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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32956 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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Do you think most people would be capable of using that 30 seconds of observation to arrive at an educated guess regarding Mr. Neeley's criminal history that would line up fairly accurately with his actual criminal history?

As I understand OP, his/her answer is no, which is why efforts to justify Penny's behavior by appealing to Neeley's record are misguided. If Penny's actions were justified -- and I don't have enough details to say one way or the other -- they can only be justified based on what he knew at the time. Hence,

the law recognizes the justification of self-defense not because the victim "deserved" what he or she got, but because the defendant acted reasonably under the circumstances. Reasonableness is judged by how the situation appeared to the defendant, not the victim. As the Court of Appeal noted, "Because [j]ustification does not depend upon the existence of actual danger but rather depends upon appearances' (People v. Clark (1982) 130 Cal. App.3d 371, 377 [181 Cal. Rptr. 682]; see also CALJIC No. 5.51), a defendant may be equally justified in killing agood' person who brandishes a toy gun in jest as a `bad' person who brandishes a real gun in anger." If the defendant kills an innocent person, but circumstances made it reasonably appear that the killing was necessary in self-defense, that is tragedy, not murder.

People v. Minifie, 13 Cal. 4th 1055, 1068 (1996) (emphasis in original)

Edit: Note, btw, that that legal rule is based on the premise that one who kills an innocent "good" person in those circumstances lacks a criminal state of mind, ie, is not morally culpable.

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