Originally Posted by antelope_sniper
Originally Posted by The_Real_Hawkeye
Originally Posted by IndyCA35
Originally Posted by The_Real_Hawkeye

They didn't have guns on them to shoot him to prevent escape. They were bearing arms in case needed to defend themselves from violence, such as the suspect attacking them in such a way as to be life threatening, as he actually did.


The racism is strong in this one, almost as strong as the anti-semitism.

If Dumb and Dumber needed to "defend themselves from violence," why did they go where the black guy was jogging in the first place? Hmmmm?



They went to him because they wanted to hold him for the police, as they had reason to suspect he was a serial burglar in their neighborhood.


But they were not police, and under georgia law, it appears they had no authority to do so:

https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-17/chapter-4/article-4/17-4-60/

A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.


True. That's what places it in the arena of an imperfect defense of self-defense rather than either a perfect claim of self-defense or murder. In other words, they didn't come to the circumstance of requiring self-defensive action with clean hands. They also, however, didn't maliciously cause anyone's death. The act causing death was deemed by the shooter to be reasonably necessary to preserve his life which was under imminent threat from the jogger attempting to wrest a loaded weapon from his grasp.