REAL LAWYER: When Is a Car a Deadly Weapon?

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A man is slumped over the wheel of a car and police respond. When they open the vehicle door the man wakes up and starts slamming his own car into vehicles, endangering the officers standing right there.

Multiple officers deploy Tasers, none of which work, and the man eventually speeds away in his car.  And we have the video to share with you!

Is this a circumstance in which the officers would be legally privileged to shoot this man dead?  If so, why didn’t they do so? Let’s discuss!

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A man is slumped over the wheel of a car and police respond when they open the vehicle door, the man wakes up and starts slamming his own car into other vehicles. Endangering the officer standing right there. Multiple officers deploy tasers, none of which work. And the man eventually speeds away in his car and we have the video to share with you. Is this a circumstance in which the officers would be legally privileged to shoot this man dead? If so, why didn't they do so? Let's discuss and for those of you who stayed to the end, I'll share with you how you can join us for our 100% free law of self defense. Hard to convict webinar.

Coming up in just a few weeks when police officers responded to reports of a man slumped over the wheel of his car in the middle of a street. They probably had two possibilities in mind. One might be that some kind of medical emergency had incapacitated the driver, another possibility, however more dangerous to the officers and the public was that the driver was simply intoxicated behind the wheel of a motor vehicle to such an intense degree that he lost consciousness based on the video evidence. It seems likely that this latter possibility is what the police were dealing with just a few days ago in Tempe Arizona. Before I jump into the meat of the show, I do want to remind all of you watching on youtube, it would be much appreciated if you could hit that subscribe button and that thumbs up button as well, they're both free. So when police first approached this man's car, he was still unconscious and they positioned patrol vehicles immediately in front of and behind his car in order to box him in when they opened the vehicle door.

However, the driver abruptly became conscious and immediately began using his own vehicle as a battering ram against the patrol cars blocking him in. Even as three officers stood inside the open door of his car, bystanders on the video can be heard urging the officers repeatedly to taser the driver and eventually two of the officers do. Unfortunately, the taser is once more ineffective, a compelling compliance as they so often are. And the driver rams enough space clear to swerve around the vehicle in front of them and speed through the intersection.

So with that background, let's go ahead and take a look at the video of this event. Well, you speaking so Hazel. Hazel, so holy. So what were the lawful use of force options here for these officers? Certainly it was appropriate to investigate this call of a man slumped over the wheel of his car in the middle of a public road.

Just based on that preliminary information, there existed reasonable suspicion that a crime might be being committed or alternatively that a medical emergency was occurring and to detain the driver to investigate what was going on. Once subject to lawful detention. The driver is of course not free to leave the scene as the investigation is taking place.

So when the driver begins to physically resist the officers and especially when he begins to use his own car as a battering ram against the police vehicles. Boxing him in that use of force by the driver is unlawful. This use of force against the police vehicles was unlawful because a person being lawfully detained is not permitted to use any force to resist that detainment. The force used was of course not only being applied to the police vehicles but also to the officers, sometimes two, sometimes three who were positioned inside the open door of the man's vehicle.

And again, for the same reasons, this use of force against the officers was unlawful. The officers are legally permitted to use defensive force against the unlawful force, force of the vehicle driver. How much force they are permitted by law to use is a function of how much force they are defending themselves against. Even mere non deadly physical non-compliance by the suspect would privilege these officers to use non deadly force to compel compliance like their tasers yet, they didn't deploy their tasers until the last moment before the man drove away. We'll discuss why that might have been in just a moment to the extent the driver was threatening the officers with imminent force capable of inflicting death or serious bodily injury. The officers would be privileged to use deadly force in self defense in this case, in the form of their service pistols fired at the driver.

Certainly, when the driver was ramming his vehicle backwards with officers positioned inside the open door of his vehicle, he was threatening them with imminent force capable of inflicting serious injury or death. Ultimately, the office suffered only minor injuries according to news reports, but that's just luck getting trapped in the open doorway of a car being driven aggressively backwards can clearly readily result in death or serious bodily injury. Yet, the officers appear to have never considered going to their service pistols.

We'll discuss why that might have been in just a moment as well. But first, why didn't the officers go to their tasers early on? Well, almost certainly because their training would have indicated to them that using a taser on a driver of an operable vehicle was a bad idea, both tactically and legally recall how a taser works in the event that it is effective. It causes a solid lock up of major muscle groups often causing the subject to go completely rigid and staying that way. As long as the taser is delivering current, here's an example of an effective taser hit. Wow. Now, imagine a driver behind the wheel of a running car in gear with his foot resting on the gas pedal. If that driver is tased, it's likely to force the rigid leg against the gas pedal flooring it and turning the car into an uncontrolled missile flying down the road to wreak havoc on innocent bystanders.

This reality was highlighted during the Kim Potter Taser Taser taser manslaughter trial over the death of Dante Wright. Wright had been pulled over for an expired tag and then found to have an outstanding warrant when officer Potter and two other officers attempted to arrest the initially compliant. Wright, he abruptly violently resisted and jumped back into his vehicle. One officer lunged into the vehicle through Wright's passenger door in an effort to secure the gear shift and prevent Wright from driving away. This officer was hanging partially out of the vehicle. A second officer attempted to secure control of Wright through the open driver side door of the vehicle. Both men were struggling with Dante Wright.

