Welcome back to Lawyer Talk! On this special edition episode, hosts Steve Palmer and law student Troy Henricksen tackle the breaking and deeply tragic shooting involving an ICE officer in Minnesota.

With raw emotion running high and the social media machine already passing judgment, Steve Palmer and Troy Henricksen set out to strip away the noise and confusion, providing a clear analysis of what actually happens legally after a police shooting like this.

They look into the critical difference between how the law treats deadly force by a civilian versus a police officer, walking through self-defense standards, justification defenses, and landmark Supreme Court rulings like Graham v. Connor.

You'll hear them debate both sides, untangle the legal elements involved, and explore what it means when state and federal authorities disagree on prosecuting an ICE agent.

Most importantly, they break it all down without the politics—just the facts, legal standards, and framework you need to better understand the chaos and complexity when headlines erupt after a law enforcement shooting.

As always, they're here not to take sides, but to help you make sense of the process.

Moments

00:00 "Civilian Self-Defense Legal Analysis"

03:44 "Ohio Self-Defense Laws Explained"

07:08 Self-Defense or Fault?

10:47 "Understanding Real-Time Defendant Perspective"

13:00 "Justification Defense in Murder Case"

16:18 "Reasonableness of Police Force"

19:52 The Dangers of Police Chases

24:05 "Debating Crime Severity in Law"

28:29 "Justified Force and Legal Debate"

29:58 "Dual Sovereignty and Prosecution"

35:23 "Analytical Framework for Complex Decisions"

Key Takeaways:

Legal Standards Are Crucial: Emotional reactions are expected, but the real decisions will follow established legal standards. The actions of law enforcement are viewed under a different framework than those of civilians, making the analysis more nuanced than social media quick takes might suggest.

Objective Reasonableness Is the Benchmark: In police shooting cases, courts rely on the "objective reasonableness" standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court (Graham v. Connor). This means the officer’s actions are judged by what a reasonable officer would do under tense, split-second circumstances—not perfect hindsight.

Jurisdictional Complexities Can Shape Outcomes: Even if the federal government decides not to charge the officer, Minnesota authorities might still pursue prosecution. However, immunity issues and federal supremacy mean any state-level charges could lead to complicated federal-court battles over whether the officer was acting within the scope of federal duties.

Got a question you want answered on the podcast? Call 614-859-2119 and leave us a voicemail. Steve will answer your question on the next podcast!

Submit your questions to www.lawyertalkpodcast.com.

Recorded at Channel 511.

Stephen E. Palmer, Esq. has been practicing criminal defense almost exclusively since 1995. He has represented people in federal, state, and local courts in Ohio and elsewhere.

Though he focuses on all areas of criminal defense, he particularly enjoys complex cases in state and federal courts.

He has unique experience handling and assembling top defense teams of attorneys and experts in cases involving allegations of child abuse (false sexual allegations, false physical abuse allegations), complex scientific cases involving allegations of DUI and vehicular homicide cases with blood alcohol tests, and any other criminal cases that demand jury trial experience.

Steve has unique experience handling numerous high-publicity cases that have garnered national attention.

For more information about Steve and his law firm, visit Palmer Legal Defense.

Copyright 2026 Stephen E. Palmer - Attorney At Law

Mentioned in this episode:

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All right, here we are. Lawyer Talk podcast, off the record, on the air. We're going to call this special edition time. We're going to talk and break down the breaking news here. The shooting up in Minnesota where the ICE officer shot what looks to be a civilian in a car. Horrible incident for everybody. I mean, I don't care if you're the ICE officer, I don't care. I mean, certainly the family, all of this, this is, this is a tragic, horrible situation for everybody involved.

Crazy from Minneapolis is only like blocks away from the George Floyd incident also, right?

