Yea, I feel like their needs to be a "attempted 1.5th degree murder on a LEO" or literally anything other than automatic 1st degree murder for a situation like this one.

1.5th would be "Planned something and shot first, but wasn't doing it to be a straight up shitlord or terrorist".

There are so many in between areas from 1st degree to 2nd degree murder that I think this would make the most sense in a video game to have a middle area.

I'm relatively high% sure that shooting cops in a jailbreak wouldn't hold up in court as 1st degree murder, since, you know, they planned to rescue their people... Not kill cops...

People called Randy out for "trying to help his boys when he pushed for 2nd degree instead of 1st" but I honestly think he was correct.

Chang and Ramee did not plan to murder police, they planned to rescue their friends, shooting the police just happened to be the only way to do that. Their is a difference.