Is it legal in the US to shoot a fleeing burglar? Or in general, is it legal to shoot a criminal fleeing the scene of crime?
CAN you do it? No, of course not. Totally impossible. 
Most places at least, shooting someone fleeing will get you in trouble. Doubly if you chase them. But like if you’re hiding under the bed and shoot them? Maybe?
Not sure about other parts of the country, but Texas will let you shoot someone who is running away to protect property under certain circumstances. Circumstance being it is night, the person is fleeing with the property, and you don’t believe you can recover it by other means.
If you are faster than me and it is dark, it might be smart to let me see that you dropped whatever you stole.
Very generally speaking, in the vast majority of U.S. jurisdictions, use of lethal force is reserved almost exclusively for self-defense, and sometimes defense of others.
In the case of a fleeing burglar/criminal, it’s hard to claim “imminent danger to life/limb,” and thus use of lethal force is generally no longer justifiable in that case.
There are exceptions, as txtumbleweed has shown, and slight variations in different jurisdiction’s wording of use of force laws allow slightly different legal interpretations from one place to another.
But overall, generally, shooting a fleeing burglar/criminal in the back will get you in a lot of legal trouble.
You are going to see some variaton in circumstance as well, shot in the back in your bedroom vs your front yard are going to be very different legally. Someone 10-15 feet away still represents a threat.
for example I break into your house, I see you and quickly turn around and start to stoll away “neener neener you can’t shoot me in the back” while drawing my gun from the concealed holster in the front waistband of my pants (Which you cant see because I am walking away from you).
In general, there is no general rule on this.
Almost any question beginning “Is it legal in the U.S…” is going to have the answer, “it depends what state you are in.”
I think a lot of people forget just how much sovereignty states have here in the good ol’ U S of A
If he’s in your house, he’s your rightful prey where I live.
More than one shitbag has ended up shot in the back as he tried to flee while providing his own covering fire.
From 2012 Minnesota Statutes on use of force (abridged):
and also:
IANAL, but I read that last as you can shoot in robber in the back (in your home) if it’s the only way to prevent the commission of a felony (i.e., them stealing your stuff). However, given the focus on “reasonable force” in the larger statute, you’d have to make a damn good case that no lesser force would do. So tackle them or pistol-whip them in the head first; if they fight back, THEN shoot them.
Same here. So long as you feel threatened, you can shoot. The cop who helped me get my carry permit told me that an intruder in my home was a threat. He said I should pull the trigger until I no longer felt threatened.
There is absolutely no duty to retreat in your own home in South Carolina. I assume that means that if it’s, like, a five year old then they might charge you, but generally speaking you’re going to get your ass shot in this state. A cop once actually advised me that if I shot a guy coming through the window I should drag his ass all the way through before I called 911, which I suspect is more presence of mind than I would have at the time. Plus more upper body strength. (And wouldn’t it be, you know, obvious?) I was told in a CCW class that I took via a very weird series of events that technically some believe our laws in this state allow us to shoot people in our yards, but there’s never been a good test case. I assume a good test case would be me, Flower of Southern White Womanhood, failing to drag a full grown man through a window all on my lonesome.
this won’t help much
i got into a debate about guard dog law when i first got my doberman. the people on the dobie forum told me it’s illegal to even post “caution: guard dog” signs because it connotes some “intention to allow your dog to attack,” and such signage serves as liability once someone is attacked. they even suggested their own clever rewordings of signs in order to skirt this perceived law. it turns out they don’t know what they are taking about…
i did a lot of research back in and even conferred with some lawyers. the conclusion drawn was that since this is private, industrial (business) property with posted keep out signs, dog can eat you if you come over the fence. legally. my take away was even if a kid trespasses to collect an errant frisbee, he can be “legally” attacked, by either me or the dog (we have fairly liberal castle law here). this went into play when someone cut a hole in the fence and came in the night to steal our work truck. my dog heard it and i released him outside before i even knew what was going on. they tore ass out of the lot (off the property) and barely made it before the dog got them. so as i understood things (through research and questioning), that was fine so long as they were still on the property.
however, we had a huge dust-up when a pharmacist was robbed and shot the armed intruders. he got into big trouble for 1. chasing the assailants out of the front door and firing upon them as they fled and 2. reloading and secondarily shooting a wounded suspect who remained in the building (subsequently making sure the writhing robber was good and dead). the business owner was charged for manslaughter and is in prison now.
thisarticle explains the use of deadly force to prevent escape (by an officer) is only permitted when someone is in immediate danger.
used to be you could shoot any fleeing felon. ^that benchmark makes it no longer the case.
i am struggling to find any cites or cases involving use of deadly force on a fleeing suspect pertaining to civilians. all the pings bring back caselaw on police officers. i hope someone else has more insight.
eta thissite claims you cannot shoot a fleeing criminal under castle law.
It used to be legal to shoot a fleeing suspect who refused to stop. SCOTUS found this to be overkill and was therefore unconstitutional.
SCOTUS ruling in Tennessee v. Garner - 471 U.S. 1 (1985)
The Tennessee statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes the use of deadly force against, as in this case, an apparently unarmed, nondangerous fleeing suspect; such force may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others. Pp. 497 U. S. 7-22.
Emphasis added.
So no, you may only shoot to end a threat and not just to stop someone from running.
If you do, roll him over and put your first shot in his front.
But a threat only to you and your relatives? What if you just witnessed someone killing somebody and now he is running but still holding a weapon? Doesn’t that count as a threat he still may posing, well maybe not to you, but to other people?
I repeat:
“…the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”
Anecdotal: not long before I left Alaska, a pastor in Wasilla (big surprise) shot and killed two young burglars fleeing his church/home. Both were shot in the back. The pastor was not tried for any crime.
The pastor was tried and acquitted.
Jury acquits pastor of shooting burglars in the back (memberhip required)