And then so imagine what everybody's going through there. Sadly, we're lawyers and we like to break stuff down and I think it's helpful as, as people process the emotions of this, as they process what's really going on to understand the backdrop. Because I've already seen not even like what I'll call real people who are not lawyers in social media, but also lawyers who don't practice in this area regularly on social media. I don't want to say, I will say it's sort of screwing up the legal standards and how it all breaks down and how it's going to be analyzed. And there's politics involved, there's the justice system involved and there's the emotion involved. This is one of those scenarios where it's a mess and we're going to try to sort of break it down to its lowest common denominator and talk about at least the legal standards on how we analyze this. Because what we have here basically is a police officer shooting. And this is going to be treated differently, folks, than it would be if it were a civilian shooting in the same situation.

So let's start with that scenario. You know, you've got a civilian and I guess the facts are basically these. If a civilian felt like somebody else was going to run them over with a car, could the civilian shoot and use deadly force against the individual driving the car? You know, that would be analyzed essentially in a self defense scenario. And by the way, we're going to talk about this just for our purposes as if it happened in Ohio. And why? Because folks, I don't know Minnesota law, so these are generalities, but I think they're going to apply because the standards we're going to use when we get to the police officer stuff is based on the US Supreme Court law, okay? And the other thing I want to note here is that here in Ohio we had a nationally known case of an officer who shot a suspect in a very similar situation and a local Lawyer here in Franklin County, Ohio tried that case. I believe the. The defendant's name was Tyler Grubb and the Tyler Grubb was con. Acquitted rather of the charge of felonious assault.

A bunch of felonious assault charges and murder.

That was very recent too. Like just last month or so.

A month ago or two. Yeah, yeah. Within the last say 60 days. So we're going to analyze it in sort of that framework and I think that's going to be helpful as we break it down. So what is important to do is I saw one lawyer that I know say this is cold blooded murder and it may well be cold blooded murder, but we've skipped a whole bunch of steps in the analysis. So back to the civilian. We'll put this in the civilian side of things. Troy, look, you've worked on self.

So we've got a resident law student, you've worked on self defense cases with me. How does it. Do you know how that generally works? Do they teach you that in law school?

It's a. Your first charge with. In this situation would have been murder. And then you then raise the affirmative defense ahead of time, saying I want to raise self defense now instead of you trying to prove like. Well, now the burden then shifts over to the prosecution. And now they have to prove it wasn't self defense.

That's right. And that's how it works in Ohio in most jurisdictions. So believe it or not, in Ohio it used to be that on the defense side we would have to prove by preponderance of the evidence an affirmative defense of self defense. And there are basically some fundamental elements. And that would be one, you're not at fault, you didn't start to fight. Two, you reasonably felt like that you were in fear of death or serious bodily harm and he used the amount of force necessary to repel the attack. And there used to be another element until what came along are these stand your ground laws that you didn't violate a duty to retreat. We no longer in Ohio have a duty to retreat.

But we used to have to approve those elements on the defense side by preponderance of the evidence, which is like say 50.000001% versus like beyond reasonable doubt, which maybe think 90%, 90, whatever you would say, now it's flipped. We have to raise self defense and if there's just enough evidence of self defense, then the prosecutor has to disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt. So there's some nuance there. But for our purposes, those main elements are what we're looking for. So, you know, as we look at this video. Let's just play it. Actually. Let's.

Let's play the video and sort of treat this like it was a civilian first. So here we have. What's going on is you've got. Now what is the police, I guess, ice coming up. You've got a car blocking them. You've got an officer going to the window. Let's stop it here. So we've got an officer going to a window.

All right. And then you have another officer, and this one's hard to tell. And I don't think everybody's seeing this, but there's another officer in front of the car.

Yeah. As if he's intentionally there to, like, block it from moving forward.

That's right. So you've got an officer at the window, several officers around, and probably some civilians around, too. And then an officer in front of the car.

Yeah.

Blocking it. That's an important distinction. I think that's the individual who fired his weapon.

Yeah. And it's just like the grubb situation here in Franklin county where one of the officers went to the window, tapped on it, and then grubb was in front of the vehicle to stop them from leaving.

