Oh, i don’t think it is self defense, i think it was fear of being harmed. That is where his defense will come from, that he was in immediate fear of being attacked. And based on the events prior to this, again, an easy argument to make. If there is some premeditation, it would have to be very specific, and if they have that, I will recant everything I said. Keep in mind, I am not defending this guy’s character, or his absurd opinions, but the video that I saw showed a vehicle driving normally until it was attacked. First degree murder is a huge stretch unless they have that smoking gun, ie “I am going to run these bastards over” or something akin to that.
I didn't think you were defending the guy, sorry if it came off that way.
But I don't think upgrading the charge to 1st degree changes anything. You still have the lesser included charges that the jury could find him on. So if they think he intended to kill someone and premeditated, 1st degree. If they think he intended to kill but did not plan beforehand, 2nd degree. If they think he had no intention to kill someone but acted recklessly (and flooring your car directly into a crowd certainly qualifies for that), then manslaughter.
And fear of being attacked won't cut it. The jury needs to find that a reasonable person would feel that they were in imminent (immediate) danger of being killed. It's not just this asshole swearing up and down that he felt that way. The standard put to a jury would be do you, as a reasonable person, feel that you were about to die in a situation like that? A few people swinging at a car that was clearly moving towards them first (remember, self defense is also void if he's found to be the aggressor) would not to me make me feel that I'm about to die right then and there. Also, the girl killed wasn't one of those people. Even if he could sway the jury on the above, I don't see how self-defense would apply to killing an innocent bystander.
The only defense would be 1) you have to convince them of no premeditation, and given that the prosecutor recently upgraded it, I'd imagine that they found past comments from this douche, on social media or otherwise, that he wanted to hurt someone; 2) then you'd have to convince the jury that you didn't intend to kill anyone, that this was some sort of panicked accident. That's going to be an uphill battle when maps clearly show that this guy went out of his way to arrive at that location with his car. The area was closed off, and he passed multiple police lines/partial barricades, and the crowd was clearly visible right in front of him. 3) Lastly, he's have to convince the jury that flooring his car directly into a mass of people wasn't somehow reckless, and that a few people hitting his car which he's safely inside would have prompted a similar reaction from an average person.
Now I don't see how a jury can buy all that. Although, juries have reached monumentally stupid decisions before.
My best guess, is that they found some posts on social media where this guy laid out his plans to hurt someone. So they upped it to 1st degree and will let the kid either plead down to 2nd degree, or roll the dice at trial.
Regardless, this kid isn't advantaged by the increased charge. If anything it's just one more thing (the premeditation) that his defense will have to argue against.
