Reply #16: Are you serious?

[jberryhill]

"How can anyone licensed to practice law make such an absurd statement?"

I would expect a prosecutor to have confidence in his ability to obtain a conviction. I don't see why you find the statement to be so "absurd". In fact, I would expect a prosecutor to open a trial by telling the jury that he is going to prove the accused to be guilty. You seem to be one of those folks who does not understand the role of innocence presumption in a trial. It is a presumption that establishes the burden of proof. You can bet that nobody at the prosecution table is considering anyone to be innocent for one red hot second before or during a trial.

Why shouldn't he turn himself in?

People are killed during the commission of crimes all of the time. If I am holding a group of people hostage in a bank, then police sharpshooters are going to position themselves to blow my head off if they can get a clear shot. If, instead, I walk out of that bank with my hands up and no weapon, then I am going to be arrested, tried, and yes, convicted to a very high degree of certainty.

Your point seems to be that police should never shoot to kill. Police do shoot to kill. That's not a lack of due process. That is a response to a threatening situation in which the suspect cannot be apprehended. If Yemen wants to let us in to arrest this guy, that's fine. Or, as I said, he can turn himself in. But if he is an ongoing safety threat and does not make himself amenable to arrest or surrender, then shooting him is no more exceptional than situations which occur in the course of law enforcement every single day in this country.

Take that cop-killer in Washington state a while back. He could run, in which case he ran a real risk of being shot - which he was during an apparent attempt to sneak up on another cop - or he could have turned himself in for arrest and trial. But I didn't see any great hue and cry over the fact that, yes, he was shot while remaining at large.