Okay. All right, so now let's stop it there. And let's assume that these aren't police officers.

Okay.

It's just a bunch of dudes arguing with another group who's in that car. And you've got somebody in front of the car, and the driver of the car takes off. Go argue the defense side.

On the defense side. I mean, on the defense side, there was someone else trying to run over our client with a car. So he generally was, like, in fear for his life. So he responded with deadly force.

Yeah. So the defense is gonna say, well, look, I acted in self defense here because I was in front of this car. This person behind the wheel took off, and they're gonna run me over. And I've seen everybody knows. And actually, I don't say everybody knows, but the law is clear here, folks, that a car can be a deadly weapon. If you run somebody over with a car, it's just the same result as shooting somebody dead. That's a deadly weapon, ladies and gentlemen. And therefore, I acted in self defense.

And not only that, I was in fear of death or serious bodily harm, because we know that getting run over by a car is going to cause death or serious bodily harm. And I used enough force to repel the attack. When I shot my weapon, it stopped the Attack. And, and I was defending myself. Now the prosecutor's gonna say, hold on a second, folks, wait a minute, that might be half of it, but there's more or might be two thirds of it, but there's another third out there that's a little bit sketchy. And that is. Who's at fault here? Who started this?

Why are you blocking a car in? Why are you going up to the windshield? You outnumber em like that in my head. The prosecution has like an argument here. What are you guys doing? You were basically asking for this.

Yeah. You were out front, you didn't have to be there. You could have jumped out of the way. So there's a couple lines of attack. One, we would say the defendant here, the civilian defendant here, if didn't start it, certainly perpetuated it in a way that started the affray, the final affray that led to the shooting. Furthermore, deadly force was clearly not necessary because there were obvious other avenues of defense available. The most obvious being the other force. Jump out of the way.

Oh, jump out of the way.

Yeah, jump out of the way. Get out of the way of the car and let the car drive off. Why do you care if the car's leaving, let him leave. In fact, this. I would go further as a prosecutor. I would say, look, if you really want to take this to its next logical extension, the driver of the car was simply trying to retreat and get away from this mess and not have a fight. And you, defendant, you brought this, you did this, you caused this, you stopped.

Them from being able to retreat.

Yeah. You blocked their, their avenue of retreat and therefore you didn't act in self defense. Now, it's a different argument if you're on, if you're arguing the civilian side. Right. So like, I don't think it's as good. And I'll get to why later. So when people are looking at, looking at this and saying, this is cold blooded murder one, I want to make sure we're looking at the person first in front of the car, not the officer at the window. Or we'll call it the person at the window.

Because in the world we've created, these are civilians.

Yeah.

The person at the window is not the person who used self defense here. We're looking at this as it's stopped. The person in front of the car is. You can barely see, but that's the person acting in self defense. So we want to make sure. But you know, this is. We want to make sure that we're analyzing the same thing. When we're calling a cold blooded murder and then you want to say, look, did this person really have to use deadly force which may make a cold blooded murder? I don't know.

Could this person, if he's a civilian, jumped out of the way and let the car go? I think there's a good argument there. There's a good argument there. And a civilian would have no right to stop this car in its tracks either way. Right. So, you know, my verdict, if I had a verdict here, is that this is a tough self defense case. If I'm looking at a jury and I'm trying to argue self defense, I would certainly do it. Look, it's my job. It's what we do.

I represent folks charged with crimes. I've done it for years. But you know, if I'm going to give this the straight scoop, I'm going to say, look, this is a hard self defense case because I think the prosecutor has a decent argument here that the police officer could have simply. Or the civilian, if that's what we're talking about, could have simply jumped out of the way and didn't have to resort to deadly force. Now the defense is going to retort. Wait a minute, wait a minute. The law does not measure nicely the amount of force required to repel an attack. Yeah, you have to put yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, in the shoes of this defendant.

