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this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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I don’t know why you’re downvoted. You’re essentially correct and this justification has been used by LEO on many occiasions. All they have to do is claim they felt or saw something that made them believe their life was in danger - even if that threat was them deliberately placing themselves in front of a vehicle and refusing to step aside when it was apparent the vehicle was headed toward them with plenty of warning at worst a shin bruising speed. This is how we get people shot who are unarmed, or already on the ground, or acorns hitting car roofs.
However, he’s not innocent. Not at all. It will be impossible to convict because the legal system is full of boot lickers or scared of the police, and trump toadies will intervene.
I mean yeah, it's not that he's innocent, it's more that it would be impossible to prove he's guilty because to prove that you would have to somehow show what he was thinking in that specific moment. It's no just some justification. It's how the law is constructed. In a normal country you would require police to act with accordance to their training and if they panic and fuck up they are responsible. In US if a cop fucks up it's ok, it's not his fault.
And people are downvoting because they don't like the law, not because they don't like my comment. Each downvote is tiny protest against police brutality in US. Keep them coming!
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the construction of the law. As designed, it doesn't matter what the individual was thinking. It matters what a hypothetical "reasonable person" would be thinking or doing in the circumstance. It'd be up to the finder of fact to determine if the actions were reasonable (though, here, depending on charges, it might be "reasonable officer").
There are also potential wrinkles like qualified immunity, but that might be hard to prove in a basically unprovoked killing like this. Additionally, the broad leeway afforded to police might not be there in this case since the State would actually be seeking a conviction and other courts have openly started not giving ICE the benefit of the doubt.
But the key takeaway here is that it's less important what this murderer was thinking when he did the murder and more important whether a "reasonable person/officer/[whatever]" would have been justified in taking those actions.
That's not as important distinction as you think. The important part is that it's based on the perception of the officer, not on actual situation. You can't say that because when looking at the video it doesn't look like he was in danger so the shooting was not justified. If he claims that from his perspective it looked like he was in danger it will be pretty much impossible to prove it was unreasonable. The moves to goalpost so high cops are only convicted when the shoot someone sitting on a couch eating ice cream or lying on the ground not moving and even then it's not guaranteed. I
This is not the legal standard at all. It is very specifically not based on the perception of the officer. It's based on whether a hypothetical reasonable person would have taken those same actions.
The ICE officer probably won't testify or share their feelings. And if they do, the standard is still based solely on their actions viewed through the lens of this hypothetical reasonable person. The defense will argue that they justifiably feared for their life (or whatever their statutory standard is), but the officer's claimed perceptions are irrelevant.
Imagine an insane cop shoots someone because they think they're a space alien trying to probe them, but it's actually just some guy trying to stab the cop. The reasonable person standard means you'd assess the shooting based on the supposed actions of a reasonable person. Would a reasonable person have shot them? Probably. So, even if a shooter is motivated by the delusional belief that their target is a "space alien" intent on probing them, the act is legally justified if the target was posing an actual, objective threat—such as an attempted stabbing. Because a "reasonable person" would use force to stop a knife attack, the shooter's bizarre motivation does not negate the fact that the use of force was objectively necessary. In this case, the subjective fear of the officer is irrelevant if the act was objectively unreasonable.
And, yeah, of course the courts bend over backwards to suck cops' dicks and they get away with murder all the time. But, honestly, how many cops are even criminally charged? At trial, in front of a jury, it's harder to prove. We just usually don't see indictments and when we do, often important evidence is excluded in favor of law enforcement.