Although the deadly mistakes of police officers are generally not crimes, the injury or killing of SWAT officers by civilians who are reacting to middle-of-the-night home invasions are almost always treated as criminal acts. Even when the police raid the wrong house and an officer, mistaken for a criminal intruder is shot, the shooter, in the vast majority of cases, will be convicted of a crime and sent to prison. Regardless of the circumstances, jurors in trials involving downed police officers are generally not sympathetic to the shooter. They are in no mood for excuses and defenses. Realizing this, many police shooting defendants in cases involving wrong house, no-knock SWAT raids, plead guilty and hope for the best.
Even when SWAT officers lawfully break into homes for drugs just before dawn, they not only risk their own lives and the lives of everyone in the dwelling, they also create the opportunity, in the event of the officer's injury or death, for a much greater crime than the one that warranted the raid. This is particularly true when the raid is unnecessary and excessive. Suddenly a person guilty of possessing a small amount of marijuana finds himself charged with assaulting a police officer--or worse, criminal homicide. Since these greater crimes would not have been committed had the police found some other way to achieve their mission, they have, in essence, entrapped these defendants. Because the legal doctrine of entrapment (the police are not supposed to go beyond merely giving suspects the opportunity to commit a crime) doesn't apply in these cases as a bar to prosecution, defendants who assault or kill police officers have very little available to them in the way of defense.
Even when SWAT officers lawfully break into homes for drugs just before dawn, they not only risk their own lives and the lives of everyone in the dwelling, they also create the opportunity, in the event of the officer's injury or death, for a much greater crime than the one that warranted the raid. This is particularly true when the raid is unnecessary and excessive. Suddenly a person guilty of possessing a small amount of marijuana finds himself charged with assaulting a police officer--or worse, criminal homicide. Since these greater crimes would not have been committed had the police found some other way to achieve their mission, they have, in essence, entrapped these defendants. Because the legal doctrine of entrapment (the police are not supposed to go beyond merely giving suspects the opportunity to commit a crime) doesn't apply in these cases as a bar to prosecution, defendants who assault or kill police officers have very little available to them in the way of defense.
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