You have to think like you're the defendant, both subjectively you have to think like you're the defendant and objectively you have to look at all the totality of the circumstances. So you have to put yourself there and you have to measure this as if you're in the heat of the moment, as if this thing is happening in real time. It's easy as we, as the prosecutor over here likes to hit pause and say, well, look right here, he could have just done this or just done that. It's sort of like the replay in football. When they have to make that football move, when you slow it down, it's so obvious. But in real time it's a whole different look. And if it's a real time with human adrenaline, with human emotion, with human fear, it's a different scenario. So the law doesn't require perfection.

And that's what the defense is going to retort. Still, though, having tried cases to juries, I think it's a tough, it's a. I'd be concerned, I guess what I'd say I'd be concerned. I would be concerned that a, if it's a civilian situation, who started this mess and who perpetuated the mess. And what I would try to do as a prosecutor is break this down into separate incidents. So whatever caused everybody to be there on that street is different than what caused. Caused the final shooting. Because the civilian trying to block the retreat of the car didn't have to be there.

No.

You know, it could just let the car go. And obviously the amount of force necessary is questionable.

But here we don't have a civilian.

No. We have police officers. So this is a whole different analysis. And again, folks, I'm looking at this like it's Ohio law. All right? But Ohio law is applying the federal standard. So in Ohio, the po. If I'm standing up on behalf of a police officer, I'm not arguing self defense. Instead, there's another, what we call an affirmative defense.

So the prosecutor makes its case, and in this case, there'd be multiple charges. In Ohio, it would be something like felonious assault, which is causing or attempting to cause serious physical harm to somebody else. Murder, purposely causing the death of somebody else. And probably different versions of both those offenses. Right. So the prosecutor makes its case because clearly there has been a death.

Yeah.

Now, you can argue about whether it was on purpose or anything else, but let's just assume there's a felonious assault and there's a murder. Now, the burden goes back to us, the defense side. And if I'm standing here with a police officer, as the local attorney, Mark Collins, did with Connor Grubb, he's going to say, yeah, wait a minute. None of that matters though, folks, because we have an affirmative defense. We're going to argue that the use of deadly force here against the victim was reasonable and lawful in the exercise of this officer's official duties, and therefore it's justified because he feared that the person's action would cause death or serious physical harm to defendant or. Or even another. Okay. To establish this defense of, quote, justification.

So we're calling this a justification shooting. In a murder that you would say, or in law school, you would learn what murder is. The unlawful or the taking of one human life by another without mitigation, justification, or excuse. And this is a justification defense. The defendant must prove that he was justified in using deadly force by preponderance of the evidence. So let's break this down. Prosecutor's burden is what?

Beyond a reasonable doubt. Right.

Which is, you know, as I make the analogy in court, I would be like, all right, folks, it's like beyond reasonable doubt. Think like tipping the scales. Almost all the way. So dumping the scales proof or proponents of the evidence is like just put a feather on it.

Yeah, barely anything.

Just a feather. The burden of proofs matter or the burdens of proof matter. So just a feather on the scale to tip it. 50.000001% is preponderance of the evidence. It's different. And we could debate about why that is in law. I don't know. I don't care.

It's not relevant. But that's the law. So now the question becomes the prosecutor has proven, let's say they've proven murder. And I, you know, that may not be a foregone conclusion. It may not be foregone that they proved that somebody purposely tried to kill somebody else. But let's just assume that it is. Now it shifts over to the defense side and the jury's going to have to decide by preponderance of the evidence. Is there an affirmative defense of justification that applies? So that's the issue.

And on the civilian side, the prosecutor would have to disprove self defense. And we've kicked that around. Now we're getting to. All right, did this guy reasonably believe that his use of force, that deadly force was justified because he feared that this guy's action would cause death or serious physical harm to the defendant? Now in the grub case here in Ohio, it was the defendant, but really it's the defendant or others.

Okay.

