[metaphysicalyes]

I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life. It is the actual intent that counts.

Appeal to mental ineptitude is not a defense of murder. If a person can't distinguish between intention of person to kill others vs escaping when driving in a completely different direction then that person does not have right to posses a weapon which can take human life.

Also interesting that you do not address the 2nd and 3rd shot at all.

[bananabiscuit]

I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life. It is the actual intent that counts.

No, I am not claiming that. I explained previously why it looked to me that Renee intended to hit the officer with her car, very hard, and the only reason it was a slight hit was because she lost traction on the ice. [1] And also she did hit the officer, this was even acknowledged in the NYT analysis of the event. Again, he got lucky that he was able to jump out of the way, only because the icy road caused her wheels to lose grip.

At that point, I would think there is an argument to be made that the officer’s life was threatened, and he is allowed to use lethal force, he does not have the time to second guess if Renee is going to change her mind and not hit anyone with her car. I am NOT saying that the officer is definitively absolved, just that based on what I’m seeing, it is not as clear a case of murder as a lot of people claim.

Also interesting that you do not address the 2nd and 3rd shot at all.

This is confusing to me and I don’t really know what to say about that, the lethal intent is there with the 1st shot. Is it that we expect the officer to go from deciding that she is enough of a threat to be shot, to deciding that she is a non-threat in the split second after his first shot?

[1] but just for posterity: a) when she accelerated, she still had her wheels pointing just left of center while the officer was directly in front of her. b) she was looking directly at the officer when she accelerated.

[metaphysicalyes]

> And also she did hit the officer

She made contact with the officer. And that is only because he had to put down his recording phone and take out the gun instead of focussing on stepping out of the way. This framing feels even more egregious when you consider that he casually strolled to take a glance at dead mother and escape the scene.

> only reason it was a slight hit was because she lost traction on the ice.

> only because the icy road caused her wheels to lose grip

It is winter season and all roads are layered with ice. Ice was not a lucky coincidence at the spot she was shot. When you drive in ice for months every year you gain the intuition of vehicle motion. Before being killed, she had reversed in that spot and had a good idea how much gas creates how much traction like any other person driving in snow does. You can not claim her intent to hit based on how fast the wheels are spinning. Grip is immaterial, what matters is how fast the vehicle was actually moving.

> This is confusing to me and I don’t really know what to say about that

> deciding that she is a non-threat in the split second after his first shot

If you can make a decision to step aside and fire subsequent shots from side window instead, your intention is no longer own safety but to kill, in common parlance, murder. A woman driving in different direction, clearly escaping is somehow more of a threat than the masked gunmen surrounding her.

> when she accelerated, she still had her wheels pointing just left of center

Do you drive? If you did you would know that it is not a discrete process of turning and forward motion. It is easier to turn when you are moving. Whatever the direction of wheel at the moment, the rotation towards right while the masked gunman is on left corner makes her intent clear.

> she was looking directly at the officer when she accelerated

Because he is a masked gunman with ability to leave her child motherless which he actually did.

[zahlman]

> I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life. It is the actual intent that counts.

As an objective legal matter, it is. There is abundant case law for this. Cases relevant to the specific case where the shooting victim is attempting to flee the scene include https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._Connor and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_v._Garner .

> If a person can't distinguish between intention of person to kill others vs escaping when driving in a completely different direction then that person does not have right to posses a weapon which can take human life.

The law quite literally does not work that way.

[dragonwriter]

> > I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life > > It is the actual intent that counts.

> As an objective legal matter, it is.

You are both wrong. The requirement for self-defense (which may or may not even be available here if it is ever charged, because it doesn't apply to all kinds of murder, notably generally not to felony murder, which given ICE's very narrow jurisdiction there is a very good case, IMO, applies here) is neither mere subjective perception nor actual intent, but objectively reasonable fear. Actual perception of a threat which is not objectively reasonable in the circumstances does not justify self-defense.

[zahlman]

Fair enough, I misspoke, implicitly accepting a false dichotomy. The case law I cited agrees with you WRT the standard.

But I don't understand the distinction in "kinds of murder" that you are describing; murder is always a felony and "misdemeanor murder" is a term of art not describing an actual statutory offense (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misdemeanor_murder). Nor can I see how the "narrow jurisdiction" of ICE is relevant here, given that it includes (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357):

> (a)(5) to make arrests — (A) for any offense against the United States, if the offense is committed in the officer’s or employee’s presence

Obstructing federal officers in their duty is a federal offense, and it necessarily occurs in the presence of those officers.

Anyway, given the evidence I find it quite clear that the threat was "objectively reasonable in the circumstances" (i.e., with the available information in the moment, without benefit of hindsight and given the time pressure).

[dragonwriter]

> But I don't understand the distinction in "kinds of murder" that you are describing; murder is always a felony

“Felony murder” is not “murder which is a felony” but “murder where malice is established not by, by the fact that the death was the consequence of the commission of a felony by the perpetrator, rather than by intent to kill or any of the other alternatives”.

> Obstructing federal officers in their duty is a federal offense

There is no reasonable case, based on any of the video I've seen, continuously from before to through the incident, to be made that she could reasonably be perceived to have been doing that when they exited their vehicle and accosted her.

[zahlman]

Their job involved driving their own vehicles down the road. Her vehicle was in the way, deliberately stopped and deliberately perpendicular to traffic. That is an obstruction of their duty.