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@FtttG, couldn't reply in the wellness thread, since it's CW-adjacent. You wrote in your blog post:
It doesn't matter whether Ross was clipped by Good's car or not. If I shoot at you and miss, you are allowed to shoot back at me. Even if I shoot at something in your general direction and you think I'm shooting at you, you are allowed to shoot back at me.
Earlier in the blog post, you wrote:
This is the only standard. Just like it doesn't matter which one was the better or worse person overall, it doesn't matter why Good accelerated her car and whether she hit Ross or not and if she missed was it because she had poor aim or Ross was the dodgeball champion. The only real answers for the jury to give are if a reasonable person working as a law enforcement officer can interpret the car lurching in his direction as an attack and if shooting the driver is a reasonable action if you have just a split second to decide.
By the way, this is another example of what I mean. If Good was simply trying to get away, it's not relevant to the guilt or innocence of Ross, and yet the blog post brings this up. Of course, it seems pretty clear in hindsight that Good was just trying to get away. So that raising this issue is fundamentally no different than bringing up Good's (alleged) criminal history: In either case, the person is using evidence which is arguably irrelevant at trial in order to make their side look better and the other side worse.
I think it's also worth noting that police and prosecutors very much use peoples' criminal history in deciding who to investigate and who to charge with a crime. And this is a big part of the reason such evidence is typically inadmissible at trial -- because it's already been taken into account by the system.
Is this exculpatory evidence? I don't think so. If it were, then every criminal who starts running from the police "because they got scared" would then have, at the very least, a get-out-of-evading-arrest-free card to play at all times.
Non-compliance with law enforcement orders has to remain chargeable. Otherwise, we get into a situation in which subjective interpretations in the moment bear the same evidentiary weight as objective facts. Again, I'd recommend everyone watch an hour of police bodycam videos and not just the ones that result in discharge of a weapon - I mean basic traffic stops / drug possession chargers. You see a pattern after a while of the cop going through this process of information elucidation to begin to establish facts and intent and also to suss out obvious self-contradicting lies. They're doing this so that, should they need to testify later, their evidence and procedure is as tight as possible.
For narrative purposes, it certainly looks much better to say she was trying to get away than to say she was trying to run down the ICE officer.
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Not in the hindsight sense. The standard is whether a reasonable person observing what the officer did and within the time the officer had to evaluate would have perceived it as a threat. If that reasonable person would see that Good was trying to get away, then it wouldn't be legal to shoot her.
Chargeable, yes. Arrestable, absolutely. Deadly force, not without more.
The standard involves a reasonable officer, not a reasonable person, and the interpretation of that standard is very, very officer friendly.
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"Chargeable" and "punished by shooting" are different things.
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The reason it matters that Ross was indeed struck is that it short circuits a lot of arguments. All the stuff from the NYTimes (among others) about how she was not trying to hit him and was clearly turning her wheel to avoid him goes up in a puff of smoke if he was (regardless of whatever else she was doing) clearly in danger, and being hit is really good evidence of that. Which is why many on the side crying murder still insist he was not hit. If he WAS in fact hit, you have to go to a lot of weaker theories, like
He put himself in jeopardy. Not only doesn't this fit the facts (because he wasn't in front of the car until after it started moving), it doesn't fit the law; "officer-created jeopardy" is not an accepted doctrine.
It was against ICE policy for him to be where he was. On shaky grounds factually, irrelevant legally; he can defend himself even if he wasn't in compliance with ICE policy
He wasn't hit that bad. This doesn't really deserve more than a raised eyebrow... how was he supposed to know he'd only be essentially shoved aside by the SUV?
He shouldn't have been there, because ICE shouldn't have been there. This is the real objection, but it's got no legal force.
The blog post says this:
But no, the first two questions do not matter. We do not consider Good's state of mind when judging Ross's actions, because Ross had no way of knowing it. We need only consider whether Ross had a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm (it's the "death or great" which allows deadly force). He saw a 2-ton SUV being driven towards him. The argument that he should have known it wouldn't hit him falls to the fact that it did hit him, making this a very easy judgement.
That is though why some people think he murdered her: He knew that he was only shoved because he faked/forced a shove.
First he switched the phone to his left hand so his right is free to shoot his gun. Then he positioned himself in the way, so it would not be dangerous for him but giving him plausible deniability. That is also why he immediately drew his weapon (even so that is useless to stop a moving car) instead of just making a step to the side.
The hole in the windshield is to the side aiming at Good with an angle, he was at the side on the car not in the front, and the other two shots were through the side window.
I can see your eyes rolling, but ICE does have a problem with fleeing cars which drivers are then shot:
https://archive.is/iQxsu
No, that is not why some people think he murdered her. Entirely backwards. They think that he faked/forced a shove because that's the only way they can maintain their belief that he murdered her. The evidence that he somehow faked being hit by the car or forced the car to hit him simply is not there.
He switched the phone to his left hand about 8 seconds before the incident. It isn't clear why; perhaps his arm was tired or perhaps it got him a better angle.
He did not position himself in the way. When the car started moving, he was not in the way. When she backed up and turned for the first half of the K-turn, he was THEN in the way.
He fires the first shot almost simultaneously with being hit; he is at the driver's side corner (in front of the car, but not centered) at that point.
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Ross drew his gun because Good was being placed under arrest and refusing to cooperate, that's why the other officer kept telling her to exit vehicle.
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For purposes of a potential trial against Ross, I agree. For purposes of the overall culture war, I'm not so sure.
You can bet that the anti-ICE crowd will use every piece of evidence they can find to make Good look like a good person. In fact, the blog post you link to has a picture of Good at the top which makes her look feminine and somewhat attractive. On the day of the shooting, she looked much more like a stereotypical angry aggressive lesbian.
If one side is going to marshal all the evidence they can find for purposes of the Court of Public Opinion, the other side can hardly be blamed for doing the same thing.
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I think this is just a case of writing that is legally on the weak side for the concepts discussed and not subtle manipulation that if she didn't physically touched him with the car, the shooting was unjustified.
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