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The facts of the case have been covered well by MLeake and others. The lesson we all need to learn, some apparently having confronted it for the first time, is that there is a difference between shooting to stop the threat and shooting to kill. That is the essence of the difference between acting legally in self defense and acting illegally as a vigilante executioner. All indications in the video and in the jury's verdict are that Ersland crossed that line by making a conscious decision to kill a person that was not at the time a legitimate threat. That is pretty much the definition of first degree murder.
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