Jury Instructions Already?

If they are hashing out jury instructions already, the end of trial could be coming quicker than anticipated:

• When jurors make their decision on whether to convict Jason Van Dyke in the murder of Laquan McDonald, Van Dyke’s lawyers want them told they can’t use “the vision of 20/20 hindsight.”
  
  As the Van Dyke trial continues in Judge Vincent Gaughan’s courtroom, the more arcane but critical battle over the instructions that the judge will give the jury before they decide the case continues behind the scenes.
  
  Special Prosecutor Joseph McMahon late Tuesday filed a motion challenging four instructions proposed by Van Dyke’s team as “complicated, lengthy and unabashedly argumentative.”

And what are the instructions?

1. They need to consider “specific acts” McDonald committed to resist arrest before he was shot
2. If Van Dyke’s decision to use deadly force against McDonald was justified, then he was not required by law to use “non-deadly alternatives first”
3. That when a person is in reasonable fear for their life, that person isn’t required by the law to “use infallible judgement” when deciding if deadly force is justified — and that “the passage of a few seconds during which the fear abates is normally not enough to hold that person guilty of an unjustified homicide”
4. Police officers often are forced to make split-second judgments about what’s reasonable, rather than with “the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”

The first instruction isn't vital. The second and third are pretty important. That last one is the kicker. Numerous Supreme Court decisions specifically mention that Use of Force is based on what a "reasonable police officer" believes, not what a non-LEO thinks based on hindsight.