He deliberately drove into a crowd of people, killing one and injuring up to 19 others. He has committed a crime. He is not innocent of further death and injury he may cause while attempting to flee the scene of that crime and the people he's angered in the commission of that crime.
If he, even accidentally, shot several people, he is not justified in shooting even more people in his escape.
Does anyone happen to really know the law as it actually applies here? What I'm referring to is the idea of justified actions taken as self defense after a crime has been committed.
In this case, he appears to have committed some sort of crime by ramming the crowd. We'll let the jury and/or plea bargainers decide, but it appears that way. Then, he is attacked by the crowd. He isn't merely trying to escape, as in trying to evade capture. He has a reasonable fear for his life at that point. Under those circumstances, can someone claim self defense?
To separate the question from the particulars of this specific incident, let's take a hypothetical. A burglar breaks into a home he thinks is empty, only to discover that a woman is in the house. She sees him, and dives for her cell phone, presumably to call 911. He shoots her, and she dies. At that point, the woman's husband comes home, and sees the burglar and his dead wife. Enraged, he attacks the burglar, and puts his hands on the burglar's throat. He clearly intends to kill the burglar. The burglar finds the gun, and shoots the man dead.
Has he committed one murder, or two?
I think, generally, that all deaths that are the result of a crime are the criminal's responsibility, so that would mean two murders. However, technically, the assault on the burglar by the husband was, itself, a crime, even if no jury would convict the guy.
Now, back to Charlottesville. The driver committed a crime by running into the crowd, but the people who set upon his car with baseball bats committed a crime by doing so. Can the guy claim self defense for any assault committed while attempting to flee from those attackers? Or has he lost the right to such a claim because the assault was a consequence of the driver's crime of running into the crowd?
To my way of thinking, it looks like the only people assaulted by the car while it was going in reverse were people who were attacking the car, and it sure looks to me like they were presenting a deadly threat to the driver. Therefore, he is justified in reversing the car, even if it poses a threat to the attackers. I'm just not sure what the law says about it.
