EEllis wrote:Charles L. Cotton wrote:
Yes, it is a fair question. The bottom line seems to be that you seem to feel that if a person commits any offense, regardless of the severity, then they should be criminally responsible for any and all outcomes regardless if intervening causes.
OK now I have no doubt you are much better versed on the law than I am but..... You asked why I didn't reply and I told you.. Sure, disagree all you want, but that is why I didn't reply and not only did your reply not address that beyond
"Yes it is". You then progress to tell me what I think , and surprisingly enough you are wrong.
I was discussing the actual law not my personal preference and since the GJ charged the crime I must assume the precursor crime rises to the level that attaches criminal liability for the consequences for activity surrounding both the commission and the police reaction to that crime. If so then we have no info that would indicate charging the suspect with the shootings was legally incorrect. As to if he should be found guilty I would say that if it were the law of the State and I were on the jury that I could find someone guilty of such a charge. I don't find the law so egregious that I couldn't in good faith find someone guilty but have no idea if in this case the conduct rises to the level which would support that. As to if I believe that any any offense, regardless of the severity, is grounds for being criminally responsible for any and all outcomes regardless if intervening causes. No. Never even came close to that. Which is why I thought the example was absurd and didn't answer. It wasnt worth answering.
Charles L. Cotton wrote:
In this case, the intervening causes would be the reckless conduct and incompetency of the responding officers. In civil cases, the injuries must be "reasonably foreseeable" to hold a defendant liable in damages. I think the reason Texas law requires the commission of a felony and a related death before charging a defendant with murder is to somewhat extend this same concept to criminal law.
I don't think reckless conduct is automatically established by the limited facts given here. That the officers fired even tho the suspect was found not to have a gun doesn't mean the officers were acting in a reckless or incompetent manner. Heck the bystanders getting hit doesn't either. If the suspect was acting in a manner which a normal person would think would get them shot then, well, there you go. Can they prove it? How would we know.
And this is NY criminal law right?
Charles L. Cotton wrote:
EEllis wrote:The theory of legal liability for events as a consequence of illegal activity is well established. Your main issue is that Texas law requires a felony and you think it lets cops off the hook right?
Wrong! Try reading my posts before you start attributing position statements on my behalf. My complaint is with the charges that were filed against the defendant, i.e. assault charges due to the reckless conduct of the officers. I'm not saying one thing about charging the officers, or letting them "off the hook" as you say. Why do you feel the need to rush to the officers' defense when I'm not saying they should be prosecuted?
I actually laughed out loud to read how offended you seem by my asking what your issue was when you actually are "Telling" me what I think/feel earlier in your post. Come on now. OK though, I think I understand. You believe that the officers were acting in a reckless or incompetent manner and as such any consequences should be blamed on them not the suspect. Correct? Ok I see that point but I don't think that article establishes those facts. There is also the issue that would there have been a foreseeable risk even with the officers acting "correctly"? If so I'm not sure that the fact that the officers acted incorrectly automatically removes all liability anyway. I think it might be one of those "I'll know it when I see it" type of situations where you can't draw a clear line. If someone purposely startles a horse and the rider is unseated of course there is liability but what if any even basic rider should be able to stay on and the rider only fell off due to their own incompetence? There is an obvious difference between a firecracker and a slight slap to the rump to start a horse moving but that's where courts come in to find where that fine line is between the two. I don't feel a big need to rush to anyone defense I just feel that there have been some assumptions that get parroted as facts in this case that just are not warranted by what we know right now.
Charles L. Cotton wrote:
You apparently don't know what NY law is either, but NY and NJ have a very poor track record in terms of filing frivolous charges. The NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund is involved in at least three cases where peace officers from others states were arrested by NY COPs for unlawfully carrying handgun. When the officers said LEOSA makes it legal, the response in all three cases was, "this is New York and we don't [care] about federal law." More importantly I made it clear I'm talking about Texas law and the absurdity of charging the subject in NYC if that State's law allows for such charges.
Chas.
Yes but I'm not putting my opinion on what NY law is ahead of the DA. And I'm sorry if NY has a lot of crappy DA's but that doesn't automatically cause me to think that this case is bad. Are the courts so bad that more than half the cases involving cops are frivolous? Then that really isn't evidence of anything in this case. It may be a great reason to reserve ones opinion or to give a closer look to the case, but not, to me, prejudge this case.
Here's the short version as I see it:
From the press reports, the justification for shooting appears to be the defendant's "furtive movement" that the officers apparently believed was a reach for a weapon. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I'll accept that for now as the easy part.
Firing at a suspect with innocent persons behind him and very close to the
intended line of fire, with the result that two innocent persons were hit and the suspect wasn't hit at all, is a presumptive case for negligence in my book. I arrive at that position based on the officers' demonstrated insufficient skill to accurately place rounds (which the officers should certainly have been aware of since they were present every time they went to the range where said lack of skill would have been apparent) and very poor judgment in placing uninvolved citizens in deadly danger which was clearly obvious at the time.
This appears to be one of those cases where officers would be duty bound to hold fire until innocent people won't be endangered by it. Those situations happen a lot more often than most citizens think, and, unlike the military, there is
no acceptable level of "collateral damage" in law enforcement.
If the suspect in fact made a deliberate movement that he intended the police to interpret as a reach for a weapon, he would certainly be partially culpable as well, but not instead of, the officers who were in control of their own decisions and actions which in fact inflicted gunshot wounds on innocent people. If the subject did act deliberately, he is responsible for making the officers believe they were in danger, but not for the decision to fire under the full set of surrounding circumstances.
Most penal codes are built around the simple concept that the guy who fires the round owns the consequences of where it lands. There are very few exceptions to that, and I don't see this situation as one of them.
