipping on the ice” or being “dragged under the vehicle” and that the only remedy to that threat is to keep firing shots into the driver is weak as hell. Good luck convincing a jury that a reasonable person would feel the same way. No, if he ever does find himself in court over this, the best bet to defend against those shots would be either ‘defence of others’ or ‘heat of the moment’, neither of which is great. I sure as shit wouldn’t want to be facing down a jury in his shoes.
no, they're not "practically" the same thing as one is not always the other
based on what? your legal experience? your sleuthing on google? vibes?
and that's not what you wrote, you wrote "which can only be stopped through deadly force"
no, he will not have a problem making the defense that 3 shots over 1 second which started in front of the car when he was struck by the accelerating car are also justified
and again, a person can use deadly self-defense force in defense of others which would also fit this scenario because a fleeing felon who just committed aggravated assault with a deadly weapon which she was still driving is an imminent deadly threat to others, including other law enforcement
he got hit by the car so he was, in fact, not able to retreat in complete safety which is the standard
and even if he wasn't hit by the car, the after-the-fact knowledge he retreated without being injured doesn't mean it wasn't reasonable for him to think he could not retreat in complete safety when he 3 feet in front of an accelerating vehicle
and again, law enforcement has special carveouts for any duty to retreat even in the 11 states which have this duty (mainly, they de facto do not have one) because otherwise law enforcement couldn't enforce laws without wholly giving up their right to lawful self-defense
that's not the standard; the standard is the jury must have zero reasonable doubt the above is wrong
There is no point arguing with you about nitpicks that aren't even relevant to this case. So reducing what you have said to just the relevant parts:
Ok, why?
A jury would have to be convinced that this was a reasonable belief in this specific circumstance. If I were a juror, you could perhaps convince me of this, but it wouldn't be easy.
OMG is he ok?
less facetiously, once he was alongside the vehicle, and had successfully retreated, and was no longer in danger, he continued to fire. These shots will require justification. Like, I'm not even arguing the first shot right now. I'm willing to accept, for the sake of argument, that that was legitimate. But you don't get to shoot someone because you have been hit - that isn't how self defense works. It's about imminent threats, not threats that have passed. the Drejka case is a good example of this.
Juries reject self defense all the time.
We are talking about a time frame of 1 second. It takes a certain amount of time for a human to take inputs from all of their senses, process it, make a decision, and then use their muscles to act out that decision. That loop does not happen instantly and it takes more time than the split seconds that elapse between firing rounds from a gun. This is why it's reasonable for a self-defender to fire more rounds from their gun even after the point you can identify, with the benefit of hindsight and the comfort of your computer screen, that they don't need to fire any more rounds. What would be unreasonable for example is if he waited 30 seconds and then fired more rounds without clear justification, but that is not what happened here.
They tend not to if they recognize that people aren't superhumans who react to changing stimuli lightning-quick in less than 1 second.
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