- That's not self-defense, says Annika Norée, associate professor of criminal law, after seeing videos of the sequence of events in Minneapolis, where police shot a woman in a car after she drove away from the scene at low speed.
She explains that a police officer has the same right as ordinary people to use force to defend themselves or someone else, for example in a situation that could, in the worst case, cost a person their life.
Guiding judgments
In the videos, it looks like the woman starts the car and hits one of the police officers, but it happens at low speed and the same officer is at the side of the vehicle, not in front, when he shoots her.
"It looks more like she's on her way out, not that she's about to run over the police. A possible investigation will have to show what happened and put the different images together, but if you ask me, I'll say it's definitely not self-defense," says Norée.
The right to self-defense in Sweden is defined in legislation, while in the US it is based more on practice, that is, on guiding legal cases that courts base their decisions on.
Strict view of self-defense law
Norée notes that the US has different states which may have different rules, but the US Supreme Court has issued guiding rulings on when police may use deadly force.
"The Supreme Court in the United States, as in Sweden, has a strict view of deadly force in self-defense. Furthermore, one only has the right to defend oneself or someone else as long as an attack is ongoing, and in this case the woman is on her way out," she says.
