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Gastogh comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 17, chapter 86 - Less Wrong
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Seems pretty obvious that a Killing Curse can't hit anyone but the intended target. You don't want dead that bystander you're not thinking about. Also "I meant to kill someone else" would be a defense if arrested for it.
Given that, it can fade quickly once it's moved past the target.
I don't remember anything about the spell not being able to hit anything but the intended target, either in canon or the MoRverse. What's your source? Or, if there is no explicit source, what makes it "obvious"?
I just said. "You have to mean it", so it's odd that you could kill someone you didn't mean to. Even if you interpret it as "You have to want someone dead, not necessarily the same person", "if you're arrested for killing with it, there's no possible defense", and "I meant to kill the Death Eater, but I hit the bystander" is a possible defense. Also nobody ever mentioned collateral damage.
FWIW, "You have to want someone dead, not necessarily the same person" is essentially how "intent to kill" works in a legal sense. That is, the distinction between murder and manslaughter is whether, by your actions, you intended to kill someone; under the law, it doesn't matter whether the person actually killed was the person you intended to kill, or not.
Not that the rules of magic are necessarily modeled after modern US jurisprudence, but it might be that they both reflect a deeper moral concept.
What happens if Alice Attacker tries to kill you, and you try to kill her in self-defense, but end up killing Bob Bystander? The Killing Curse solves that one by having self-defense not count as intent to kill; does law do the same?
I think so (it's been quite a few years since my brief foray into law school). Let me do some quick Googling...
Yep, there it is: Looks like it may vary in different jurisdictions, but
Wanting to kill a specific person may be a requirement for fueling the spell, sure, but I don't see why that necessarily entails everyone else being immune to what is essentially a profoundly lethal effect. Once a bullet is in the air, it doesn't matter what motivated the firing of the gun.
The bit about nobody mentioning collateral damage sounds like an argument from silence. I'll tentatively grant you the point about "no possible defense", but to me it seems like Moody could well have been talking about deliberate, cold-blooded murder rather than all possible circumstances. I mean, by the time of the "no possible defense" line he's already name-dropped the Monroe Act, which is nothing if not a big, fat exception.
Well if you were using it fighting Death Eaters under the Monroe Act, and accidentally killed a bystander, and had fellow aurors to back up your story, you probably wouldn't be arrested.