A GQ question about self-defense shooting:
If a man charges at you with a knife, or is already stabbing you, it is perfectly reasonable to open fire. That’s as clear-cut as it gets.
But in this video, a driver shoots someone who was trying to drag him out of his car. In court, would this still hold up as justified self defense? The driver technically couldn’t predict what the man was going to do after dragging the driver out of his car.
It is still a matter of opinion. How good are the lawyers on both sides of the equation, what are the local laws, how might a jury rule etc.
I am not a lawyer, etc., etc., though I did have a stint as a legal assistant a looong time ago. This means I’m not offering a legal opinion and the specifics of how this would be handled may vary from place to place.
But in general terms, from my recollection, your reactions in a self-defense situation are based on a reasonable amount of fear. “Reasonable fear,” is the operative term.
If you are passing through an area that’s notorious for carjackings followed by torture-murders, it would be reasonable to fear for your life if somebody tried to pull you from your car. If you saw a person walking down the sidewalk and giving people light punches to the shoulder as they walked by, lethal force would be… much less reasonable.
I have not seen that video posted, and am unable to. That’s a Facebook thing. But it goes back to the “reasonable fear” standard, and how well you could sell the jury and/or judge on how reasonable your reactions were.
What state did this occur in? Because allowances for self-defense vary. Depending on the law, it may be that the mere process of dragging someone out of their car is enough for them to respond with deadly force, never mind what may or may not come after.
And FWIW, I haven’t watched the video. I have no interest in seeing someone assaulted or shot, so if there is some nuance to the situation, please consider describing it.
That’s an argument FOR plugging someone.
In the video in question, if the driver’s intent is shown to be to do harm, then the guy who grabbed him is off the hook and the driver’s on the hook. For something.
In the video, a man drives his car down a street lined with protesters, but encounters an obstacle. When his car stops, another man (and many others) rushes up to his window and tries hard to pull the driver out of his car (through the open car window.) The driver then opens fire with a pistol, a single shot, hitting the man trying to yank him out.
Well, the driver was charged, so the police must have thought it was not justified. Google June 8 Seattle driver shoots.
More detail:
It’s hard to see at first, but there is a person (black sweatshirt, purple sleeves) hanging onto the side of the car as it’s moving. At about 0:03, the man lets go of the car and begins running. The car leaves him behind and advances another 25 meters or so. At this point a person, having come from the direction of the car’s origin, arrives at the driver’s window and begins trying to violently haul him out. I’m pretty sure this person is the same guy we see hanging onto the side of the car when the video starts.
Other media sources talk about a “suspect driving through a crowd of protesters”, which just makes it look and sound like a crazy guy with a gun was running people over and then got out of his car and started shooting/threatening people for no reason. But the driver wasn’t running anybody over in any of the footage I saw. Indeed, there were a couple dozen people he could have run down if he had wanted to. He came to a controlled stop when confronted with a physical barrier - at which point multiple protesters ran up and started hammering on his car, and the aforementioned person started trying to physically haul him out through the window. When the crowd backed off, he stopped aiming his gun around and walked away to turn himself in to the cops.
IANAL, but whatever may have happened before the 0:03 mark (or before the video even started), ISTM that the person at the window is not acting in self-defense after that, and the driver is justified in exerting lethal force in his own defense.
Here is a source that shows the entire sequence of events - with the actual gunshot edited out, starting at 1:25.
nm, deleted
If this happened in my state, the driver clearly has a reasonable fear of serious bodily injury or death, and has no duty to retreat. That’s a clean shoot. The criminal, if he survives, should be liable for any damages he caused to the shooter’s vehicle. Apparently the law is different wherever this happened.
Washington state has no duty to rereat. But even if it did, it looked to me like retreat was not possible without running over multiple other people.
One important question is- why did he drive into the protestors to start with? I know he wasnt trying to hit them, but was he being bullheaded? or had no choice?
I have little doubt they were gonna beat him, but…
I deleted the above post because it was a dumpster fire of misspellings. Nothing up my sleeve. It is reproduced (hopefully with fewer spelling errors) below:
Then I don’t think I can even begin to answer this question without knowing what happened to set up the confrontation. Did he drive through a crowd of protesters (and in what way)? Did he have his window rolled down so he could egg protesters on and try to provoke them into a fight? Because if going into the crowd to provoke someone to attack him was his goal, then self defense is… a hard sell.
RCW 9A.16.020 seems to be the applicable portion of the law in Washington state. FWIW, citizen’s arrest or something like it may come into play here, too, because there’s this blurb:
(2) Whenever necessarily used by a person arresting one who has committed a felony and delivering him or her to a public officer competent to receive him or her into custody;
So… that’s where the background becomes important, I think. Did the driver just commit a felony, and were members of the crowd seeking to apprehend him to hand over to the police? Because that gives them the justified use of force (up to a point), not someone who committed, say, vehicular assault. Hypothetically.
Have you considered that the nearest analogue to someone charging at someone else with a knife in this situation might be… the guy with the car and gun?
Barring something really odd like you’re car is on fire it’s not a matter of opinion that someone is committing an act of violence. The threat does not have to be death in order to defend yourself.
Unless, maybe, you’ve just committed a felony and the person reaching through your window is trying to apprehend you under applicable portions of state law allowing for such use of force.
The question the OP asks isn’t whether an act of violence has occurred. It is how would it hold up in a court of law, and that is most definitely a matter a opinion.
He didn’t actually run anyone over and he did not contrive his path to attempt to hit anyone, but he was driving through several people who were in the street and made no effort to slow to avoid hitting them. It is somewhat speculative about what would have happened had the pedestrians not scattered out of the way in time but I think there is a case for assault (IANAL, IANALEO). The guy who reached in the window might present a defense that he was trying to prevent what reasonably looked like a driver trying to hit people, even though he had not actually hit anyone. Yet.
Oh, and other footage shows that he did get out of his car and brandished a gun.
However, there may be mitigating circumstances if the guy who reached into the car had a reasonable fear that the driver was deliberately trying to cause great bodily harm or death to others.
This is probably not the best example to use to address the OP’s question because of the ambiguous circumstances. Suppose you are just sitting at a red light tapping your ashes out the window when someone runs up and grabs you through the window. What force is justified?
It’s not a matter of opinion that the act unto itself was violent and presented a danger to the driver.
If you want to throw a bunch of “what if’s” into the mix that’s a different question. But an isolated act of trying to yank someone out of the car is one that justifies the use of a gun.