So what's the best thing to do in a legal sense? If you shoot the perp twice the prosecutor will say you went beyond "stopping" or "incapacitating" the perp to murder, but if you don't put the perp down hard you run the risk of being fins up yourself...
???????
I heard very funny “fake testimony” from an Army NCO, supposedly at his trial for gunning down an armed burglar in his house. He covered the gamut of “things to say” that are generally cross-examination proof.
It has a long and respectable history. Even in the Victorian age, a police officer would not say that “I found out that ‘is Lordship was dead’”, because an attorney in cross examination would demand to know that since he was not a doctor, how could he declare that the victim was dead?” So the officer would testify, “I found out that ‘is Lordship ‘ad been interfered with, and was no longer in possession of ‘is head.” It saved everybody time.
US courts are even worse for such fake testimony, which is allowed because it avoids the “rudeness of the truth”. Only now and then is it abused, such as one officer who was caught using exactly the same testimony on dozens of different DUI arrests, some of which later tested 0.0 on blood alcohol. He was being lazy.
In the gun case, the NCO in truth would have been sleeping and been awakened by the burglar, so he retrieved his gun, sought out the armed burglar and gunned him down. No mess, no fuss. Properly what should be legal.
But in court, his fake testimony was that he heard a noise, so he retrieved his gun, removed its safety lock, retrieved his ammunition, loaded his gun, when to the top of his stairs, illuminated his position, loudly shouted “Is anyone there?”, observed the armed burglar, ordered the burglar to stop and identify himself, saw what he believed might be a weapon in the burglar’s hand, saw the burglar raise the weapon towards him “in a menacing fashion”, ordered the burglar to “drop your weapon”, saw the burglar continue to raise what he believed to be a weapon at him “in a menacing fashion”.
So he discharged his weapon, once, “in an effort to prevent the burglar from using his weapon, and in the state of mind that he was afraid the burglar was attempting to use his weapon.” He could not determine if the bullet he had discharged had struck or had any effect to prevent the burglar from using his weapon, so ordered the burglar to again “drop your weapon”, but the burglar continued to hold what he believed to be a weapon at him “in a menacing fashion”.
So he had discharged his weapon a second time...a third time...a fourth time...and still the burglar continued to hold what he believed to have been a weapon at him, in a menacing fashion.
This explains to the court why the burglar had five bullet holes in him, and was carrying a shiny kitchen knife from the NCOs kitchen, which he had undoubtedly stolen for use as a weapon. And of course, the NCO could be forgiven for mistaking the glint of a knife for the glint of a gun.
And while everyone in the court would know what actually had happened, “all the t’s were crossed, and all the i’s were dotted”, in a legal sense, so the NCO would not have inadvertently admitted to some offense on the witness stand.
Had he just said what had really happened, his testimony could have been maliciously picked apart to make him look like the bad guy, with any number of stupid and petty laws used against him for defending his home.