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Notes -
uh:
I think that's kinda gonna count.
uh:
The family's attorneys have found a forensic pathologist who disputed the self-defense claims, but that focused on which direction the shots went, with Wecht holding that most of the wounds on Spencer's back were entry wounds, and the state's forensics department saying they were exit wounds. There are professionalism arguments in favor of not magdumping. This shot list does not, on its own, raise serious questions about the self-defense claim. It is, charitably, a bit of a stretch to call the head, torso, and buttocks "all parts of his body".
There's been people making similar arguments over the Rittenhouse, and the Gardner cases, and a good few others.
In one sense, it's true! Someone claiming "they were coming right for us!" alone isn't reason for the police to pack it up and go home! In one sense, yes, there's a reason self-defense experts like Masaad Ayoob recommend having a lawyer on retainer.
((I mean, not actually, descriptively true, but that's more because there's a number of police departments that are garbage.))
But for this specific case, day one had every witness at the scene says that the shot guy was threatening to shoot up the place and was trying to block their escape, his pockets are filled with their keys and one of their cell phones, and there's a bunch of recently-used shell cases matching the shot guy's gun, and tons of gunpowder residue up and down shot guy's arms. Nothing to contradict the self-defense claim comes up. And then on day two, the post-mortem tox report lights up like a Christmas tree in ways that support the suspect's claims, and completely unaffiliated witnesses from the camp owners -- who the suspect might not even have know were there -- give testimony about the shot pattern that matches. Still nothing to contradict the claim.
((And that's ignoring the stuff probably not admissible in court and shouldn't be considered by prosecutors but often is, like the rifle with an obliterated serial number and the already-active ATF investigation.))
Notably, unlike your hypothetical, no one was arrested or detained overnight. Now, this isn't the clearest-cut case of self-defense, since there was no video evidence. But I'm exceptionally skeptical that an honest and impartial prosecutor, not having the force of the state attorney general, the state police hate crimes side, national media coverage, international media coverage, so on, hits your parade of horribles.
And, what a coincidence! The same group is all, every single one, conveniently also opposed to civilian gun ownership and self-defense.
Yes, tradeoffs exist. But the opening framework was not whether an investigation could occur, but that "this is the kind of use that makes me highly suspect of the actual utility of it." The scale of the tradeoffs matter. 1K USD and a bad night is not actually that bad compared to axe wounds and/or tens of thousands of dollars in property damage. There's a lot of things people will deal with for even a moderate reduction in the chance them and three of their friends of getting shot in the head by someone hopped up on shrooms, demanding that they sprawl out and call him a good, and confiscating their keys and cellphone.
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