Well, as far as being charged with 2nd degree and manslaughter, I have no problem with the verdict. But, I am, as I said, pretty sure he was guilty of practising vigilantism. Whether it is illegal or not does not absolve him of being guilty of it.
I have not seen the term "Vigilantism" in any of our statutes or the CC, it may well exist in the US, I don't know. However, it refers to taking justice into your own hands, i.e. exacting punishment for the perceived crime. That is not legal in any jurisdiction of any free country that I know of. Justice is owned by the courts; the law, however, is owned by us, the people. It is not the sole property of the judiciary, the police, or legislators. We do have the right, and sometimes the duty to take the law into our own hands, it is ours after all. We do have the right to arrest and detain anyone we see committing an indictable offense. Our police and prosecutors, at times detest the fact that we actually do have this right as they must think that we are somehow beneath them and will prosecute, sometimes virulently, those who exercise this right, as per David Chen. The law has since been clarified so that yes, we can actually track down the scofflaw and detain him until police arrive.
The law also allows us to use force, up to and including deadly force if we reasonably believe we or those in our care are under threat of death or greivous bodily harm. That is not vigilantism, that is a basic human right.
Yeah, silly ain't it? So I could be someone who has barely an idea of which end of a gun to hold onto, let alone aim or whatever, and start blazing away in whatever direction .... well, I'm sure you get the idea. Good thing in Canada, we have this:
Sorry Les, I don't mean to pick on ya, but you're using the same arguments every other gun grabber does, and i'm too lazy to look for other posts, and I wished my home computer hadn't crashed because I had the stats where police missed their intended targets more often than armed citizens, it was worrying. However, Newsweek did report in 2003 that armed citizens shot and killed two and a half times as many criminals as police did, and mistakenly identified criminals 2% of the time, as compared with 11% for police. It almost makes you wish for the Edwardian days where we were armed, if we wished, and the police were not. They were our employees and served at our pleasure, 'tis not the case today.