An ordinary-reaction test for police shootings makes unlawful killing nearly undefinable

Evidence

Partly, we have to look to the legal framework itself. As Christian Werthschulte observed in a Facebook comment last night, when we read the official verdict, we see that “the jury is somehow made to ask themselves if they had felt threatened if they’d been in the shoes of the police officer in order to conclude if the killing was lawful or not. Inevitably this will lead to a ‘Oh, I would’ve been scared, too!’ reaction.” This is both absurd and terrifying, given the amount of sub-machine guns that Met officers carry around London. If the question posed to juries in such cases is going to be “might you, an ordinary member of the public, have been scared”, then it’s hard to see what would ever constitute an unlawful killing. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1748

Categorization

• QUESTION: The reasonable-person standard in police-use-of-force law — if the jury is a proxy for the officer’s fear, the officer’s armed context always legitimates the shooting. Worth comparing to how US qualified immunity functions.
• XREF: connects to: Framing police-killing verdicts on jurors’ own fear makes unlawful killing nearly indefinable. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1748