Quote:
Originally Posted by RealtorTommy  As someone who doesn't write law....it's a start....
You get my point.....Please fill in the proper wording that even you could not defend against.... |
I get your point, and mine wasn't to say the law is problematic because of any abilities I may have. My points were as follows:
[1] a law that says "any justifiable shooting by the cops under X, Y, and Z cirumstances is an auto-acquit" is begging the question. Whether the shooting
was justifiable is determined by investigating and perhaps ultimately trying the trigger-happy guys who think that anything that
might be characterized as a
potential threat at some point in the future justifies shooting to kill. Since such a law has no rational purpose--as it only restates the basic legal inquiry--its only conceivable purpose is to be trotted out by a defense lawyer and bias a jury by convincing them that there's some special lower legal standard for cops re: justification. As opposed to that which they'd apply should I, a mere civvie mortal, whip out my concealed carry and, say, drop some guy who I thought was maybe reaching into his coat for I knew not what, but suspected might be a weapon because I sure couldn't see for sure that it wasn't a weapon.
[2] I found the underscored text problematic because it allowed the cops too broad a legal protection for their decision to shoot, allowing a killing as justified by their being threatened if any random object sort of resembled a gun and was maybe displayed in a threatening manner. Don't get me wrong: if someone's reaching for a black plastic cap gun or a Zeus Warsensor, and the cop blows them away, I'm fine with letting him off the hook without so much as a trial. However, the language you put in place here creates the same problem that the "justified shootings are justified" language did above: a defense lawyer for a cop who shot someone under otherwise unjustifiable circumstances pointing to the text of a special "cop justification statute," which itself adds nothing to the legal standard for justifiable homicide, and telling a jury (which by its very definition is full of 12 gullible idiots) "although my client shot a man who was reaching for what ultimately turned out to be his black leather wallet, he must be acquitted without any review of whether the circumstances made that a justifiable act, because the wallet was a 'weapon like object' and his reaching for it was 'using the object in a threatening manner.'" There's already a legal framework that requires a contextual analysis for justification: the language I'd choose instead is none at all.