by Jonathan Turley at Res ispa loquitur — The thing itself speaks
“It was an outright murder.” Those words from Rep. Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) were echoed by Democratic leaders from coast to coast almost immediately after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, 37, as she sped toward him in a vehicle. Goldman is the Madame Defarge of American politics, the character from Tale of Two Cities who knitted as she gleefully called for the heads of aristocrats and counterrevolutionaries in the French Revolution.
Goldman has made a career of dismissing due process for his political opponents while engaging in willful blindness of the conduct of his allies. He has denied the existence of Antifa as an organization as well as claiming that he has seen no evidence of an increase in attacks on ICE officers.
He apparently needed no further proof to declare this officer a murderer: “It was an outright murder. This officer needs to not only be fired and suspended, but—based on the video—charged.”
The video does not support such a claim. Under the governing case law, the officer is allowed to use lethal force when he is facing an imminent threat to his life or the lives of fellow officers or third parties.
In this case, the officer had a fraction of a second to decide whether to fire his weapon after Good sped toward him. Good appears to have been attempting to flee the officers and flight alone is not a justification for the use of lethal force. However, when you speed toward an officer, he may treat the vehicle as a weapon and discharge his weapon in self-defense.
Goldman is fully aware that past case law supports the officer in this case…
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