kgbsquirrel,
My statement about judging his actions comes as both a retired lifeguard, an Army vet, a former criminal prosecutor with some pretty heavy firearms training, experience at being involved in SWAT raids/search warrants, and now 5 year on the bench. Just wanted to say that, like you, my own reactions do not always make sense to people.
The problem is that the law generally uses an objective(i.e. "reasonable person") standard, and nort a subjective standard. A jury sitting on this case won't have anything but the witness testimony, the forensics, and the tape that shows a man standing over a downed subject and firing multiple shots. As I said earlier, the jury will never hear what Mr. Ersland thoughts were as he went through this, as he made the bad choice at the beginning to lie to investigators, so he could never testify credibly. So the jury would never hear him say that he was acting on his military training, or anything along those lines. The jury would see a man walk away from the threat, search out a second handgun, go back to the danger, and fire shots into it. The only witness to what happened is tha man who fired those shots, and he couldn't testify.
So, all you had was the camera. Did that downed man reach for a weapon, or make some kind of threatening move? Don't know. We'll probably never know for sure. But that tape, the only evidence as to what happened, with no outside description of other circumstances, looks like an execution. So found the jury.
The more this debate rages on, the only thing it reinforces in me is that your best bet is to do what has been said a thousand times over around here. If all else fails, shut up and lawyer up. We may disagree about making any statement to police (I believe you should), but I'm sure we can all agree that YOU SHOULD NEVER LIE TO THE INVESTIGATORS ABOUT THE SHOOTIN!
