Quote:
"If the use of force is justified in the immediate situation and becomes deadly in a way that was beyond reasonable expectations, it should not be considered a crime."
Think about that. If that was a valid excuse then every one would be saying right after they shot a person that they were only firing a warning shot.
What if the officers surrounding the officer who fired the warning shot mistakenly believed the shot came from the crowd or an individual?
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It’s not meant as an "excuse", but as a justification … an explanation of how an action taken was correct.
I have thought about it actually, and find your suggestion that every person shooting someone could claim it was a warning shot … to be either misrepresenting or misunderstanding my statement.
How many "what ifs" do you want to go through? Your imaginative ability is the only limit to the number of possibilities. Most will not be reasonable expectations, though.
There are several possibilities arising from hypothetical mistakes of the officers. These possibilities are largely reduced to near-irrelevance by their training and by the various advantages in perception they have by actually being in the situation.
Just for the sake of playing the game a bit more, imo .. the most common result in the officers making such a mistake would be momentary distraction from the immediate fight at hand… which would then result in another branch in possibilities, then another, and so on, and so on. Even if you were to take the most probable branch in each successive possibility, after only a few "branches" the possibility of the most likely result actually occurring … could be absurdly remote.
Lethality to the mob is justified through its actions and power it has.
A warning shot is often effective to turn a mob. If properly employed, it is non-lethal to bystanders and could result in dispersal of the mob (changing the mob back into a group of individuals).
Since lethal force is justified, using a warning shot is an attempt to show mercy towards the individuals misbehaving by forming themselves into the mob.
The question becomes : Is mercy to the guilty justifiable ? Personally, I think not.
However, I think it must be allowed and respected in recognition of our own humanity and that of others whenever we have the chance to show it … IF we can do it without causing harm to the innocent or to society itself. I think many would additionally take this as a personal duty to their God, and imo some wrongfully attempt to legislate such things (with sometimes disastrous unintended consequences such as "obligations to flee" and many other infringements of the unalienable rights of man.)
Showing mercy is beyond justification, one of the unalienable rights of man itself, and therefore should never be required nor prohibited by laws. It’s proper use can be regulated, and laws can be made to ensure it’s proper regulation, but only to the point of preventing the USE of mercy from becoming a detriment to the strength of society or the reasonable expectation of safety for the innocent.
By the way, government and laws do not define society under our Constitution. We the People are society and create the government as a slave, by the contract between ourselves (Constitution) to simultaneously serve both ourselves and fellow man. Unalienable rights are those we cannot give up and still be considered free men. If they are given up, we redefine ourselves as slaves and the Constitution becomes a contract between govt. and a society of subservient people.