Left At Crime Scene: Gun, Shoes, Arm

[Simon_Jester]

I am arguing that Sam would commit armed robberies because he committed an armed robbery. The only extrapolation I am making is that a person willing to commit premeditated crimes against strangers purely for their own profit is willing to commit premeditated crimes against strangers purely for their own profit, until something happens to change that mindset.

And, you argue, this justifies committing vigilante violence against him to protect his future victims.

Even arguing that Pierre would do what he did again is more of a stretch than that: Pierre was thrust into a deadly and unforeseen situation against his will and responded to that situation as best he could,

Specifically, he responded by committing attempted vehicular murder after the threat left the area.

If you believe that people's past actions set a precedent for their future actions, the precedent thus set is "Pierre will kill you if you threaten him, even after you have gone away." We have no idea what his definition of "threaten" is.

If you believe that people's past actions don't set a precedent for their future actions, then Pierre is not justified in ripping the arm off the guy who robbed him "to protect his future victims."

But you don't stop there; you are accusing Pierre of being a dangerous loose cannon because he reacted poorly when someone tried to fucking murder him for his shoes. Which do you think is more likely: that not once in Pierre's 40 years has he ever been insulted, fired or otherwise provoked; or that it was only the extreme nature of this particular provocation that caused him to respond with deadly force?

How the hell do I know? Maybe Pierre has a long history of taking premeditated and excessive revenge on people. Maybe he even has a criminal record. We can't know.

But you advanced the argument that it's right to maim people to protect the potential future victims of the crimes they might commit by repeating their past actions. If so, surely it is also right to imprison people to teach them (and others) not to commit disproportionate and illegal violence against someone who has wronged them.

Conversely, if it's wrong to worry that Pierre (or others who hear of this case) may feel licensed to use excessive, illegal violence against those who wrong them... when that is exactly what Pierre just did...

...Why is it right to worry that Sam (or others who hear of this case) may commit more armed robberies... when that is exactly what Sam did?
____________________________

If you have a problem with being caught between these two choices this way, fine. But then stop arguing that it is right for vengeful private citizens to kill or maim those who wrong them to "protect their future victims" because you expect them to commit crimes in the future.

[His Divine Shadow]

Personally, I don't feel (based on my own ethics) that this was justifiable as self-defense because the SUV driver was not under immediate threat when he caused harm to the other guy. However, I do agree that the circumstances had a lot of mitigating factors involved

Yes this is about how I feel. I would think temporary insanity or something like that would be a good description of the situation here.

[Broomstick]

Video footage shows that there were few to no people in the immediate vicinity when Pierre hit the thief - it wasn't an out of control vehicle, he was aiming that thing. It's not a circumstance where bystanders were at real risk.

[General Zod]

Personally, I don't feel (based on my own ethics) that this was justifiable as self-defense because the SUV driver was not under immediate threat when he caused harm to the other guy. However, I do agree that the circumstances had a lot of mitigating factors involved

Yes this is about how I feel. I would think temporary insanity or something like that would be a good description of the situation here.

Temporary insanity almost never works as a legitimate defense, but I think you're going to be hard pressed to find a jury willing to prosecute the guy under attempted murder.

[Beowulf]

Yes this is about how I feel. I would think temporary insanity or something like that would be a good description of the situation here.

Temporary insanity almost never works as a legitimate defense, but I think you're going to be hard pressed to find a jury willing to prosecute the guy under attempted murder.

Attempted murder? Probably not going to work. But there's other lesser charges that could stick. Assault with a deadly weapon, perhaps.

[Broomstick]

The prosecution probably started with attempted murder and will offer a plea for a lesser charge in exchange for an admission of guilt.

[Raw Shark]

Yeah, he'll get convicted on some kind of lesser charge if it goes to a jury trial, unless the litigators somehow manage to choose twelve people who would gladly participate in, or at least cheer on, a lynching. It's really hard to defend yourself against at the very least Aggravated Assault and Battery when video footage shows you deliberately accelerating and hitting someone with a fucking SUV. Those things don't tickle. Pleading out would just save everybody involved a lot of time and money, and probably get him a lot less jail time than what a successful insanity defense would get him in an asylum for the criminally insane, especially if he doesn't have any prior convictions. Even if it was an easy defense to pull off, which it isn't as noted above, pleading out would probably be the smarter move.

The really important question here, in my mind, is Sam's religious beliefs, if any. Because if it turns out that he's a practicing Muslim*, I am going to laugh my ass off. Also, did the cops get his prints? You'd think it would be obvious that they did, but this is NYC we're talking about here...

* Nothing against Muslims, just that Sha'ria law says that you should lose a hand for theft. Congrats if you got the joke without reading this.