You don’t get to shoot a cop who is doing his job, even if that job involves mistakenly breaking down your door.
Again, your two philosophies directly conflict. I asked you about a very simple scenario:
In the dark at night, someone breaks down my door. I have reasonable fear for my life and a gun in my hand. It’s dark and all I can see is the shape of a person with a gun in their hand. Can I shoot them?
Not if they’re a cop doing their job.
How many fractions of a second did the Rice kid have to do what he was told?
Then you don’t believe that I can shoot an unidentified intruder if I’m in reasonable fear for my life? I thought you believed in self-defense! What a shock! Steophan is against the right of self-defense for citizens to defend their homes from unknown intruders in the dark!
Pausing to identify the intruder could cost me my life, thanks to your anti-self-defense philosophy.
You’ve accused him of threatening or appearing to threaten a police officer multiple times.
No, you don’t in fact do that unless you’re an incompetent moron.
Let’s say a tiger escapes from its cage. Your actions in order of preference are:
- Isolate the tiger from the general public (either by trapping the tiger somewhere or removing the public from the vicinity) until it can be coaxed or herded back into its enclosure.
- Tranquilize the tiger from a distance. This is less preferable than 1) as even tranqs can cause potential damage to animals, but if 1) isn’t a reasonable option this may become necessary.
- If 1) and 2) are not options and/or the tiger poses an immediate danger to someone, then and only then is lethal force used.
You will note that none of the options are “Run right up to the tiger, shout at it, and then shoot it to death two seconds later because your aggressive approach caused it to react”. Because that would be the action of an incompetent moron.
As a last resort. No one is saying there are no circumstances under which the police should shoot someone, although I can understand why you feel the need to keep claiming this as it allows you to pretend you have any credibility left on the subject.
I wasn’t intending to build a full legal case on a passing rhetorical device but if you likehere’s the Wiki:
If it makes you feel better, I doubt anyone would bother to try a case on this basis when potential manslaughter was on the table but nonetheless the officer was reckless and a boy died as a direct result of it.
But not to instigate or escalate them, for fuck’s sake.
Which Rice didn’t do, remember? Do try to keep your story straight.
You can defend yourself from unknown intruders if you have a reasonable belief that they present an imminent threat, but not from cops doing their job. They are completely different situations.
If someone is breaking down my door in the middle of the night, and they have a gun in their hand, then I have a reasonable belief that they present an imminent threat. So I can shoot them, right?
That’s not an accusation, it’s an observation. I’ve never claimed Rice committed a crime, as there’s no reason to even consider it.
If you have a reasonable belief that they present an imminent threat, yes. If they are a cop doing their job, no. Assuming that the cop is in uniform, if not it would probably be reasonable to misidentify them.
It’s entirely possible to have a reasonable belief that they present an imminent threat in the time before I figure out that they’re a cop. In the dark I might be able to see nothing more than a body shape and a gun. If I wait to identify them, they might kill me and my family. So I can shoot them, right? Because I have a reasonable belief that they present an imminent threat, even if this is before I’ve identified who they are?
You can shoot to kill someone who you reasonably believe to be an imminent threat to the life of you or your family. You may not shoot a cop who is doing their job.
There’s not going to be a different answer no matter how many times you rephrase the same question. Don’t shoot cops who are doing their jobs, or even cops who claim to be doing their jobs but are actually unlawfully arresting or searching or whatever. Deal with it in court later.
This is a direct conflict, since both of these things might occur at the same time. If you actually care about the right to self-defense, then you would agree that I can shoot someone if I reasonably believe they are an imminent threat to the life of me and my family, under any circumstances, and even if they’re later revealed to be a police officer who busted down the wrong door.
Or maybe you don’t really care about self-defense, and only about protecting cops no matter what mistakes they make.
I don’t believe that this is correct for your self-defense scenario, but IANAL. Self-defense is a positive defense; you’re admitting to shooting someone, but you are claiming it’s justified. It’s up to you to demonstrate that justification to the jury.
Lawyer Dopers, am I off-base here?
It’s not an observation; it’s speculation at best and an accusation at worst. Observations require something to be observed. The video does not show Rice threatening the officer.
So “threatening a police officer with a gun” isn’t a crime?
It doesn’t disturb you that, according to your legal philosophy if there we no witnesses, I could walk into a room, shoot you, claim self-defense (“He was going right for my throat!”) and the burden would be on the state to prove that you weren’t trying to kill me when I shot you?
Right. And Al Capone is innocent of everything except tax evasion. :rolleyes:
Legally, you’re technically right. Realistically: are you serious? And/or fucking stupid?
Bullshit. I’ve explained at length why I found that the juries in the Castile and Slager cases were wrong. I spent plenty of time going over the evidence available.
Your only response to this has basically been, “The juries know better so you’re wrong”. That’s not an argument, that’s exactly what you’re trying to prove! That, and to pretend that my position is something entirely different, and imply a bunch of bullshit that does not follow from my posts. Why? It’s dumb. And it’s really transparent.
I think that with the benefit of hindsight, more time, and more evidence, I can do better than 12 random schmucks who may or may not know anything about the law and bring all their own biases to the table. I think the one holdout in the Michael Slager case was almost certainly not looking at the law objectively. I think that it’s possible that Yanez was still within the borders of the law, but that if that is true, the law is incredibly unjust.
And, presumably, they have a right to flashbang that infant. My god, lick harder, I can almost not see my face reflected in that officer’s boot. Even if you’re right, even if any pretense of self-defense goes out the window the moment the people breaking down your door are cops (even if they don’t announce it as such and even if there’s no way you could have known), that’s the legal issue. The moral issue is something else entirely: this guy shot at people breaking through his window. That’s clear-cut defense of self and property. The fact that the unidentified intruders had a “right to be there” does nothing to eliminate the fact that there is no way Marvin Guy could have known that at the time. This is not a murderer. At best, he made a mistake - a mistake far more innocent than the mistake Officer Yanez made.
Okay, so you agree that the murder charge is bullshit, right? Because prosecutors tried to sentence Marvin Guy to death. He’s still awaiting trial three years later.
I’d be astonished if it was, it seems far too specific. Those two things may well be elements of one or more crimes, but as no-one is accusing Rice of any crime it’s irrelevant.
You have a right to self defence. You have a responsibility not to shoot cops who are doing their jobs. They sometimes conflict. That doesn’t remove either the right or the responsibility.
Good for you for admitting that these can conflict. When they conflict, which takes priority? In the moment, if I pull the trigger due to the unknown intruder with a gun in the dark, I might kill a cop who broke down the wrong door. But in the moment, if I refrain from pulling the trigger, he might kill me and my family. So what’s the correct action?
Simple - you shouldn’t shoot the people with guns breaking down your door in the middle of the night because they might be cops, but they should shoot you because you might have mistaken them for intruders and be planning to shoot them. Because it’s a dangerous situation. Or something.