By now all responsible public leaders have recognized the need to dial down the rhetoric and de-escalate the confrontations in Minnesota. Yet Cardinal Robert McElroy has joined with several other religious leaders in Washington to rouse passions still further, beyond their already dangerous heights.
“The murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti,” the religious leaders’ joint statement begins. Right away that opening statement signals their choice to use inflammatory language. They could have spoken in neutral terms about the “deaths” of those two people. Or “killings” would have been perfectly accurate, and conveyed a better sense of the violence involved. But to term these tragic deaths as “murders” is simply irresponsible.
Murder is a specific word, describing an intentional killing without justification or excuse. In law, a charge of murder requires proof of malice aforethought. Whether the law-enforcement officers who shot these two unfortunate people intended to kill is debatable; whether they acted without justification or excuse is even more questionable. But to say that they acted with malice aforethought is simply implausible; in all likelihood the officers did not know these individuals before the fatal confrontations.
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