This controversial case happened in Germany in 2010 and I’m interested to know (hypothetically) what the legal situation would have been in the United States, had it occurred there:
*A member of the Hells Angels motorcycle club in the German city of Anhausen, Rhineland-Palatinate, had received death threats by members of the rival Bandidos motorcycle club. One day in March 2010, at 6 o’clock in the morning, a police SWAT team was charged with executing a search warrant at the residence of said biker. The SWAT team members, who never identified themselves as law enforcement officers (which later proved to be a fatal mistake), tried to enter the house by breaking the front door of the house, but they struggled in doing so since the front door was heavily fortified.
The biker, who had been sleeping, was awoken by the noise. He grabbed his pistol (which he legally owned, strangely enough) and went to the hallway. Through the blurred window of his front door, the biker saw this person (who, again, did not identify himself as a law enforcement officer) who was still in the process of breaking the door. The biker shouted: “piss off!” and he turned the lights on. When the intruder still wouldn’t let up and continued to break the door, the biker fired a shot through the door. The police officer was hit under the armpit, just above the bullet-proof vest he was wearing, and was fatally wounded.
The biker was charged with manslaughter. He claimed that he feared for his life and that he could not have known that the intruders were indeed law enforcement officers and not members of a rival gang.*
So what would have been the legal situation, had this case occurred in Florida or California? Is there a concept of “putative self-defense” under criminal law in the United States?
NYC, late 70s, early 80s? Police sent a bunch of police out to apprehend some guy in his (or girlfriend’s) apartment. When they entered he fired a gun at them through a wall hitting at least one, maybe killing one, it’s a long time ago. He got away, was labeled a Mad Dog Killer by the police and press, eventually found. He said the police sent a death squad after him and he was acquitted of the charges involving that raid. IIRC police hadn’t followed procedures.
Not one of your target jurisdictions, but we had a similar situation here in Kansas in 1995: police were serving a no-knock warrant in the middle of the night at the home of a suspected drug dealer. The suspect alleged he thought it was a burglary and fired at “shadowy figures” through the front door; he struck and killed one of the officers. He was initially charged with capital murder, but the state later downgraded this to second-degree murder, and he was acquitted at trial. (He was convicted of aggravated assault for pointing the gun at another officer and drug charges, and did less than three years in prison.) See Stephen Shively and Officer Tony Patterson, or Broken hearts, broken lives.
His defense centered around his belief that he was defending his home from burglars, and his witnesses included neighbors who testified they never heard the cops announce themselves until after the shots were fired either. He had also called 911 and reported a burglary in progress. The prosecution argued that he knew very well that they were cops, but the jury didn’t buy it.
The right to use deadly force in self-defense in general rests on (paraphrasing) a reasonable fear of serious bodily harm or death. So that’s two elements: one, did the defendant fear serious bodily harm/death, and two, was that belief objectively* reasonable? If the answer to either of these questions is no, a self-defense argument will fail.
We don’t need to look at any special rules governing law enforcement conduct to apply this test, given the facts you provided. Why? Because there was no law enforcement identification made. A citizen generally must comply with even unlawful police orders, but may defend himself against unlawful use of force by police.
As a result, it was not unreasonable for the defendant to believe that the person breaking down the door was an evildoer from whom he could permissibly defend himself.**
In other words, if he believed he was in danger of harm, his fear would not have been unreasonable. Whether he actually believed that was the case is (perhaps surprisingly) a closer question since his door was apparently barricaded. If he had no reason to believe the intruder could breach the door (or another entry), he had little or no reason to fear harm. Your story doesn’t offer enough information for us to conclude one way or the other on that issue.
*“Objectively” as it is used in Anglo-American law is a bit misleading. In that context, it means that a hypothetical reasonable person could have formed the same belief. That is as opposed to a subjective reasonable belief, which looks at whether a person like the defendant could have formed that belief. If the believe is objectively unreasonable but subjectively reasonable, that might preclude a first degree murder conviction, though.
**In many states (though famously not Florida), a defendant has a duty to retreat if he may do so in safety rather than using deadly force. Most US states create an exception for a home, car or workplace (the “castle doctrine”).
As I wrote, the shooter was a member of the Hells Angels and he had received death threats. He was involved in organized crime and he had good reason to assume that rival gangs would be going after him, so an attack would not have come unexpectedly. The front door (and doors in German houses tend to be sturdier than in the U.S. anyway) was secured with three heavy bolting devices. When the shot was fired, the SWAT team member had dismantled two of these bolting devices.
Those would be subjective factors, since they do not directly impact the “reasonable person” analysis. A jury would be likely to take them into account nonetheless if the defendant could find a way to get them in, though.
Colorado’s “Make my Day” law gives extremely wide latitude of action to residents. As long as the DA understood the facts, it’s very unlikely that he would even be indicted.
Could the states or the feds (USA) pass a law including “…you cannot use self defense as an argument in this crime”? Or would that be unconstitutional? It obviously invites nullification.