Posted by vtuck2: Well here's what I'd really love to know: At what point would the OP have had legal justification ("reasonable cause") to shoot?
I'm going to borrow the following excellent response to a question in another forum regarding a home invasion scenario:
Posted by Sam1911: When the question can be distilled down to, "When MUST I shoot?," "When do I HAVE TO shoot?," or "When do I have no choice BUT to shoot to save life?," folks are on the right track.
Unfortunately one side effect of the Castle Doctrine laws seems to be the growth of a different line of thinking: "When CAN I shoot?," "When am I ALLOWED to kill?," and "When am I cleared hot to waste this scumbag?" The checklist mindset -- that once someone does x,y, or z, you have permission to plug 'em -- is very dangerous.
I do not think that the fact that the ATM scenario at hand is not a castle doctrine issue makes that answer any less pertinent here.
What it really boils down to is this:
- If the facts at the time indicate that the use of deadly force is immediately necesary to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, one would have no choice but to use such force.
- If the investigators, charging authority, or should it come to that, the triers of fact decide, on the basis of totality of the evidence presented after the fact, that a reaonable person, knowing what the actor knew at the time, would have believed that deadly force had been immediately necessary, and that the actor had believed the same thing, the use of deadly force will be decided to have been justified.
- There are some nuances regarding the lawful use of deadly force to prevent a forcible felony; those really involve the same concepts, because it is presumed that the victim is put in danger of death or serious bodily harm during the commission of such a crime.
- There are some differences in Texas, where deadly force may be used under some limitied circumstances to prevent the unlawful taking of tangible, moveable property.
- In some states, there is a duty to retreat before using deadly force if retreat is safley pssible; the absence of such a requirement in some juridications does not mean that retreat is not the wise thing to do.
- In all jurisdictions, justification goes out the window if the actor knowingly precipitated the situation.