I think to establish this defense, defense must prove he was justified in using deadly force by pronouncing the evidence. So that's just a great way to the evidence. Deadly force means any force that can cause death or serious physical harm. That's pretty easy. The reasonableness of a particular use of force. This is what, this is where the rubber meets the road. So the jury's going to be told first, all right, justify. Is this person justified? And to figure that out, let's first decide if he used deadly force.

Clearly he did. Somebody's dead, and now is it reasonable? Here's what the instruction would be. In Ohio, the reasonableness of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene rather than with 2020 vision hindsight. This determination of reasonableness must allow for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split second judgments in circumstances that are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation. The test of reasonableness is not capable of a precise definition or mechanical application. Reasonable. The reasonableness inquiry is an objective one. The Question is whether an officer's actions were objectively reasonable in a light of all.

In light of all the facts and circumstances confronting him without regard to his underlying intent or motivation. So we see a couple differences here.

The 2020 hindsight, I'm thinking that's more of the argument of jumping out of the way. That's what I view it as.

Yes. So this is a lot. So let's draw some parallels. Civilian case, the law does not measure nicely the amount of force that's necessary. You're allowed to make reasonable mistakes. And they. Even this instruction actually bakes into the cake some of the stuff that we talked about. Like, all right, everybody understands that there are all these circumstances of what's going on.

And it's tense, it's whatever. But the reasonableness here is an objective test, not just. Not a subjective one. And the instructions are very clear about that. So it's what a reasonable officer in that situation would do as viewed from the outside looking in. So the jury gets to look from the outside in. And our guy's intent, meaning the officer's intent. I'm not saying our guy, but my client's intent in this situation, I'm representing him.

Doesn't matter. And it says that. It says without regard to the defendant's underlying intent or motivation. So it could be in this weird bizarro world that you have a cop who's intending to commit murder, but it's still reasonable because of the outside circumstances. But, you know, back to it, reasonableness. What are we were talking about the parallel. So the parallel between the civilian side would be this idea that the law does not measure nicely, but the big difference is the intent doesn't matter.

Right.

So now what you have is, is a scenario where two different cases, civilian self defense, police officer, justified as a reasonable use of force based on these definitions. So you can see how this is a totally different question. If a police officer's on trial versus a civilian's on trial.

Yeah.

Now if you're.

I think he has a little extra layer of cushion around him. Like it's a. He's more protected.

It seems like the, like the police officer gets a better deal.

Yeah, absolutely.

Why make the argument.

The argument is a civilian surrounds my car, I'm probably gonna want to get away too. And I'm being trapped in cops under the color law coming up on. And I feel like they have a prima facie view of they're there to protect you, they're doing the right thing and they're asking you to stop. You can't just run from cops anytime. It's makes sense why they have a cushiony, easier gig. I mean, if a cop stands in front of my car, I'm not going to drive off. Yeah, I would expect to probably get shot, honestly.

Well, let's, let's, let's play this out. So, you know, I've had these debates where I've represented folks who have been, who are on the other side who actually give chase, where there's the high speed chase and when you dig into it, like it's easy on tv, sees ip, you see these high speed chases and the cops are coming out, there's always shooting and all this stuff going on. But a high speed chase like this or a police chase is actually really, really dangerous. Not just for the police officers and not just for the person fleeing, but for everybody else around. So when you see these movies like car crashes and people jumping out of the way and everybody, like in the real world, these kind of chases often cause all sorts of collateral damage, if not death or body harm to other people. Innocent people who have nothing to do with any of this.

I watch them all the time on TikTok, YouTube and all that. Like they're literally hitting like 10 cars on the way around and everything.

Yeah, it's bad news.

Yeah, Pit maneuvers, flipping over into the other side on the freeway.

And when you're engaged in a high speed chase. Look, a colleague of ours had a high speed chase case that resulted sadly in the death of a child because the guy who, the defendant in that case ran off the road or crashed and killed a kid in a yard who was playing game. You know, I mean, it's tragic. So there's a, there's a policy argument here that we don't want to encourage people to give chase and we want people to follow off orders of the police and, and avoid that. So I think. And then police officers are out enforcing the law. Now the other side's going to say, wait a minute, these guys, they shouldn't be here in the first place. They're ICE officers, we hate them.

