Interesting case.
"Earlier on Saturday, the judge said questions posed by the 12-member jury
indicated they thought Dunn was initially justified in firing the first
seven bullets to defend himself from Davis, but then went too far by
continuing to pull the trigger as the fleeing teens drove off.
"The judge speculated that jurors felt Dunn overstepped the limits of
self-defense law by shooting a final volley of three bullets after he got
out of his car, when the teens no longer represented any kind of threat."
"They may say justifiable use of deadly force was in play to (a) certain
point and then it went away. There was no justification for those last set
of shots," the judge said."
"You may only legally shoot to stop the threat. Anything beyond that, and
you face going to prison for many years to come, as Micheal Dunn has now
discovered the hard way. Those of you who insist on "shooting to kill" at
all costs once the shooting starts because some non-attorney shared their
incorrect "conventional wisdom" are going to be very popular on the prison
dating scene."
Really what the Authorities mean when they say you may not use "excessive
force" is that you are not allowed to "punish" an assailant for attacking
you. You are only allowed to use the force necessary to stop the attack
again you. Once an assailant has ceased attacking you or ceased posing a
credible threat to you, you have to stop using force too. You may not chase
after the perpetrator to "teach him a lesson".
Now is this doctrine fair and realistic? No, it frequently is not applied
in a realistic manner, especially in cases involving non-lethal force (as in
a fist fight), since it definitely goes against human nature. Humans
instinctively understand that fear of retribution is what ultimately makes
people behave themselves, so consequently it is often hard for people to
restrain themselves and "stop on a dime" when their blood is up. As talk
radio personality Barry Farber used to opine "Wrong-doing tends to invite
over-reaction". Many people will typically be very two-faced about this
issue as well, advising you to exercise unnatural restraint in the face of
extreme provocation, but then going out of their way to punish a perpetrator
when they themselves are the injured party (and then coming up with some
specious rationalization of why it was Ok for THEM to act that way). People
like that may even sit on a jury deciding someone's fate.
Nevertheless, fair or not, the Law prohibits "excessive force" in
self-defense; the courts consider it to be a bad thing whenever people are
killed, even violent wrong doers and thus consider the use of lethal force
is be avoided whenever possible. Therefore, the citizen employing force in
self-defense must remain aware of this in order to avoid prosecution and /or
conviction.
"Note: The media and their citizens control allies are attempting to make
the same claims about "stand your ground" laws in this case as they did in
the Zimmerman trial. That claim was patently false in both trials. Neither
Zimmerman nor Dunn raised "stand your ground" defenses."
By Epictetus
No comments:
Post a Comment