Kim Potter also standing by the open driver's side door, then infamously drew her glock nine millimeter pistol mistakenly believing she had grabbed her taser loudly shouted taser taser taser as per her training and then pressed the trigger instead of taser darts being fired at Dante Wright. However, he was struck by a nine millimeter bullet with fatal results. I'm afraid the video of that shooting may be too spicy for youtube. But if you're a law of self defense member, we'll see what we can do to get you access to it.

Now, although Potter's use of her service pistol was unintentional. She meant to be using her taser under the facts of this case, she would have been legally privileged to fire that fatal nine millimeter round into Dante Wright as a lawful use of force in defense of her fellow officers, both of whom were positioned partially inside of Wright's vehicle as he attempted to race away. And surely if Potter would have been legally privileged to shoot right on purpose, it can't have been a crime to shoot right, unintentionally further her mens rea her mental state was in any case a valid one. She intended to use her less than lethal taser to neutralize Wright's deadly force threat to her fellow officers that she intended to present her taser and instead unintentionally came out with her gun wasn't a function of her own recklessness. It was a consequence of Dante Wright's abruptly violent non compliance and the imminence and intensity of the deadly force risk suddenly faced by her fellow officers. As the Supreme Court noted many years ago in the 1921 decision of Brown V United States quote, detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.

Close quote, that is the law takes into account the use of force decisions made under the stress of defense of self or others against life threatening attack do not have to be perfect decisions. They merely need to be reasonable decisions under the circumstances. The prosecution in the Kim Potter case, however, took a rather different view. They said not only would Potter not have been legally privileged to shoot, right? She would not even have been legally privileged to taser, right? So not even non lethal tasering would have been lawful.

Therefore, they argued even Potter's mental decision to go to the taser, which led to her mistakenly presenting her pistol was an unlawful decision itself. And why did the prosecution argue that Potter would have lacked legal authority to even merely taser, Dante Wright, because he was behind the wheel of an operable vehicle and even a taser hit could have turned that car into a lethal missile. Ultimately, of course, Potter was convicted of manslaughter, arguably on the basis of a defective jury instruction and then sentenced to a relatively low prison time of just two years. Much of what she was credited because of pretrial detention. Now, the same dynamics argued in the Kim Potter case would also apply to this case. Out of Tempe Arizona, the officers likely didn't go to their tasers because they had been trained that the taser was not an appropriate tactical option for a driver in an operable vehicle.

So why did they go to the taser eventually. Anyway, that's a really good question. If anything, the moment that the two officers fired their tasers was an even less appropriate time then had they done so earlier? Is it possible that the goading from the bystanders to taser taser, um, is what led them to deploy their tasers? Uh, who knows? But I sure hope not. Bystander urging is not a good reason to deploy any use of force.

In any case. Of course, the taser hits proved ineffective at compelling the driver's compliance as tasers so often are, would these officers have been privileged to use their service pistols and deploy deadly force against the driver? Once his conduct qualified as an imminent deadly force threat to the officer's position in the open door of his vehicle. Legally, the answer is yes. So why didn't they just shoot him? Well, almost certainly because of today's racially energized political climate and given the racial makeup of the folks involved here, the three officers are white men and the driver was a black male that shouldn't matter.

But that's the world in which we live. Every white police officer is well aware that if they kill a black suspect, even in a 100% lawful use of force event, they're sure to be the center of a racial firestorm with protest marches and federal lawsuits alleging racism and a huge payout from the department even worse. A politically motivated prosecutor could well put the officer to the punishment of a trial and perhaps even secure a conviction and a long prison sentence, no matter how lawful the shooting might have been innocent people get convicted, especially innocent white police officers who shot and killed black suspects and are subject to perhaps a year long propaganda campaign before their trial.

So it's quite possible that the officers in this instance had simply made the decision that they were not going to use deadly force no matter what this driver did with his vehicle. And let's face it. It's not like the driver was going to stop if the intersection light had been red or there had been a pedestrian in the crosswalk when he raced through it, he was simply going to escape in a manner that recklessly endangered the public no matter what, because that's what we've conditioned police officers to do now as little as possible to the point of nothing even at the risk of the most violent offenders escaping arrest and endangering the public. And of course, when suspects know that they can readily escape arrest and accountability by simply fighting the police long enough and hard enough that simply incentivizes them to engage in more violent non compliance and fosters yet more lawlessness in the community. It's too bad. Ok, folks, before I wrap up, I do want to share with you how you can join us for our 100% free law of self defense. Hard to convict webinar coming up in just a few weeks.

As the title suggests, this free webinar teaches you how to be hard to convict if you're ever compelled to use force in defense of yourself, your family or your property. The webinar will be live streamed by me. There'll be plenty of opportunity for live Q and A. Again, it's 100% free, but we do limit seats to allow for adequate Q and A opportunity with all the attendees.

So I urge you to grab your seat right now before they're all gone by signing up at law of self defense.com/hard to convict. Again, it's free. I'll close out by reminding all of you again that if you carry a gun for self defense so that you're hard to kill, that's why I carry a gun.

So I'm hard to kill. So my family is hard to kill. Then you also owe it to yourself and your family to make sure you know, the law as well so that you're hard to convict. Until next time I remain attorney Andrew Branca for law of self defense.com. Stay safe.