They're violating people's constitutional rights, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not debating any of that. But the fact is you have police officers on the ground and my guess is this would have been a lawful order to stop, whether we agree with it or not. And you can fight that later in court. Like this individual, if charged with a crime, this person who was driving the car could have gone into court charged with obstruction of justice and Aired it out there. Yeah, I'm not saying the person deserved to be shot. I'm not saying the person. But there are other ways that this could have played out.

It could have also played out that the police officer jumped out of the way and this person was later apprehended. But clearly the person was trying to avoid apprehension. So again, this is horrible. This is horrible for everybody involved. And what we're trying to do is break this down to its lowest common denominator and just analyze it, legally speaking. So don't take from this that we take one side or the other. I mean, you know, I'm not here to engage in a political debate, but rather give you the elements of how this would be treated within the law. And then finally, I want to talk about.

I said I would talk about where this stuff comes from and what it's all about. There are. There's a couple of Supreme Court cases. I'll focus on one. It's called Graham vs Connor. Back in 1989, it's considered one of the landmark Supreme Court cases that established the objective reasonableness standard for evaluating excessive force claims against law enforcement officers under the Fourth Amendment. And that's what's sort of been imposed into these types of criminal cases. So you have a civil case where somebody's getting sued for excessive force, and the Supreme Court says, look, you have to use an objective reasonableness standard based on the totality of the circumstances.

And there are some key factors to look at under the Graham case. The severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to safety or of the officers or others, and whether the suspect is actively resisting or attempting to evade an arrest by flight. And those are the factors, generally speaking, that the Graham court said we should look at in determining objective reasonableness. Let's sort of break some of that down. The severity of the crime at issue. So there's going to be two sides to this. So you argued one side earlier today, before we took the mics. What was your side?

My side was, it seems like she's blocking the roadway. Just something what I considered very minor.

A misdemeanor charge. Destruction of justice.

Yeah, misdemeanor type level stuff. That's what I viewed as the crime, like the severity of the crime. The first factor of the gram test.

Okay, now the defense side is going to say, hold on a second. Hold on a second. That may be what started it. But the severity of the crime really was the crime of felonious assault or even attempted murder by the driver of the car trying to run over the police officer to get away. So the severity of crime, you choose, what is it? And these are the things that often get people sideways in the social media and civilian debates. I call civilians because it's like we get brainwashed in law school to look at this stuff in this very clinical way. And these terms don't always translate directly to what we think they mean in the real world. So these are the two sides of that debate.

Is the crime, the severity of the crime measured by the person trying to run over the police officer to get away, or is the severity of the crime measured by the person simply blocking the police, causing the police interaction in the first place? That's up for the course to decide.

Yes.

And there's going to be, there's tons of case on this. The second factor, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others. And that sort of harkens back to what we're saying. So you're going to say, wait a minute, the severity of the crime is covered by the second element. So. Yeah, hold on a second.

Yeah, and I would say at the time, probably not an immediate threat. She's just sitting there in the car blocking the roadway. Obviously they don't know what's in the car, what she's totally doing. But at the time I don't think it's that bad. That's the argument I feel like.

Yeah, this one I think, I think the first one probably favors you because you're arguing that side of it.

Yeah.

The second one probably favors the officer. Whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others. Well, clearly there's an immediate threat to the officer who's in front of this vehicle.

Yeah.

And again, a high speed chase or giving chase to the police is a threat of safety to everybody around there, whether this person intended it to be or not. I think that one probably favors the police officer. The third one, whether the suspect is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.

That one's, I think that's the one's going heavily for the cop here.

Yeah, that seems to favor the police officer now.

