• barsquid@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    On the presumption that robbing a bank is always an armed robbery, yeah, the law is likely going to tolerate parties using violence to stop the robbery if they think they are preventing harm.

    Trespassing with intent to deliver a pizza is not going to cut it as justification since nobody was in physical danger. Probably not even in Texas since no property was in danger. He wasn’t even warned to exit the property, and he wasn’t fired on until he was leaving.

    IANAL but there is absolutely no chance of a self-defense claim here. His best move will be to take whatever plea bargain his lawyer can get.

    • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      You are confusing two different questions here. Whether someone is justified to shoot the robber in the bank and whether the robber is justified to defend themselves if they are attacked (fired upon).

      Yes, it would have to be armed robbery to justify shooting at the robber, and even then that alone may not be enough. (IANAL, depends on state, it’s complicated)

      On the other hand, even in an unarmed robbery, the robber does not have a claim of self-defense if they injure/kill a guard trying to stop them.

      I was talking about whether the delivery driver was allowed to return fire, not if the homeowner was allowed to shoot them, which is somewhat unexpectedly not the same thing.

      By the way, another interesting and unintuitive law is felony murder. Lets say you rob a bank with a permanent marker, pretending it is a gun. You obviously do not intend to harm anyone. However, lets say a cop shoots at you thinking it is a gun, misses you and kills a bystander behind you. You can go to jail for felony murder, because you created the dangerous situation by committing a felony (the bank robbery) and the bystander died as a result of that dangerous situation.