In my martial arts classes, I’ve always taught that self defense ends when the attacker stops being a threat. That leaves you on the right side of both law and morality in nearly any jurisdiction and anyone’s estimation. While it’s possible that Diallo beat Nash badly enough before he stopped fighting that he later died of his wounds, it’s much more probable that he kept beating on him long after he stopped being a threat.
A right to retribution is generally not recognized by courts, and most civilized people frown on it too, though they might understand the impetus. If you want to start letting people beat other people to death, you might as well disband the police and courts, forget about the rule of law, and go back to mob rule and vigilantism.
I’m obviously not against protecting yourself. I teach how to do it. I’ve been practicing one form or another of the old, nasty, non-sportified break-bones-and-hurt-people forms of martial arts for most of my life. I also generally support Second Amendment rights, which makes me a weirdo among the lefty-leaning traditional martial arts community. But, you don’t kill scroat-bags just because they’re scroat-bags. You kill them when you don’t have any other choice. Otherwise, you stop them from hurting people and put them where they can’t hurt anyone else. Sometimes that does mean beating the shit out of them with a crowbar, but this doesn’t seem to be one of those times.
Depending on the details of the incident, the assault charge is likely to stick where manslaughter might have been less likely to be prosecutable; that’s my guess as to why the charges were changed. We’ll probably find out more as the case progresses.
Why not? What are you afraid of if they let him off? Do you think there will be a line of rapists coming to his door and getting their heads caved in?
This is a “crime” where the perpetrator is neither likely to have a chance to reoffend, nor has shown himself to be worse than a “reasonable person”. The only difference between him and the average man off the street is that he was the one exposed to a provocation that we cannot reasonably demand a person prepare themselves to face with a clear mind.
So how do you recognise that? So you - the generic you, not you personally - give your target six strikes with the crowbar, then pause to catch a breath and assess and realise that maybe the fourth strike did the job. Does that make the fifth and sixth strikes illegal? Because if you pause to assess after every single strike you’re going to lose the fight. I’ll note that as someone trained in combat, you personally are in a privileged position; the rest of us, not so much.
The article doesn’t say that the dead guy was attacking the husband. For all we know, he could have simply let the attacker leave, without suffering any harm. Once he hit him a couple of times, how much did the attacker fight back? How readily could he have been apprehended by police?
Letting the attacker go would be unrealistic for most “reasonable” people. But the question remains, how much force IS reasonable.
I couldn’t care less that the guy is dead. I’ll say he likely “deserved” it. But I don’t want to live in a society where individual citizens get to assign and mete out punishment, no matter how deserved.
He tried to rape my wife? Until the police can arrive, I should use enough force to make sure he’s no longer a threat: if he’s still moving, then I should err on the side of caution and keep hitting him; but if he’s not still moving, then I should err on the side of caution and keep hitting him, because he might be faking it. Seems reasonable.
How have you concluded that it is more probable that he kept beating on him long after he stopped being a threat? Apparently there is video from surveillance which could shed light on this, but it’s not available at this time.
Diallo and the attacker meet in the elevator. The wife is in the hall with her clothing torn and identifying the person that attacked her. I’d say a citizen’s arrest is appropriate in that scenario. New York Penal Law, sec. 35.30:
(my bold)
Throw in the fact that Diallo may have been defending himself, and I don’t know how you can draw any conclusion that Diallo acted inappropriately at this time.
The attacker didn’t die at the scene, so even if he was struck more than once, it’s unknown whether it was the first or last blow that killed him. Sure as shit if a person is justified in making the decision to swing once, they are surely justified in swinging a second or third time in rapid succession unless it’s completely clear that the threat has been abated.
I don’t think anyone’s opposed to the idea that you keep swinging until the guy is down, and not getting back up. Given the various justifications in the thread about how all the various John Waynes of the SDMB would be beating the fuck out of the guy out of bloodlust, and not to end the threat, it doesn’t seem like that big of a concern. Unless for some reason they’re all theorizing scenarios where the only way to “win the fight” is to prolong their attack on the guy as long as possible and savor every delicious violent assault.
There are oceans in between the scenario where the fourth swing completely disabled the guy in retrospect, but you took a fifth swing, and the scenario where you suddenly transform into the dude from Saw and brainstorm interesting ways to make yourself feel better by rearranging his limbs.
What we’d have to know is precisely what happened afterwards. His and Nash’s actions could mean anything from justifiable self-defense to second degree murder.
The video of the incident is not super helpful to Diallo’s case but it’s not proof, either. We see his wife’s attacker waiting for the elevator. Diallo gets out and the man gets on, and it’s only as he passes Diallo that Diallo notices him, and quite unambiguously attacks Nash first. After that, however, we do not know how the fight proceeded.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
If this had happened in a wealthy white neighborhood, Mr. Diallo Plimpton-Smythe would never have been arrested in the first place. At best, they might have done a token presentation to a grand jury. The ACLU should be all over this.
[/QUOTE]
If Diallo was white I’ve not a doubt he’d have been arrested. There is a dead man in his elevator and he put him there. In New York City, they’re going to arrest you.
The video is not going to help Diallo’s position, IMO. Though the reason he notices Nash allegedly because his wife was in the hall and identified him and told Diallo to not let him get away.
The fact pattern of a citizen’s arrest could be met if Diallo told Nash to stop and Nash refused.
Suppose you’re not intending to kill anyone, but want to subdue a guy and give him a whack or two. But once you start he fights back and then you fight back and then you both keep at it until the guy stops moving. (At no point do you intend to kill the guy.)
Wouldn’t the intention have something to do with it? For example, trying to subdue a bank security guard to rob the place would probably be treated very differently than trying to subdue a guy fleeing from an attempted rape of your wife.
As a gross generalization, bearing in mind that different jurisdictions divide up and title offenses differently: Killing someone through carelessness can be punished as negligent homicide. If your conduct is reckless, it can rise to manslaughter. If it’s really reckless, it might be considered depraved-indifference murder.
If your initial use of force was consistent with self-defense, then the subsequent violence probably is too. There comes a point where hitting a defenseless person can no longer be considered self-defense, however.