Perhaps this ruling will help the police eager to dress up and play soldier to remember that it’s perfectly legal to shoot and kill anyone breaking into your house without warning, even SWAT team members:
In an astonishing ruling, a Texas grand jury declined to press capital murder charges against a man who shot and killed a law enforcement officer executing a no-knock raid on his home. A Burleson County SWAT team raided the man’s home near Snook on December 19th of last year.
28-year-old Henry Goedrich Magee said he shot and killed Burleson County Sgt. Adam Sowders, 31, because he thought he was being robbed and acted to protect his pregnant girlfriend and children.
“He did what a lot of people would have done […] He defended himself and his girlfriend and his home,” said Dick DeGuerin, Magee’s lawyer. The jury agreed, citing a lack of evidence Magee knew the invader was actually a law enforcement officer, they neglected to charge him despite his being a “cop killer.”
Warrants and procedural limits on police actions aren’t merely there to protect the innocent. They will also tend to protect the police from their own militarization.