If you have no intention of killing them and they die as a side effect of your actions, it’s an accident, and manslaughter. If you kill them because you realize you can’t arrest them, it’s murder, complete with intention of malice. However, the fact that your actions are sanctioned by the state is obviously not a defense (a la Nuremberg), and so there’s no point in adding “police officer” to the example.
You could ask if I thought executing someone who was framed would be considered murder, but since I view all manner of execution murder, guilty or no, there’s no use.
However, the fact that your actions are sanctioned by the state is obviously not a defense (a la Nuremberg), and so there’s no point in adding “police officer” to the example.
Actually, I think there is. If you kill someone without “state sanction”, as you put it, it’s almost certainly Evil. If you kill someone that the local laws allow you to kill, it’s much less likely to be Evil, because non-Evil reasons for killing, such as self-defense, tend to be accounted for in most legal systems. Anyway, I think I’m getting off the subject. Let me try rephrasing the general scenario:
You are a police officer. You have an arrest warrant for a suspected criminal. If you try to arrest the suspect, he is willing to use lethal force against you in order to prevent being captured. You also believe that, once the suspect has attempted to use lethal force against you, non-lethal force will prove to be insufficient to complete the arrest.
The way I see it, this could end in several ways:
1) Don’t try to make an arrest attempt at all.
2) Attempt to make an arrest. The suspect responds by attempting to use lethal force against you. (He shoots at you with a low-caliber pistol, but you are protected by your bulletproof vest.) You believe that non-lethal force will most likely fail to subdue the suspect. Not willing to use lethal force and kill the suspect, you retreat, failing to make the arrest.
3) Attempt to make an arrest. The suspected criminal responds by attempting to use lethal force against you. (He shoots at you with a low-caliber pistol, but you are protected by your bulletproof vest.) You believe that non-lethal force will most likely fail to subdue the suspected criminal, but try anyway. (You start running at him, intending to wrestle the gun away from him with your bare hands.) The suspected criminal kills you. (He shoots you in the head.)
4) Attempt to make an arrest. The suspected criminal responds by attempting to use lethal force against you. (He shoots at you with a low-caliber pistol, but you are protected by your bulletproof vest.) You believe that non-lethal force will most likely fail to subdue the suspected criminal, so you resort to lethal force. (You shoot him with your own gun.) The suspected criminal is killed, and, when you are questioned about your actions, your lawyer says that you killed the suspect in self-defense. (Under U.S. law, this would indeed be the case—you would not be guilty of murder.)
Obviously Scenario 2 is a better outcome than Scenario 3, because in Scenario 3, you end up dead. However, if you know that you’re not willing to use lethal force to begin with, and that non-lethal force is going to be insufficient, you’re probably better off not making the arrest attempt at all, which is Scenario 1. Therefore Scenario 1 is better than Scenario 3. If you’re going to make an arrest attempt at all, you are expecting Scenario 4 to occur. If you go through with Scenario 4, does that make you Evil? You initiated the use of force by making the arrest attempt, but the suspect could have chosen to submit to arrest rather than to fight against you—and he did, indeed, use lethal force before you did.
I notice that you left off an outcome that if anything allows you to make your point stronger.
5) Attempt to make an arrest. You see that the suspected criminal has the capacity to use lethal force against you (he is armed) and you suspect that he will use it against you. You shoot the suspect. His use of lethal force against you is never more than counterfactual (ie. a valid suspicion).
For consistency some “6)” may be required in which the first “attempt to use lethal force against you” is successful. I suggest that this action is not necessarily Evil, for similar reasons that you describe for scenario 4. Obviously this is less clear cut and has more scope for failure modes like “black suspect reaches for ID” so we want more caution in this instance and (ought to) grant police officers less discretion.
If you kill someone without “state sanction”, as you put it, it’s almost certainly Evil.
I think ‘almost certain’ may be something of an overstatement. The states that we personally live in are not a representative sample of states and killing tyrants is not something we can call ‘almost certainly’ Evil. The same consideration applies to self defence laws. Self defence laws in an average state selected from all states across time were not sufficiently fair as to make claims about almost certain Evil.
