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Misleading headline. As written, it sounds like someone shot their taxi driver for mistakenly thinking they gave them the wrong change. In reality it was an uber parcel courier who was shot while unwittingly acting as a money mule for a phone extortion scammer.
Usually these scams involve money mules who are in some way complicit, in the "ask no questions and look the other way" sense, and who receive a cut of the money they launder. But this time it was a bona fide courier from a courier service (the article mentions Uber working with police to identify the user account that placed the delivery order) - a case of literally shooting the messenger.
So the old man did not wrongly think he was being scammed, he was literally being threatened and robbed for $12k, just not by the uber courier. The headline is clickbait for not making that clear. The courier was not being scammed, just performing a routine paid delivery that happens to be for a criminal.
It is insane to shoot a taxi driver for giving you the wrong change. It is not insane to shoot in self-defense someone robbing you for $12k. Unless you are so anti-gun as to argue that self-defense is never justified and we should just roll over and let ourselves be robbed/kidnapped/murdered, but then I'd say it is you who are insane. Even in my liberal guns-practically-banned state, shooting and killing a robber is perfectly legal (NY PEN 35.15 2b). Here, a robber doesn't even need to explicitly threaten to use deadly force against you first - being in a robbery is specifically listed among a few select crimes automatically considered to be a life-or-death situation. You can also, even as a non-police officer, use force to detain a criminal or to prevent escape from custody, which is the situation that happened in the article.
Under the law, you have to shoot or detain the right person though. You not only have to think they are guilty, and not only does your thought process have to be reasonable, they have to also actually for real be guilty. If you kill an innocent, you are liable for murder. If you arrest an innocent, you are liable for kidnapping. That's what the court trial is there to determine. The old man failed on the latter two requirements and was justifiably found guilty. A police officer has an additional qualified immunity. They can arrest someone who they think is guilty, and not get in trouble if the person turns out to be innocent. As far as I understand it, legally this is the only distinction between a police officer and a private citizen in US law.
Also, neither a police officer nor a private citizen can use deadly force to prevent escape (other than a few special cases, like in prisons). That's another strike against the old man. If a police officer had shot the courier trying to walk away like that, they too would be (or ought to!) put on trial for murder, as that's not covered by qualified immunity. Like in the example of that guy who got killed on video in 2015 while trying to walk away from a traffic stop.
No amount of money is worth another person's life you sick fuck.
Lethal self defense is only justified in absolute life or death situations, and this absolutely isn't one of them. I personally believe even further that one has a moral duty to attempt not to kill an attacker, merely stop them, and have them face legal justice. The boner some people have to shoot an intruder is disgusting.
I guess I'm so anti-gun that I think getting robbed is not a reason to kill someone.
Self-defense means defending yourself or somebody else, not your stuff. Your stuff can be replaced. A functioning state leaves headroom for this instead of forcing you to put your own life at risk for $12k, and/or becoming a murderer for $12k.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the law.
Someone has to robbing you, be entering your home illegally (castle doctrine states), or in some way threateningyour life to justify deadly force. A scam like this would be classified as fraud or larceny (depending on applicable state laws) not as robbery.
Additionally yes you can detain a criminal in many jurisdictions under a citizens arrest. This is limited in scope and does not allow you to use deadly force. There's some caveats here, for example if the person you tried to detain pulled a knife, but those are not relevant here. This woman did nothing to justify the use of deadly force. Most likely the crime he believed was committed does not align with Ohio's citizens arrest laws. They tend to be limited in scope.
That's it. He was in no threat of physical harm here. That's when you are allowed to defend yourself. Being coerced by words does not count unless they are threatening violence (leading to a reasonable belief of harm). If you read the article this was a bond scam saying he owed money for missing a court date. That is not threatening bodily harm.
