Could you have sat there and watched someone choke to death on their own blood? Or would you have "finished them off"?
After being in such an incident, how cogent do you think your thought processes would be? Shock does some very weird things to people. This is why officers and soldiers are trained to deal with bodily responses to those stresses.
I think people are ascribing evil motivations where there doesn't need to be any such thing.
Yes, stress does weird things which are why for me some leeway may be justified. The evidence in court should help, but with the way the courts do things it may not matter. I would not let someone choke to death or to bleed out. I also think I would have shot more with no pausing in between.