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I don't think it's right to characterize this as so unexpected as to excuse the result of his decision. He's a trained police officer who chose to stand in front of a vehicle and to use his gun to try to stop it. He put someone's life in his hands and therefore needed to be able to quickly react to all reasonably foreseeable outcomes. He could have looked at her tires to see she was already turning the other way. He needed to not panic. He needed to not shoot once the apparent threat was gone. If he couldn't handle that kind of situation, he needed to not put himself in one.
Even if she had been trying to run him over, the car continued for some distance afterward until it slammed into a parked car. How would him shooting her have protected himself?
It was a wholly preventable death and if his best defence shows that he was incompetent, then he should at least be guilty of manslaughter.
I am paying him to stand in front of that car. It’s literally his job. And to use necessary force to enforce our laws. If he’s detaining a person we give him the ability to do that detention.
My understanding is that police are generally told not to stand in front of cars and shoot the drivers to try to stop them because it's dangerous and it doesn't work, as you can see in this video. After she was shot, the car continued forward until it crashed into a parked car. So he went against the standard police procedure, killed someone, and failed to stop the car.
Sure. But that’s not a legal standard. Yes it’s kind of dumb for a cop to stand in front of car, but if he decides to it’s still attempted murder to drive into him. And legally he has the right to block her and attempt to detain. I voted for him to detain.
And now that he killed someone; how many of people are going to be physically obstructing ICE? A lot less. Which means they spend more time deporting which is what I voted for.
It's not attempted murder. This is hyperbole. Murder requires intent. It's very unlikely she knew he was there when she started driving and then she immediately turned to her right. She did not deliberately drive into him. Her car brushed by him.
It absolutely matters for his legal defence if he recklessly put himself into a dangerous situation by walking in front of a moving vehicle.
Resisting arrest with a car is attempted murder.
Resisting arrest using violence or force on an officer is a felony. If the officer dies that then is of course felony murder since a felony was done even if there was never an intent to kill the officer.
Legally murder does not require intent to murder. It requires intent to commit a felony which happened here.
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.
What other elements?
Driving a car into a police offer looks like murder to me…but what do I know.
I gave you an example. Even though murder doesn't necessarily require intent to kill, attempted murder does. Otherwise, there is no "attempt". You seem to be assuming that an attempt to complete an act that would constitute murder if it resulted in death constitutes attempted murder. That's not true.
Another problem is that you assume resisting arrest with a car is attempted murder. It is not necessarily. The car would have to be used in an attempt to kill the officer. Resisting arrest by driving away is not attempted murder if there is not intent on killing the officer with the car. Even the risk that the officer might be killed is not enough on its own to turn it into attempted murder. That is true even if it would be murder had the officer been accidentally killed.
Killing someone while committing a felony is not necessarily felony murder. It depends on the felony. It's not just any felony. There is also the merger doctrine which excludes felonies where the elements would constitute the elements of murder. That would seem to apply in this case. If you're arguing that the felony is the act of hitting the cop with the car and that would be murder if the cop died, then it can't be felony murder.
The felony has to be a separate act from the one that resulted in death. For example, you commit robbery and then shoot someone. That's felony murder even if you shot them by accident. But if you don't actually shoot them, the robbery isn't attempted murder just because you could have accidentally shot someone. That would make every armed robbery felony murder.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/felony_murder_rule
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