Page 19 - April 2017 Newsletter

tion or threatened infliction of great bodily harm, or is attempting to escape by use of a deadly weap- on, or otherwise indicates that he will endanger human life or inflict great bodily harm unless ar- rested without delay.
Relevant and binding case law holds that “the per- ceived danger, rather than what might have been the ac- tual danger, is the controlling factor.” Moreover, the case law implicitly recognizes that, “in the heat of a poten- tially deadly confrontation, drawing a fine line between what may be a reasonable belief versus an unreasonable suspicion can be exceedingly difficult.” For instance, the Illinois case law states that where self-defense is an is- sue, if a person is in reasonable fear of his or her life, the passage of a few seconds during which the cause of the fear abates is normally not enough to hold that person guilty of an unjustified homicide where he or she would have been justified in using deadly force only a few sec- onds earlier. The law does not charge an individual in such circumstances to use infallible judgment.
I am reminded of a recent out-of-state case in which police fired more than 60 rounds at a PCP suspect, and the autopsy detailed 45 separate wound paths through [his] body. The suspect, with pistol in hand, took 11 steps toward police, while being simultaneously struck by a hail of police handgun bullets, until a shotgun slug that struck his spine between T6 and T7 dropped him to the pavement. Even then, his upper body remained functional, as he tried to point his handgun at police
with his right hand, while holding a cigarette in his left. It took a .40 S&W round to the brain stem to finally stop this threat.
In that case, the officers’ actions were deemed lawful; however, it would be hard to imagine that they would pass scrutiny under the new act currently being pro- posed. In its current form, the act requires an instan- taneous discontinuation of deadly force at the precise moment the threat is defeated. The problem with such a strict requirement is that compliance would be impos- sible in many circumstances. Officers involved in rap- idly developing split-second situations will never inter- pret a situation in the same way as someone viewing it on video while sitting in their living room. Prosecutors and plaintiff attorneys will be able to slow a video down frame by frame and show a suspect releasing his weapon upon falling to the ground and conclude that any shot fired after that point was excessive and unlawful. Such a rigid interpretation is wrong and strictly at odds with undisputed scientific evidence. A person sitting on their sofa watching a video is not witnessing it from the an- gle of the shooting officers; they are not experiencing any physical changes to their body, such as a dramatic surge of adrenaline, tunnel vision, auditory exclusion and many other physiological symptoms experienced in these situations.
It would be utterly unfair and irresponsible for our lawmakers and policymakers to fail to consid- er these critical factors prior to placing their stamp of approval.d
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