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Comment by briffle | Hacker News Reader

A famous case of this is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Philando_Castile where the man identitified he had a concealed carry, the cop told him not reach for it, he started to say he wasn't, he was getting his license the officer asked for, with the officer cutting him off repeatedly and the officer shot him because he 'feared for his life'.

All they have to prove is that they fear for their life. It does not have to make sense, does not have to be 'justified', etc.

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"All they have to prove is that they fear for their life. It does not have to make sense, does not have to be 'justified', etc."

That's not really true. The standard is a reasonable fear for your life. That's reasonable standard is evaluated in court by how a reasonable person would have reacted. Yes, they do give some deference to the individual who was actually there (police or civilian). The real problems happen because the DA and the courts tend to have bias when it comes to subjecting members of the system to the same process that others face.

Police officers in court cases don't have to meet that standard until it established that they do not have qualified immunity. In vastly more than 9 out of 10 cases, they do, and thus that standard is completely irrelevant.

Qualified immunity only applies to civil cases, not criminal.

Most (not all) cases against police officers for excessive/fatal use of force are civil (typically civil rights violations).

Oh good. So you'll still be dead, and they might get a reprimand. If you're lucky they'll lose their job.

> All they have to prove is that they fear for their life.

In which case, they should spend the rest of their life in a high-security psychiatric hospital.

They're obviously too mentally fragile to be allowed out in the world.

To some degree this is how they’re trained, and imo the people doing the training also need some form of repercussions - if you haven’t before, check out some information on the courses that are (were?) taught to precincts across the country: Killology. Yes, that’s the literal name.

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