Thankfully there was a sane jury and at the very least this man will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Yes, you are right! A scam is not one of the specified crimes. As I understood it from the article, the phone call started out as a regular bondsman scam, but then escalated into threats of harm to the old guy and/or loved ones held in custody at the remote end (?), which elevates the severity, possibly up to a robbery-in-progress. The caller must have dropped the pretense at some point given that the old guy realized it was a scam yet still had the money ready to go in a package on the table. I'd have to read the actual court case to know what really happened, which is too much work, so I wrote my response under the assumption that the old guy was told a family member would be harmed unless he gave the money to an associate who was on the way.
In such a situation, it would be reasonable to initially detain the courier for investigation. If police officers were hiding in wait at the house, they would have done the same thing. It was unreasonable to continue to believe the courier was an associate once it was clear it was an uber driver following an app. So the old guy was guilty for detaining an innocent person without qualified immunity, and crazy for not listening to an explanation of what an uber driver is. Notwithstanding this, there seemingly were threats of physical harm through the phone, so if the old man did treat it as a robbery, and if the courier had been an associate, and the associate did get detained (by the old guy or by the police), and the associate did attempt to escape, there could be a situation where there was an imminent threat that the associate would return to join his accomplice on the phone and the two of them would inflict the promised harm upon the family member they were holding hostage. That would justify the use force up to possibly deadly force to stop the escape. It depends on what exactly was being said on the phone, though again we don't have the court transcript. Unlikely but possible.
Of course none of this happened, the courier was an innocent bystander, there was no hostage, and the old man was totally unjustified for opening fire under these circumstances. But that what the court trial is for. I do not dispute the outcome and I'm glad this person is now in prison. What I don't like is the headline saying a crazy guy shot a taxi driver over some missing change (that he himself misplaced). And then people argue that all self-defense is unjust because it lets crazy guys like this get away with murder. Which he did not get away with. And he was not crazy in the way the headline described it, but was in an intense situation which he might have been led to believe was life-or-death. And in the process he did violate self-defense rules in three specific ways. So we'd better learn the rules, and consider in advance our personal approach to the use of force, so we can act cool under pressure later. It could happen to you too.
If you had to place a dollar value on your life, what would it be?
Well, we wouldn't be the first people to consider that question. This is basically why life insurance policies don't cover suicide.
You might be surprised at how low the number is for a lot of people. What's perhaps sadder, is that due to exchange rates, lives are worth more in some countries (some currencies) than others.
I guess my only point is that yes, some people can put a price on human life, even their own - and so probably others as well.
Apparently for the guy I replied to, it's 10mil for them, and 12k for others. I don't think any conversion rate can dig you out of that one.
Yeah, that does make them kind of a dick.
In this economy?
Last time I considered this it was $10M, though I might need to update it for inflation now.
That is irrelevant here though, because a robbery is considered a life-or-death situation in law not because of the monetary amount, but because of the everpresent threat of bodily harm. Whether explicit, with a pointed gun, or implicit. "Give me your money!" ... or else... is implied. If the criminal could reach into your pocket and take your money without use of force, without you even knowing, it would not be a robbery but a pickpocket larceny and precisely not covered by deadly force. But a criminal ordering you to give your money is a deadly situation, even if you only got $0.10 in your pocket.
You are implying we should value human life and just hand over the money, but that's not the issue here. There is no guarantee that you would not be harmed even if you cooperate. A fast food place in my city got robbed, the cashier handed over all the money but the robber got mad there was only $100 in the register, and shot dead the cashier and the customers. The criminal has already demonstrated reckless abandon by engaging you in a robbery, there is no longer any expectation (as would be with any normal stranger) that physical harm would not imminently follow. Next to a literal attempted murder, a robbery is the most dangerous confrontation you could ever find yourself in. I am glad that the law of my state treats it as serious as that.
If you are in a robbery and you are absolutely sure that no harm would come to you if only you cooperate, that is nice, and you can graciously demonstrate your value of human life by handing over your $100, or $12k, or $0.10 or whatever, but such security is not a privilege everyone shares.