So that's why I don't like in the first element you using the fleeing or assault on an officer or like attempted murder. Because I would make the argument that. No, you can use that argument in the third element.

In the second and third, but not the first.

Yeah, that's right. That would, that'd be the argument I would make is you can't, you can't milk it for every element.

So nobody wins. All three factors maybe is your argument. I would tend to agree with you.

Yeah.

So, you know, is, you know, that, that, that last one I guess sort of said, I mean, sort of bakes that in actively resisting or attempting to evade arrest by flight. Clearly that's happening. So it's like now we're back to like the old, you know, the Wild West. I don't call it the Wild west, but the old, the old movie days. You know, there was a time in my world where if you're running from the police, you get shot. And I'm not suggesting that's, that's fair, I'm not suggesting that should happen. I'm not saying that's, that's legal at all. But like, you know, that sort of puts that into it.

So it's a complicated mess, in other words. Yeah, but those are the factors that the US Supreme Court have enumerated as important in assessing this. And I think what the takeaway has to be is it's not measured and evaluated as a civilian self defense case, but rather a, an excessive force case or an objective justification case. Objective, reasonableness of justification case. I mean, that's how it comes down. So look, again, this is horrible, it's tragic. And I, in a perfect world, none of this ever happens. But it did.

And this is going to cause all sorts of debate across the mainstream media, the social media, the alternative media, us, everybody else. And what we're trying to do here again is just break this down objectively as much as we can without taking a position and say, here's how this all gets evaluated. And I'm sure in the comments everybody's going to say, no, you're wrong, or this is this, or this is this, it was murder. And all, all that may be true. All that may be true, but I think this is how it's ultimately going to be broken down.

This is what kept me up last night. I want to know where this officer gets charged. I think that's the biggest pickle in this case.

All right, so this is really the last, last issue that we should, we should cover because it's an important one. Before we talk about immunity and some of those issues, let's kick around. Let's just assume for the sake of argument that the federal government is not going to charge this guy with a crime. And I think from looking at Pam Bondi's statements or all the federal heads, the talking heads in the federal government, they're not going to charge this guy they're saying, wait a minute. A vehicle. A car is a deadly weapon when used this way to try to run over a police officer. This guy's use of force was completely and legitimately justified. You can disagree with that.

And I'm not saying I do or I'm not saying I don't, but that seems to be that. The federal government is not gonna charge this ICE agent with any crimes related to this shooting. What about Minnesota? Let's assume.

I mean, look, what I thought off the bat was, you know, Tim Walls made his statements on him, like, and if I was in his shoes and had his motives, I'd be like, well, I'll talk to my ag. I'll make sure this guy gets indicted here in our state. That's what I thought was gonna happen.

All right, let's talk big picture. Constitutional law. The first thing you have is something called the Supremacy Clause, which says that the federal government is the supreme law of the land. And if anybody's curious about how this all unfolds, go study the Federalist Papers and how the US Constitution is written. And, you know, the federal. We tried the first time with the Articles of. I forget what the first. I've drawn a blank.

But then we had to redo it. We created our Constitution as it is, and we ended up with a standard where the US or the federal government is the supreme law of the land, but we still have individual sovereignty of all the states. So we have this other doctrine called the dual sovereign doctrine. So you could be charged in bank robbery, not only in federal court, but you could also be charged with bank robbery in state court. They have dual sovereignty over that. And that interaction is sometimes blurry. But here I think we have a situation where we can agree that the federal government's not going to charge this guy with any crimes. So what happens when Minnesota wants to prosecute? And I think clearly it's far worse for this ICE agent to face criminal charges in Minnesota should they be brought.

I mean, look, the reasons are obvious. It's in their local community. Clearly, Tim Walls has taken a position that they don't want ICE with boots on the ground in their jurisdiction. I think the mayor of Minnesota even came out using certain explicatives saying, get the F out of our whatever. I think it's probably fair to say that Minnesota is going to do what they can to try to prosecute this agent for murder and or related crimes.

That's fair.

