Doesn’t matter, as long as the officer had probable cause to fear for the safety of others. An escaped prisoner is likely to be a danger to others. I don’t think that needs any other proof at all besides the fact that the person is an escaped prisoner.
I can’t believe people are nit-picking this.
Shoot a black boy in the park, and people will give the police the benefit of the doubt. Shoot a white escaped convict, and everyone is concerned about police overreach. (not everyone, of course, but still…)
I remember THIS:
I bet they thought they had probable cause too.
Looking at a picture his appearance hasn’t changed much. I think it was a clean shoot, just arguing the hypothetical. I assume the searchers had been prepped with photos showing him shaved or with a 3 week beard, and I assume they had been tracking him and it wasn’t just a random encounter. And also I’m sure the sgt. was in uniform and ordered him to raise his hands before Sweat ran.
What part of “(Officer Jay Cook) positively identified Sweat, repeatedly commanded him to stop, engaged him in a lengthy foot chase…” don’t you get?
IIRC those cops were clearly in a panic and didn’t take reasonable efforts to ascertain who they were shooting at. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
My question matters for differentiating between :
He’s an escapee from custody and therefore deserves to be shot even if his original crime was importing fish eggs without a license.
He’s a convicted murderer and deserves to be shot because he’s already killed one cop and it is reasonable to assume he’d kill another if given the chance.
Yeah, I’m pretty much okay with how the Sweat thing went down, (without knowing every last detail) but just saying that we’ve given cops a WIDE latitude on what is probable cause and I don’t think it’s a “nit-pick” to at least question or discuss what went down.
How about “No matter what he’s done before, right now he appears to be a clear and present danger to any and all around him, and he needs to be apprehended with all due haste, by any means necessary”.
Here’s the actual New York law:
My bolding. So a police officer in NY is legally permitted to shoot a person attempting to escape arrest under certain circumstances, even if that person is not posing an immediate danger to others. So the cop is legally in the clear, no “likely danger to others” handwaving required.
Note that this section of NY law only applies to police - a civilian shooting under such circumstances would be in violation of the law.
“(a) The offense committed by such person was:
(i) a felony or an attempt to commit a felony involving the use or
attempted use or threatened imminent use of physical force against a
person; or
(ii) kidnapping, arson, escape in the first degree, burglary in the
first degree or any attempt to commit such a crime; or
(b) The offense committed or attempted by such person was a felony and
that, in the course of resisting arrest therefor or attempting to escape
from custody, such person is armed with a firearm or deadly weapon; o”
So, that answers my question. If the escapee imported fish eggs without a license or sold fraudulent securities and isn’t known to have picked up a gun during his time on the lam, shooting him would be unlawful.
My bolding.
nm
If the importation of fish eggs or securities fraud were felonies, he would be guilty of escape in the first degree. Bernie Madoff’s crimes were white-collar and non-violent. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison. If he were to escape, would it be unreasonable to consider him to be a threat to police and civilians? … Another way to look at it; anyone that would risk their own life escaping from an armed prison would likely risk the lives of others to prevent going back.
Walter Scott , a police officer in South Carolina was indicted by a grand jury on a murder charge for shooting a fleeing suspect in April, 2015. He is currently in jail awaiting trial.
I understand Sweat was an escaped prisoner. It seems that alone makes a legal difference.
Yes it makes a big difference.
Constraints on use of deadly force against fleeing felons were addressed in Tennessee v. Garner. At common law the fleeing felon rule permitted the use of deadly force to be used to stop a felony suspect who was in clear flight. After Garner that was no longer the case.
There is an issue here we can debate. One approach would be to have all the laws and rules and procedures you can think of, already in place ahead of time to cover every kind of situation you can think of. There might be an à priori rule that you can’t shoot the guy without positive identification. If that’s so, and if there wasn’t positive identification, then it becomes unlawful to shoot him even if he turned out to be the right guy to shoot. Our American Way Of Law generally prefers this kind of system.
OTOH, you could argue that shooting him without adequate ID is only a problem if, after the fact, it turns out to be the wrong guy. But if it turns out to be the right guy to shoot after all, no problem! (This is basically Shodan’s argument.)
Compare with the rules about booby-trapping your cabin in the woods: It’s à priori illegal, the logic being that a booby-trap might catch the “wrong” guy (like a fireman responding to a fire) just as much as it might catch the “right” guy (e.g., a burglar). With the à priori law, the booby-trapper is liable no matter who the trap catches. In the Shodan system, the case is decided after the fact according to the desirability of trapping (and harming) the person who got trapped.
. . . with the additional complexity that there was an international border hidden nearby in them thar trees. They especially didn’t want him to get to Canada.
Side-question: What would have happened if he made it to Canada? There were Canadian LEO’s out in force in that area as well, so they might well have caught him then. Presumably, Canada would cooperate in dealing with him, presumably extraditing him. But it might become a thorny legal issue that still has to wind its way through the courts in any case. If he were accused of a capital crime, or was already on death row, it would have gotten even messier.
(If he had made it to Canada and kept going, he could even have made it all the way to Detroit. Did y’all know that Detroit is north of Canada?)
If you’re crossing your I’s and dotting your T’s, you’re doing it wrong.
Fish eggs or fraudulent securities, okay. But heaven help the dude caught selling loosies.
Quite aside from the legalities of shooting him, there’s also a strong incentive to catch him alive just so we will have a better chance of learning the whole story. That’s generally considered important too.
Canada would have extradited him in a second, as long as he was not subject to the death penalty. (Although Charles Ng was extradited, despite that.) Canada did not, however, have 1300 police scouring southern Quebec, so if he had made it across, his chances of getting away* markedly improve.
*For a certain value of getting away. Most career criminals don’t know how to do anything except be criminals. He’d have got caught sometime, somewhere, possibly after he’d murdered someone else. Fortunately, that won’t happen.
By all accounts, the officer who shot Sweat recognised him, ordered him to stop, and only fired when it appeared that Sweat, who was fleeing, was about to make it to the tree line where he might have escaped. Fully justified use of force.
I’m sure Canada would have dumped him back on us like a hot potato, although I would sort of expect it would have to go through diplomatic and legal channels and might have taken a long time. I don’t think the Mounties who might have captured him would just carry him back to the border and toss him over. And it might have made quite an international incident if he had made it into Canada and then got shot and killed by LEO’s there.
I don’t know about 1300 police, but I read that they did have some large number of Canadian LEO’s congregating in the nearby area.
Ng wasn’t subject to the death penalty. That is, he was, but the United States had to agree to renounce that and reduce his penalty to life in prison as one of the conditions for Canada to extradite him.