John99 said:
Someone steals a police car and speeds through the streets with sirens blaring, putting everyone in danger and attempts to ram into another car (oh, but he missed ) that is OK. So the cops use lethal force to stop him to prevent him from killing someone then that is a problem?
See Zanket's point above.
In the meantime, though the kid peacefully and surreptitiously returned the vehicle to the pool, if someone died in the cops' shootout, should he have been charged with first-degree murder?
We know what the
Arizona statute says. It's not a big enough deal for me to look up the one in Washington. The point being that, while certain intents of the statute might make sense, it's a ridiculous one. There is a difference between the examples we've been considering.
• Cops in a chase accidentally hit another vehicle, kill someone. This death can reasonably be attributed to the suspect, but first degree murder? Manslaughter will do. The statute seems vicious in that case, to be used as a weapon to make the righteous feel better.
• News helicopters collide, crash while covering a police chase. The statute in Arizona makes these deaths the problem of the suspect, but as the vote suggests, such a standard might well cross the line of common sense. People seem to be having a hard time accepting that someone else's negligence should be your problem.
• Guy shares marijuana with friend, chokes on a hit, falls down stairs; friend is guilty of first degree murder? The example is constructed to isolate the "murderer". It wasn't even his dope or pipe. It wasn't his house. Two people consent to commit a crime together, how is the one responsible for the other falling down the stairs? The answer, of course, is only by statute.
• Police panic, discharge weapons at wrong suspect. Should the suspect be held accountable for what's taking place blocks away? I mean, the cops who did the ramming didn't really do much to confirm their target after they lost sight and "reacquired" the suspect.
Let's think about that last one for a moment. A depressed teenager doing something stupid should wind up charged with
first degree murder because one cop shot another while the kid was parking the car?
It sounds good to many of us when we're angry. Just like people complaining about Bush. Yes, I think he's a war criminal, but if it ever came to executing the man for his crimes, I'd be willing to bet his road to the gallows would be painted with extraneous appeals to emotion, exaggerations beyond belief, and the kind of neurotic self-righteousness quite common among Americans. Jeez, in New York when the cops killed a guy for not having drugs on him, Mayor Giuliani opened a sealed juvenile file, exposed an arrest never charged for shoplifting, and called the victim a career criminal. Now, maybe the cops aren't lying. Maybe Dorismond, wrapped up in a scuffle, could hear the inbound cop screaming and cussing at him. Maybe some bystander did tell Dorismond to get his assailant's gun. But for heaven's sake, it wasn't necessary to tar and feather the dead in order to make the cops look like angels. Especially since nobody believes cops are angels.
Did somebody do something wrong? Fine, let's "get 'im". But we don't need lynch mobs, and we don't need to take "justice" to such extremes that you are held responsible for other people's negligence. If that's why the statute was crafted, it needs to go. If that's how it's being applied despite more sensible intentions in its invention, the people pushing the application need to go screw.