Indiana Legalizes Shooting Cops

[zorgon]

Indiana Legalizes Shooting Cops

Or so all the headlines are saying....




Hold onto your holsters, folks: shooting a cop dead is now legal in the state of Indiana.

Governor Mitch Daniels, a Republican, has authorized changes to a 2006 legislation that legalizes the use of deadly force on a public servant — including an officer of the law — in cases of "unlawful intrusion." Proponents of both the Second and Fourth Amendments — those that allow for the ownership of firearms and the security against unlawful searches, respectively — are celebrating the update by saying it ensures that residents are protected from authorities that abuse the powers of the badge.


http://worldtruth.tv/indiana-legalizes-shooting-cops-2/

[zorgon]

While the headlines (as usual) take it a little out of context

it seems that it is true...

Myths and Misconceptions About Indiana's New Self-Defense Law

Contrary to the impression one might get from some recent headlines, a new Indiana self-defense law does not authorize Hoosiers to wantonly open fire on police officers.

The Week ran the headline "The Indiana law that lets citizens shoot cops."

The Russian cable news network site RT went with "Indiana legalizes shooting cops." Bloomberg News was only slightly less sensational with its headline: "NRA-Backed Law Spells Out When Indianans May Open Fire On Police."

Then there's the the San Francisco Chronicle's version: "Indiana law lets citizens shoot at police." The popular political gossip blog Wonkette asked, How were the National Rifle Association and Indiana's "law and order Republicans" able "to get cop-killing legalized?"

The headlines all refer to Indiana's Castle Doctrine law -- and more specifically, to a recent revision of it, which passed both chambers of the legislature by wide margins and was signed into law last week by Gov. Mitch Daniels.

Jeffersonville, Ind., police Sgt. Joseph Hubbard told Bloomberg News, "If I pull over a car and I walk up to it and the guy shoots me, he's going to say, 'Well, he was trying to illegally enter my property. Somebody is going get away with killing a cop because of this law."

Added Tim Downs, head of the state's largest police union: "It just puts a bounty on our heads."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/myths-and-misconceptions-_b_1596846.html

Fortunately, the law does nothing of the kind.

The changes to the law resulted from a widely criticized Indiana State Supreme Court ruling, Barnes v. State, in May 2011. The situation that triggered the court case (an appeal of a criminal conviction) resulted from an 2007 incident in which police responded to a 911 call about possible domestic violence.

After Richard Barnes had a verbal altercation with police, his wife pleaded with him to let officers into their home. Barnes refused. The police entered anyway. Barnes responded by shoving an officer to prevent him from coming inside. Barnes was arrested, charged and convicted of battery on a police officer, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He appealed, arguing that because the officers' entry into his home was illegal, he was permitted to use force to prevent them from coming inside.

The Indiana Supreme Court could have simply ruled that as a result of the call, Barnes' state of mind and his wife's pleas provided exigent circumstances for police to enter the Barnes' home legally. Instead, the court went much further, finding that "there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers." The court even acknowledged that this unraveled hundreds of years of common law precedent.

The ruling effectively barred anyone accused of using force against a police officer, for any reason, from arguing self-defense or the defense of others at a trial. At the time, critics pointed out that with the ruling, a man who uses force against a police officer who is raping his wife would not be allowed to argue in court that he was defending his family. The battered spouse of a police officer who fends off her husband could in theory be arrested and, under the ruling, wouldn't be permitted to argue self-defense.

While those scenarios may seem far-fetched, a bad prosecutor sympathetic to a wayward officer could easily make them a reality, said Mark Rutherford, chairman of the Indiana Public Defender Commission. "The police organizations say those sorts of things would never happen," he said. "And you'd hope a prosecutor wouldn't bring a charge like that. But if a prosecutor did charge you, you wouldn't be allowed to try to convince a jury that you were defending yourself. And that's the problem."

The amendment this month to the 2006 Indiana statute, known as its Castle Doctrine law, corrects the problem. It does not give Hoosiers the right to shoot police officers; Indianapolis won't be the next Mogadishu.

The Castle Doctrine law says that if someone has entered or is attempting to enter your home without your consent, you're legally permitted to use a reasonable amount of force to expel the intruder from your residence. If you reasonably believe your life or members of your family are in danger, you can use lethal force. The revision to Indiana's law simply states that public servants aren't exempt from such treatment.

Rutherford pointed out that the word "reasonable" appears throughout the revision to the Indiana law. "That's important. The amount of force you use must be reasonable," he said. "So if a police officer pokes his head inside your screen door because he heard something suspicious, no, you don't now have free rein to shoot him."

Indiana residents must (a) reasonably believe the public servant is attempting to enter their home illegally and (b) use no more force than is reasonably necessary to dispel the threat to their lives or property.