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Fascinating thread.
Seems a lot of you are confused by what is "just and right" and what is lawful. Pretty much everyone agrees that if he did what he seems to have done then he deserved the full punishment of the law - be that life imprisonment or death, but that really isn't the question. The more difficult question is whether the police acted lawfully. The actions of the police, may have been pragmatic, they may have even been just and they may have been exactly what the suspect expected, but that may not make them lawful.
While there are many facts in dispute, I think there is one that is not and is critical, but first, I do make one assumption which I think is reasonable, and that is that if the police fired multiple "burners" into the cabin then they intended to burn it down or knew it would burn down. I think that is reasonable given the radio traffic about burning down the house. The critical fact is that at the time this decision to burn down the cabin was made, the police had other feasible options. Options that carried a much lower chance of killing the suspect - such as lights, snipers etc mentioned by others.
I really don't think its clear whether the police acted lawfully or unlawfully, but I find it really hard to understand how intelligent people think its ok for police to do what is "right/justified/deserved" regardless of whether it is lawful. Police are given some level of discretion but it isn't an absolute discretion, for example and bringing it back to this case, returning fire when fired upon is lawful, burning down a house containing a suspect probably isn't.
Shaun - actions do have consequences, but not unlimited consequences. There is a limit to what the police are allowed to do in response to a suspects actions.
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