Yeah that was an interesting one. I think intent matters but so do the consequences and I suppose as a society we resolve that through sentencing. Will never be a perfect system of course.

There were a number of cases along those lines. There was a guy who stole a police cruiser left idling while the cop was afk. After offloading the guns and body armor the perp took the car to a field and set it on fire. In the process he sustained a mild burn injury. But the way the arson law is written the range of sentencing is enhanced if you injure a person as opposed to just property and it doesn’t specify that the person injure can’t be yourself so he was facing something like an extra 10 years or maybe up to life (don’t recall exactly.)

Then there was a guy who survived a drive by which iirc was at his mom or grandmothers house (someone who wasn’t involved in whatever underlying conflict.) He drove after them and did a squad wipe with a rifle. Tough case to show self defense strictly speaking but as a practical matter these guys were out to kill him and didn’t care who got caught in the crossfire and the cops weren’t capable of stopping it. If it were a John Wayne movie he’d be lauded as a hero and you have to wonder if he’d have even been tried had he been a white man. And I’m not saying he shouldn’t have been, I understand legally we can’t abide vigilantes on a societal level but on a personal level this guy didn’t want to be involved in that life, as I recall, and didn’t see any practical way out of the situation that didn’t end up with him and possibly his loved ones in a body bag.