I'm pretty sure that any mildly competent lawyer can get this guy off of a murder charge. I looked up the language for
First Degree Murder and
Second Degree Murder in Arizona. Both contain the word
intentional. There's just no way that the death of these people was intentional.
What he can and may go down for is involuntary manslaughter. This law uses "reckless" within it's language, and it wouldn't be too hard to show that the guy's recklessness (running from the police) led to a series of events which caused the death of the pilots.
On the other hand a defense attorney can argue that the chopper pilots were the victims of a hazardous job.
Another thing that's being ignored in this thread is precedence. There's going to be a lot of homework involved here. I'm sure that somewhere there was a car chase which involved harm to a civilian and that civilian or their family sued the criminal fleeing. How did those cases work out? U.S. Law is heavily weighted in precedence and that's going to play a big role here.
In my eyes murder is definitely out of the question, but involuntary manslaughter is very much in the realm of reasonable possibility.
Jam it back in, in the dark.
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