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After federal agents killed an unarmed U.S. citizen in broad daylight last week, top government officials rushed to the shooter’s defense, calling a mother’s attempt to flee an escalating confrontation “domestic terrorism” and blaming the victim for his death. The killing of Renee Goode was more than just a failure of policing—the public response from those in power should shock every American who believes that being intimidated by armed agents and trying to escape should not be punishable by death. In fact, recent Supreme Court precedent illustrates why the shooting of Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross was not a case of self-defense, as government officials have suggested. The entire incident — a standard set by the courts since 1989 and reaffirmed last year — showed that Rose was unjustified in shooting Goode in the head as she tried to drive away from ICE agents who were trying to forcibly remove her from the car.
Last week, Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old white mother of three, as she sat in her SUV, apparently trying to escape an increasingly hostile situation. In cellphone video of the incident, two ICE agents can be seen getting out of a pickup truck and approaching Goode’s car. When an agent appeared to reach through the driver’s open window and try to open the door, Goode slowly backed up, then veered to the right and drove slowly forward in an attempt to leave. At this time, the third police officer standing in front of Goode’s car pulled out his holster, moved to the side of the car, fired several shots into the car, and hit Goode in the head. The car continued moving forward and hit a parked car. Goode was pronounced dead a short time later.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the agent who shot Goode, saying: “This was an act of domestic terrorism. ICE officers were trapped in the snow and were trying to push out a vehicle when a woman attacked them.” U.S. President Donald Trump also commented immediately after the shooting, writing on “Truth Social”: “The woman who screamed was clearly a professional agitator, and the woman who drove was extremely unruly, obstructive, and resistant, and then she violently, intentionally, and viciously ran over ICE officer, who appeared to have shot her in self-defense. “None of the videos that emerged from the shooting show Goode running over or attacking the agent before his death.
Goode is a U.S. citizen and the Department of Homeland Security has said she is not a target of the ICE investigation. She was shot and killed just blocks from her home.
Another video of the incident captures what happened before agents approached Goode’s SUV. In the video, Goode reaches out her arm from the open driver’s window and gives a “go” signal to a pickup truck that has just stopped a few feet from her car, just before the ICE agent gets out. The video shows that Goode was not trying to stop the agents with her car, as some have claimed.
A third video, taken from the cellphone of the agent who shot Goode, shows Goode smiling, rolling down his window and saying, “It’s okay, man. I’m not mad at you.” It also shows a woman, later identified as Goode’s wife, Becca Goode, filming the ICE agent outside the car. As the agents were photographing the license plates on their cars, Becca said, “It’s okay, we don’t change the plates every morning, just so you know. When you come to us later, it’s going to be the same plate.” Seconds later, two agents approached the SUV, and one tried to open the driver’s side door while yelling, “Get out of the damn car!” Possibly frightened by the seemingly hostile situation, Goode put the vehicle in reverse and drove forward. The camera suddenly points to the sky and we hear a loud bang. Three gunshots were fired, one after the other. Afterwards, we hear a male voice say: “Damn bitch.”
The government claims the agent who shot Goode acted in self-defense and feared for his life. The videos illustrate something else: an avoidable tragedy. Recent Supreme Court precedent once again helps explain why.
In assessing whether a law enforcement officer’s use of deadly force was reasonable or excessive, the court last summer rejected 5th The circuit court’s narrow “moment of threat” doctrine—which states that the only thing that matters in determining whether an officer reasonably feared for his life in a use-of-force situation is the shooting itself—is inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment. court, in barnes v felixrejected this narrow time frame approach and repeated it in graham v Connor: When assessing the reasonableness of an officer’s use of force, one must consider Wholeness situation.
Many who defend the shooting appear to focus on the moments before he fired the first shot. Applying a moment-of-threat approach to this shooting would require freezing the video at the moment when the officer stood in front of Goode’s car and saw it slowly moving forward. With such a narrow horizon of events, possible It was concluded that at that moment the officer feared for his life and needed to fire his weapon in self-defense.
By comparison, if we expand the time frame and consider that the agents positioned themselves in front of the car, seconds before a smiling Goode told the agent, “It’s okay, man, I’m not mad at you,” and only began to move her car forward after other agents approached her car, one of which reached through the open window, tried to open the driver’s side door, and screamed at her to get out of the “fucking car,” claiming that the agents needed to shoot Goode to save his life doesn’t seem very reasonable. As Goode swerved the SUV to the right and attempted to drive away, the agent was able to stay on his feet, move to the side of the car, and fire two shots into the open driver’s side window, further undermining the idea that he acted in self-defense to neutralize an imminent threat to his life. The video shows that Good was simply trying to leave an increasingly hostile situation, rather than intentionally attacking the ICE agent who was standing dangerously in front of her car.
an issue unresolved by the courts barnes The question is whether prior law enforcement conduct should be considered whether it increased the risk of fatal encounters with civilians—what many call “officer-created danger.” It seems clear that if one takes a total circumstances approach then prior law enforcement conduct that increased the risk of the encounter becoming fatal is only part of the overall circumstances and should be part of the investigation.
Some noted that placing oneself in front of a moving vehicle is not considered a wise move by police. Likewise, shooting into a moving vehicle is not considered good police practice unless necessary to stop an armed or dangerous felon (neither of which is an accurate description of “good”) because there is a risk of injury to those in the vehicle and nearby bystanders. While the first shot appeared to go through the car’s front windshield, the second and third shots appeared to have been fired by agents who shot Goode in the head through the open driver’s side window as she tried to leave. The officer fired from the side of the car, not at the person who was trying to run him over, as claimed. If he was just trying to stop the vehicle from escaping, why did he aim at the driver’s head instead of the SUV’s tires?
When discussing the shooting, Noem said, “Any loss of life is a tragedy and I think all of us can agree that in this case it was avoidable,” and suggested it was Goode’s own fault that she was shot. Likewise, Vice President J.D. Vance said Goode’s death was “a tragedy of her own making.” Through those comments, Noem, Vance and others who defended the officer argued that none of this would have happened if Goode had simply followed orders and got out of the car.
Ironically, Goode’s death was completely avoidable, not because Goode failed to comply with orders to get out of the car, but because the police officers could have exercised restraint and not shot her. He captured video of her license plate number, so if the agency wanted to track her down, it could do so later. Goode did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to him or any other agent when the agent fired two shots from the side of Goode’s vehicle through the open driver’s side window. Goode was not a violent felon trying to flee a crime scene. She just wanted to go home intact and be with her three children.