Quote:
Originally Posted by jacobmuller
There was actually a third shot, brain hit for 56 injury, which made all the above moot, except possibly as a result of an autopsy and an IAD investigation: did the officer pause to check the effect of his first two shots or did he deliberately use unnecessary force, ie did he ignore the evidence of his own eyes or simply not realize how effective his first two shots had been?
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If the situation is judged to warrant deadly force, multiple shots that would have individually proven fatal* would probably only bring further investigation if the evidence showed that the range or angle changed significantly. That would suggest that the shooter had shot the target, moved, and shot again, as though he was finishing off a downed foe. Even then, if they were moving to arrest a wounded man and he went for his gun, they would probably be able to justify that.
If you're going to kill you might as well overkill. However, once someone is no longer a threat, cops call ambulances, not put an extra round in them. At the same time, cops don't normally make called shots to the head, and doing so might get someone labeled a loose cannon by the media (or a superior or IAD investigator with an axe to grind).
* "Instantly fatal" pretty much means a central nervous system injury. Heart, liver, and such might be instantly incapacitating and quickly fatal, but an autopsy probably won't reveal such details.