If you have no intention of killing them and they die as a side effect of your actions, it’s an accident, and manslaughter. If you kill them because you realize you can’t arrest them, it’s murder, complete with intention of malice. However, the fact that your actions are sanctioned by the state is obviously not a defense (a la Nuremberg), and so there’s no point in adding “police officer” to the example.
You could ask if I thought executing someone who was framed would be considered murder, but since I view all manner of execution murder, guilty or no, there’s no use.
Actually, I think there is. If you kill someone without “state sanction”, as you put it, it’s almost certainly Evil. If you kill someone that the local laws allow you to kill, it’s much less likely to be Evil, because non-Evil reasons for killing, such as self-defense, tend to be accounted for in most legal systems. Anyway, I think I’m getting off the subject. Let me try rephrasing the general scenario:
You are a police officer. You have an arrest warrant for a suspected criminal. If you try to arrest the suspect, he is willing to use lethal force against you in order to prevent being captured. You also believe that, once the suspect has attempted to use lethal force against you, non-lethal force will prove to be insufficient to complete the arrest.
The way I see it, this could end in several ways:
1) Don’t try to make an arrest attempt at all.
2) Attempt to make an arrest. The suspect responds by attempting to use lethal force against you. (He shoots at you with a low-caliber pistol, but you are protected by your bulletproof vest.) You believe that non-lethal force will most likely fail to subdue the suspect. Not willing to use lethal force and kill the suspect, you retreat, failing to make the arrest.
3) Attempt to make an arrest. The suspected criminal responds by attempting to use lethal force against you. (He shoots at you with a low-caliber pistol, but you are protected by your bulletproof vest.) You believe that non-lethal force will most likely fail to subdue the suspected criminal, but try anyway. (You start running at him, intending to wrestle the gun away from him with your bare hands.) The suspected criminal kills you. (He shoots you in the head.)
4) Attempt to make an arrest. The suspected criminal responds by attempting to use lethal force against you. (He shoots at you with a low-caliber pistol, but you are protected by your bulletproof vest.) You believe that non-lethal force will most likely fail to subdue the suspected criminal, so you resort to lethal force. (You shoot him with your own gun.) The suspected criminal is killed, and, when you are questioned about your actions, your lawyer says that you killed the suspect in self-defense. (Under U.S. law, this would indeed be the case—you would not be guilty of murder.)
Obviously Scenario 2 is a better outcome than Scenario 3, because in Scenario 3, you end up dead. However, if you know that you’re not willing to use lethal force to begin with, and that non-lethal force is going to be insufficient, you’re probably better off not making the arrest attempt at all, which is Scenario 1. Therefore Scenario 1 is better than Scenario 3. If you’re going to make an arrest attempt at all, you are expecting Scenario 4 to occur. If you go through with Scenario 4, does that make you Evil? You initiated the use of force by making the arrest attempt, but the suspect could have chosen to submit to arrest rather than to fight against you—and he did, indeed, use lethal force before you did.
I notice that you left off an outcome that if anything allows you to make your point stronger.
5) Attempt to make an arrest. You see that the suspected criminal has the capacity to use lethal force against you (he is armed) and you suspect that he will use it against you. You shoot the suspect. His use of lethal force against you is never more than counterfactual (ie. a valid suspicion).
For consistency some “6)” may be required in which the first “attempt to use lethal force against you” is successful. I suggest that this action is not necessarily Evil, for similar reasons that you describe for scenario 4. Obviously this is less clear cut and has more scope for failure modes like “black suspect reaches for ID” so we want more caution in this instance and (ought to) grant police officers less discretion.
I think ‘almost certain’ may be something of an overstatement. The states that we personally live in are not a representative sample of states and killing tyrants is not something we can call ‘almost certainly’ Evil. The same consideration applies to self defence laws. Self defence laws in an average state selected from all states across time were not sufficiently fair as to make claims about almost certain Evil.
Once he uses lethal force against you, your use of lethal force would be self-defense, not murder.