“I can easily establish that you shot someone. That is all I need to secure some degree of criminal conviction. You need to convince the trier of fact that you had good and legal reason to shoot that someone.”
If I’m on a dark street in the city, that is correct. If I’m in my home in Arizona, and the shooting is of a stranger at 1:30 AM, and the door has been forced open, and the bullets hit him in the front or side...you’ll need a lot more than a corpse to get a conviction.
Pointing out a few facts - “I heard the door give way”, or, “When he started down the hall, I was between him and my kids” - that is probably OK. After that, “I’ve been scared, and now I want to talk to an attorney before saying anything else” - and then SHUTTING UP COMPLETELY - makes sense to me.
Better to spend the rest of the night in jail than to say something that can be misconstrued by a liberal DA in Pima County AZ...they cannot use, “He didn’t talk a lot of the cops” as evidence against me. But if in my emotional state I make a comment that doesn’t square with the physical evidence, they CAN argue I lied to cover up guilt!
I don’t think we disagree in any important sense. I completely agree that the less said before you get counsel, the better. Especially so in the immediate aftermath when the physical and emotional reaction ‘crash’ is happening.
I’m just saying that some here seem to be advocating a position of NEVER talking to the police. In a case as clear as the one you are postulating, the facts themselves will do the necessary talking. Things are rarely that clear cut. The recipient of self-defense lethal force is often an acquaintence, family member or domestic partner. The door may have been open. It may have been at a reasonable hour. It may have been on a dark street where you really shouldn’t have been. That doesn’t mean that the necessity to use deadly force wasn’t there. It does mean that you will need to paint in the picture of what was happening that led to your perception of imminent peril and your decision to employ deadly force in the defense of you or someone else.
I really dislike absolutism. Many here at FR are so reflexively anti-police that it would seem that they would stay silent (or even maybe lie) when the truth would save them. Whether to remain silent, or to talk (and if so about what and how much) should always be evaluated with your counsel. Talking, however, cannot always be avoided in all circumstances.