Fair to say, but wait a minute. The federal government is the supreme law of the land. I'M on the other side. I'm going to be saying you can't prosecute a federal agent in a state court for criminal charges arising out of the federal agent's duty. If he's engaged in his lawful duties as a federal agent, then you can't prosecute him, as is often the situation in law. This has come up before, and there was a case. I didn't know this off the top of my head. Believe it or not, I knew a lot about.

I had to do some research. But there's a case called Inray Nagel. N E A G L E. For those geeks out there. It's 135 U.S. 1, 1890, where the Supreme Court affirmed that U.S. marshal David Nagle was justified in killing a gentleman named David S. Terry to protect Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field.

So you got a guy apparently trying to kill a Supreme Court justice, establishing federal authority to protect judges and affirming federal law supremacy over state law when federal officers act within their duties. Even without specific congressional legislation. The ruling found Negle was acting under federal authority and immune from California's murder charge, setting the precedent for protecting federal officials. But that's not the end of it. There's another case in 1990. And as this has evolved, I think this is how it all unfolds. And we may follow up on this. We'll get some pros on this.

Professionals. That is not pros. I think what has to happen is, I think generally speaking, agents are protected from state prosecution if their actions were authorized by federal law and were, quote, necessary and proper for filling their office for, for, for fulfilling their official duties. And this is that Nagel case. But immunity doesn't shield them from everything. So if you're a federal officer and you're acting outside your federal official authority, the logic would follow that you can face state court prosecution. And here's where the procedure could get wonky. It could be that Minnesota wants to file a murder charge against this ICE agent.

And the agent says, wait a minute. I have immunity. You can't charge me with a crime because I was acting in my official duty as a federal agent and my actions were necessary and proper. Well, now it sort of brings up this next question. Who gets to make that decision? Is it going to be the local Minnesota court, or does the officer get to remove it to federal court and let a federal judge make that decision? I think that's how it's going to shake out. I'm not positive. We'll have to get some more input on it. So say it gets removed to federal court for that decision.

So some judge somewhere, some authority has to decide, did the agent act with immunity? In other words, was he doing what was necessary and proper? Was he acting reasonably? Basically the same thing, but as a preliminary. The same thing as we've talked about all along, but as a preliminary impediment to a state court prosecution. And then that brings up all sorts of questions. Who's the federal judge that's going to get assigned the case? Is that federal judge going to support the Department of Justice or the state court? I don't know how it all shakes out, but it adds a layer of complexity that the local case that we talked about, the Grubb case, you know, we had a local officer. He's clearly. There's no immunity issue for criminal prosecution because he was acting. He is a local cop.

Yeah.

Not a federal cop. So, look, folks, lots and lots to unpack on this. We're not here to tell you that this was justified or not justified. I'm not here to tell you what I think about it. Just trying to break it down. I'd love to get your thoughts, your questions, your comments, but understand, we look at this as lawyers or we try to. And we get brainwashed in law school to try to separate the emotion and look at the black letter law, look at the facts and try to make that logical analysis without the clutter of emotion. It's impossible to do that because we're all human, but we do our best.

And that's what the purpose of this was, is sort of to give everybody an analytical framework to look at this without the emotion and draw your own conclusions there and then inject the emotion, because it's all part of it. I think the decisions that the Minnesota officials are going to make are premised upon a lot of emotional response to this and a lot of their thoughts on whether they wanted ICE in their community or not in their community. And there's going to be a lot of law enforcement officers saying, look, we deal with this stuff all the time. We want to stand by this guy because we don't want to be in this situation and not be able to use force that we need to use. There's going to be other law enforcement maybe say, no, this is probably too much. You know, there's a lot of moving parts to this. We're not here to solve all the problems, but maybe create some questions and create a framework so you can draw your own conclusions with the proper legal analysis. Fair enough.

That's fair.

All right. Lawyer. Talk off the record, on the air. You got a question, you got a comment, leave it. We'll do our best to respond.