An incident I heard about on the radio

[blackmind]

Originally Posted by Clinot

Originally Posted by blackmind

"Now, say this cop is raping a woman after placing her (wrongly) in custody. Who here wants to maintain that once a cop is raping her, the woman still may not defend herself with lethal force?!"


Could you elaborate on this?

Um, no, not without you first explaining what about it needs elaboration. I think it's pretty clear.


-blackmind

[blackmind]

Harris County District Attorney John B. Holmes Jr. said Thursday that the six Houston police officers involved in a Sunday raid in which a man was killed could have been within their rights to shoot him - even if they had no right to be in his home.

"I don't know of any authority at this point that gave them the right to be in that residence," Holmes said. "But that doesn't make the shooting a crime."
[Either the officers had authority to enter the residence or they didn't. If they did not, then their shooting a man in his own home amounts to homicide. What's so hard about that? Or hasn't Mr. Holmes ever heard of the Fourth Amendment?]

If I were burglarizing a guy's house and he came out of his bedroom to find me standing in his hallway with loot, and he points a gun at me, I AM NOT PROTECTED BY LAWS THAT ENTITLE ME TO SELF DEFENSE, since I am committing a crime!


Police entering a house by force, when that house is NOT the one subject to the warrant, are committing a crime and therefore they should have no protection under self-defense laws if the occupant draws and/or fires on them.

The same should hold true if they do have a warrant, but the reason for the warrant's issue is fraudulent. (My reasoning is, they will then be busting in on an innocent man who has little or no reason to think the cops will be a-callin', and he can be excused for the reasonable reaction of defending his life and home while thinking he is the victim of a home-invasion robbery.)


The bottom line is that the police court disaster when they execute (pun?) no-knock warrants. In sports it's called "drawing the foul," is it not? They do something that is wrong, or very near the line, and cause a person to do something that then justifies killing him. That's just plain intolerably wrong.

-blackmind