.. an appropriate, and perhaps even required charge for the Commonwealth's attorney to bring. All that's required for first-degree homicide in Wisconsin is that you cause the death of another human being with intent to kill that person or another. In Wisconsin, there is no capital or first degree murder as most people typically think of it involving willful premeditation or malice aforethought. The self-defense angle comes in as a mitigating circumstance or outright defense that is, by virtue of the way their code is constructed, part and parcel of the first degree intentional homicide charge. So accusing him of that is not quite, if I'm reading things correctly, necessarily an "appease the mob" type of thing. I can't say for sure because I can't crawl inside the head of the district attorney there but, under the letter of the law, it certainly seems like a defensible charge, and not the overreaction that you might think when first reading it.