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"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.
It is, in fact, possible to run people over without deliberately trying to, and thus being an imminent threat regardless of intentions.
That is not a fact, it's just your interpretation of the events, and a pretty dubious one at that. The police can't read minds, and even for us, with all the videos after the fact can't say for sure what she was trying to do.
They don't. If they were going through an involuntary spasm that would result in them pulling the trigger, you would be justified in shooing no matter what they intended. And you keep ignoring the fact that in the real world we can't read each other's minds, so the amount of justified scenarios is even higher.
In general, yes. But given that she was in the process of turning away from him in order to drive away, it's very unlikely she would hit him unless she had done it deliberately.
The fact that you can come up with a scenario in which there would still be a threat even without the intent to do harm doesn't prove that intentions don't matter. Her intentions determine the likelihood of her hitting him with her car. She wasn't going through a involuntary spasm. She was in control of the car.
By the way, I think this example is illlustrative as almost a reductio ad absurdum. I think most people would find the ideat that, had she had an involuntary spasm, he would have been justified in shooting her, to be ridiculous. The argument is the same, as you rightly point out. And you're being consistent if you think both would be justified. But it strikes me as a totally absurd conclusion. I can't imagine that a police officer would ever shoot someone in this situation, and I think the fact that your argument justifies shooting people who have involutarily lost control of their vehicles shows how weak this self-defence claim is.
Countered by the fact that she did, in fact, hit him, and by the fact that the car was delayed by the wheels spinning on ice.
That's quite literally what that means. Conversely, having murderous thoughts does not justify shooting, if someone is unable to act on them. Intentions are irrelevant.
The trajectory of her car is what it is regardless of her intentions. Many drivers miscalculate what their car will do. You are also still ignoring the fact that he has no way of knowing her intentions.
I think you're wrong, and the people who would think that are simply refusing to out themselves in the position of the cop for ideological reasons. All the cop sees is a car driving at him, he has no way of knowing whether it's because of a spasm or deliberate action with the intention to do harm. He has to react to the material facts available to him from his perspective, not guesses about the state of mind of the suspect.
I have no idea how this follows from anything you said.
How do you know that?
You don't seem to grok the concept of probabilistic beliefs. Every little thing about the situation informs his beliefs about her intentions. He doesn't have absolute certainty about anything and that lack of certainty doesn't mean that the things about which he is uncertain are irrelevant.
We don't live in a world where cops are killing people who have lost control of their cars for medical reasons and I don't think many people who find that acceptable. The reason is that when the person getting shot is seen as innocent, people instinctively look for alternative solutions to preventing accidents than just killing the driver.
No, he does have to guess about her state of mind. He has to make his decision based on the totality of the evidence, even if it is uncertain. Guessing people's state of mind is a big part of police work. It's a skill he's supposed to have.
You seem to be arguing that a police officer standing in front of a car whose driver is having an involuntary spasm, and consequently driving towards him, is justified in shooting the driver.
You can see him getting pushed back through the force of the car in one of the videos. He also suffered from internal bleeding as a result.
I grok it, I just don't think the idea is particularly useful in the situation. Many suspects don't telegraph their bad intentions, and as a result, doing the kind of analysis you describe is just an easy way to get yourself killed when doing police work.
Because most of those people don't happen to lose control of their car when police are nearby, and when the car is posing obvious danger to them or others.
No, he doesn't. It's literally irrelevant whether the driver is coming at him with murderous intent, or with nothing but love and all the warm fuzzies in the universe, he can die either way, and has a right to protect himself in either scenario.
Yes, but that does not imply the self-defense case is weaker.
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