Originally Posted by DDDDave

My wife has been a police officer for 15 years. She was a beat officer and worked her way up to Lieutentant. She has a bachelors and masters in Criminal Justice. We watched the video and discussed it.

Here is her take: Four years is a pretty stiff sentence for what is basically beating someone up. The strong sentence probably had more to do with his prior record. He could have been on probation. Just getting arrested on probation is a felony. All of that stuff leading up to the first punch is really immaterial. He said, she said. In Florida, threatening someone with the capacity to carry out the threat, is a misdemeanor. Punching someone, wherever, is a misdeameanor. Punching him again and again is a misdemeanor. Causing great bodily harm, which is defined as near life threatening injuries (which the guy did not have) is a felony. Usually the standard for GBH is disfigurement. He didn't have a weapon. He tried to lift the guy up to hit him, but he didn't stomp his face into the ground. People get in fights everyday and the guy that won doesn't usually get four years. I doesn't matter legally, but we didn't see it as a sucker punch either. He was facing him. If you're gonna get in someone's face you better be prepared for what might happen.

Re: a gun. If the guy who was getting beat up had a gun, would he have been justified in shooting the guy dead? By statute, he would have had to feel that he was going to die in order to be justified in killing someone. Obviously a jury would ultimately have to make the decision according to evidence presented but I could make a case that getting punched 5 or 6 times, when maybe you deserved it after insulting a guy, does not give you the right to shoot him. If you were one of the other customers, there is no way you could even be justified in pulling your gun in that situation.

I'll reserve the social commentary as to how our society deals with these guys but I am glad that I won't be seeing this guy in any pizza places for the next four years or so.

Cops learn how to diffuse situations like this too. I said 'what would you have done if you were there off duty?'. She said try to distract the guy. You have no legal standing in trying to break up the fight. You could get beat up just as easily. Maybe holler "Hey man, here come the cops!" . It really comes down to if you want to or not. It's not like the guy is your brother. He wasn't going to die, he was just getting his butt kicked.