I feel that the first 30 expain the killing. They don't excuse it but to ignore the fact that the pharmacist was the victim moments before the killing is just plain silly.
Being a victim moments earlier doesn't give a person a free pass to commit murder.
The justification for deadly force VANISHES once the threat is over. If you kill someone when there is no justification for the use of deadly force you're committing murder. If your actions make it plain that you killed them deliberately and with intent then you're committing murder 1.
Why is the heat of passion manslaughter not a viable option?
If you want my opinion then here it is.
1. Ersland doesn't give any evidence of being a man "in the heat of passion". He goes about his task methodically.
2. Too much time elapsed between the initial incident and the murder.
But here's an even better answer:
The jury examined all the evidence and felt that it didn't apply because his actions and the evidence warranted a conviction for murder 1 rather than a lesser charge.
I still have difficulty declaring premeditation in this circumstance.
I can see that, but your difficulty arises from something other than the clear evidence in the video. Ersland walks over to retrieve his gun and then walks back across the room to the robber, walking both directions without giving the slightest evidence that he is concerned about any threat from the robber. A person doesn't have to plan a murder for days to make it premeditated. The law just says they have to kill someone deliberately and with intent. Ersland clearly did that.
In his interview, Reston mentions grappling with the suspect prior to being shot, not after.
In the link I gave provided it clearly states that the attacker was on top of Reston and that Reston had to flip them both over to free his gun arm so he could make the final shots.
My point only being that sometimes the only way immediately stop a threat, is to, like you said, take out the CNS. Which equals killing someone.
It does not equal killing someone and we just had a very high profile case that proves it. The Gabby Giffords shooting.
Besides, it doesn't matter. It is legally acceptable to kill someone in self-defense. The key is the phrase "in self-defense". That means that the killing takes place during the course of self-defense. It means that the goal is self-defense, NOT killing.
As I said earlier, what's the point of killing the attacker if you or your loved ones die soon after? What does it matter if you and your loved ones are kept safe but the attacker survives? Neither one matters if the goal is self-defense and that's the way it should be.
If you train yourself either intentionally or unintentionally to seek the death of your attacker you've done yourself a disservice.
1. You may let your true goal slip at an inopportune moment and severely complicate what might otherwise be a very simple case of self-defense.
2. Your mindset may drive you to make unwise decisions or take unwise actions during a self-defense encounter which could put you in the same jam Ersland is in.
3. Your mindset may cause your tactics to suffer. While in some ways using deadly force to kill is very similar to using deadly force in self-defense, it is different in other ways. Losing track of what your true goal is may expose you, your loved ones, or innocent bystanders to unnecessary danger. You don't want to take an ill-advised shot in an effort to kill when it really isn't necessary to stop the encounter. That shot is one more shot that requires you to expose yourself to return fire. It's one more shot that could miss or pass through or ricochet and hit an innocent bystander. It's one less shot that you will have available if a threat that you haven't identified yet presents itself. It's a shot that you may not be able to explain when questioned later. And so on...
In Ersland's case he clearly went to an extreme to try to kill one robber by chasing him down the street firing at him. That exposed him to needless danger of return fire, it exposed others to danger from his shots and possible return fire from the robber and it was almost certainly a contributing factor in helping the jury determine what his true goals were. And although he verbally expresses concern about his "people" in the 911 recording, if he were really concerned about them, his time would have been far better spent insuring they were safe or summoning help if necessary instead of running down the street firing at a fleeing robber.
(By the way, this is another piece of evidence that Ersland either didn't consider the robber on the floor to be a danger to anyone or didn't really care about his "people". If he really thought that the robber on the floor was a threat and cared about his employees he would have had no choice but to stay behind and insure that the robber didn't cause any injury to his employees.)
In Reston's case it made sense to go for a CNS shot because he was desperately trying to survive and realized that his time had run out. Had he simply decided to kill the guy, had he decided that he was going to die anyway so he might as well take his attacker with him, a higher percentage approach to that end would have been to riddle the attacker's chest with bullets. Hunters understand that shooting an animal through the chest offers the best chance for killing it even though it may not result in an instant kill. That's because bullets to the chest have a better chance of scoring a hit, a better chance of hitting something vital and a smaller chance of being deflected by protective structures. The lower power of a pistol round makes avoiding bullet deflection even more critical.