Even someone who discharges a firearm at you MIGHT not be trying to kill you, they MIGHT just be trying to scare you. You will never know for absolute certain if someone intends to kill you until you are dead.
That's true. You can't read someone else's mind, and the law does not expect you to do so. That's why the reasonable person standard exists. Instead of being instructed to ask whether the attacker
really intended to kill you -- a completely unanswerable question, even if the attacker is still alive -- the jury will instead be instructed to ask whether a reasonable person, knowing what you knew, would have concluded what you did.
Would a reasonable and prudent person, being fired upon, believe that a person who fired a gun at them manifestly intended to kill them and had the ability to do so? Yup. That's a no-brainer, and therefore probably a no-bill.
It has often been the case, given the totality of the situation, that badguys have threatened then"reached" for a nonexistant gun in an attempt to intimidate, and then been shot by their intended victim.
True. And any reasonable and prudent person, knowing what the defendant knew at the time (and no more!), would believe that the threatening badguy who reached for his waistband was in fact reaching for a weapon and intended to kill the defendant.
Doesn't matter what other facts come to light later. The badguy could have been unarmed, or the gun may have been a toy. Those facts might look bad to the rest of the world, but they would not matter legally as long as you did not know them at the time.
On the other hand, the badguy might have been a mass murderer on steroids or an extensively trained martial artist who regularly snapped people in half with his bare hands. That would make you look pretty good to the rest of the world, but again it would not change your legal position one tiny bit unless you knew these facts at the time of the event.
Plenty of other factors could completely change your understanding of the events after the fact, but have no real effect on your legal position. Legally, the important thing will be what you knew at the moment you pulled the trigger. The jury will be instructed to ask itself whether a reasonable and prudent person,
knowing what you knew at the time, would have believed the attacker had the ability to kill to you -- and whether the totality of circumstances indicated that he intended to do so. The bad guy coulda done this, he coulda meant that, the circumstances coulda been this other thing -- but when it gets to court, all that will really matter is what you knew at the time.
I don't believe the law says I HAVE to get into a fistfight with a mugger because I'm male.
It doesn't.
It says you cannot kill someone else unless a reasonable and prudent person, knowing what you knew at the time, would believe the attacker had the ability, opportunity, and manifest intent to kill or cripple you at the very moment you killed him.
pax
