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I'm not claiming to know exactly what legal standard applies in this case, but normally, when there's a threat, you have a duty to flee. You do not have the right to kill someone unless necessary to protect yourself from serious injury or death. The cop easily got out of the way and was just barely in the way to begin with. He was standing in front of the corner of the car. The car was not going fast enough to seriously injury him and the wheels were turned. She did not go straight forward. She was clearly trying to get away, not run him over. The cop fired a second time from the side when he was well clear of the car and there was no risk to anyone.
Given that the cop deliberately created a dangerous situation by standing in front of the car, I do think it is entirely reasonable for him to bear the responsibility of accurately determining the risk of the situation he put himself in.
She may bear responsibility for putting herself in that situation, but it's just a fact that death is far too severe a consequence for what is a fairly minor offence. The police should not be creating situations with people they know aren't likely to be cooperative where they're likely to do something the police are going to interpret as a sufficiently serious threat that they will respond to it with deadly force.
It does some seem like American police can get away with almost anything. They get a shocking level of deference. It seems like one of those cases where the cop was just looking for an excuse to kill someone.
The common attitude seems to be that if there is even the slightest risk to a police officer, the officer has the right to kill the person posing that risk. Many people, including me, think that killing someone should only be done when absolutely necessary, such as when severe injury or death is likely, not just a remote possibility, and that the police cannot both be unnecessarily contributing to the creation of a situation that is dangerous to them and be reacting to that danger with deadly force.
The cop had no reason to stand in front of that vehicle unless he was absolutely sure she would not run him over, and he should not have shot her unless he thought it was very likely that she would run him over. He should not be allowed to kill her for his lack of judgment, even if her own bad behaviour also contributed. Summary execution should not be the sentence for obstruction of justice unless absolutely necessary. The police are far too cavalier about ending people's lives.
One final point, shooting her accomplished absolutely nothing. After she was shot, the vehicle continued until it hit a parked car. If ending her life didn't even accomplish the goal of protecting the officer, what possible justification could there be?
Police do not have a “duty to flee”.
Secondly: she turned the tires of her car TOWARDS the cop and if not for the ice that prevented her from getting traction, would have run right over him. He was actively being attacked. The analog here would be; she pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger, but it jammed.
The cop was standing in front of the left side of the vehicle. She turned her wheels sharply to the right to go to his right.
The gun analogy is absurd. Guns are for killing people. Someone pointing a gun at you has a clear intention of killing you. Someone driving in your general direction is almost certainly not trying to injure you. You just happen to be possibly in their way.
Sure, but you left out the part where she was non-compliant and refusing to stop the car. She was not just some ordinary driver commuting from work.
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?
"Not trying to injure him" and "had no idea he was there" does not comport. If I'm in the driver's seat of a car and there is a pedestrian in my blind spot, and I move the car such that I would hit them, but I don't know that they are there, do you think it matters that I wasn't trying to injure them? I think an analogous situation is if I am firing a gun with my eyes closed, or pointing the gun in a direction I can't see.
Why is he to blame for information he didn't know (that she didn't want to injure him), while she doesn't take any blame for information she didn't know (that he was standing there)? Especially when she was clearly being commanded to get out of the car.
As for the rest of your analysis, we are talking about a time frame of 1 second and humans are not expected to make perfect split-second decisions in such a short amount of time. See my reply here.
You're making a common mistake I've seen people who defend the shooter make. The lack of reasonableness in her decisions does not make his decisions more reasonable.
I absolutely agree that she was driving recklessly and had she hit him, she'd have been at fault. But that, if anything, undermines the self-defence claim. He needs to show that she intended to run him over. If she isn't paying attention and he ought to know that, then that makes it less reasonable for him to believe she is trying to kill him.
She can take plenty of blame. Her being blameworthy has no bearing on his self-defence claim.
The reason he takes blame for information he doesn't know is that he cannot just assume that someone is trying to kill him. The belief needs to be based on something. Given that in the vast majority of situations where someone is driving towards you, they're not trying to kill you, the less information he has about her intentions, the less reason he has to think she is trying to kill him.
It has nothing to do with whether her decisions were reasonable, unless you are seriously arguing that she was the one who was defending herself (in which case I would disagree). His decisions were reasonable on their own.
I think a good parallel case to bring up where the shooter's decision was unreasonable despite the decedent also making unreasonable decisions -- just to show you that I'm not making a distinction without a difference -- is the shooting of Ashli Babbitt. It was unreasonable of her to be a part of J6, and it was unreasonable of her to climb through a shattered window (yes, even if she passed officers who made no effort to stop her), but that doesn't mean the officer who shot her was reasonable to do so, since there is no reasonable argument that she posed an imminent deadly threat to him.
So yes, just because someone is making unreasonable decisions does not necessarily mean that you are allowed to shoot them. It depends on what those unreasonable decisions are. Every case of justified self-defense I can think of has involved someone making an unreasonable decision, but those decisions are usually on the level of "charged at an officer with a knife" rather than "fought the officer with fists to resist arrest", even though both are unreasonable decisions.
No, he doesn't. He needs to show that the threat was imminent. Had the vehicle been completely stationary for the entirety of the interaction, there would be no argument in the universe that she was an imminent threat. But she moved the car, and in such a way that he was in its path.
Intentions don't really matter here. If a robber points a gun at you, most of the time they are not intending to pull the trigger, and are merely using it as intimidation. However, you are still allowed to shoot him. You do not have to prove that he was intending on shooting you.
Again, doesn't matter. In the vast majority of situations where a robber pulls a gun on you, they're also not trying to kill you. That doesn't mean you're not allowed to pull out your own gun and shoot them.
The fact that she wasn't trying run him over means that it wasn't an imminent threat. The fact that he should have known that she wasn't trying to run him over means it wasn't reasonable for him to think it was an imminent threat.
Intentions absolutely do matter. If you knew with absolutely certainty that he would not pull the trigger, then you would not be justified in shooting him. Every situation has some risk of someone causing severe bodily harm, but in order to rise to the level that justifies killing someone, the risk needs to be at a certain level. That always requires a judgment about someone's intentions.
Someone driving a car very rarely intends on running someone over. The presumption should always be that any given driver is not trying to kill someone. For Ross to be justified in killing Renee, he needed to form a reasonable belief that she may have intended to injure him.
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