MAN DOWN-THE LAW OF SELF DEFENSE! Have you ever been in an abusive relationship, violently attacked by another person or even had to defend yourself in a robbery before? If you can not relate to any of these scenarios there is one that I am sure most of us have experienced, and that is being in a situation where you feel like your life may possibly be at risk. You are left with two options, to defend yourself or to surrender to the attacker. When we are able to protect ourselves, our innate human nature tells us to do so. It is critical for each individual to know and understand what it means to rightfully defend oneself. For a victim to claim self-defense there must have been a reasonable belief that the use of such force was necessary to protect him or herself from the attacker. In order for the use of force to be justified, the victim would have needed to feel an immediate threat of physical harm. Therefore once the threat is over, the victim should no longer be in fear of being harmed. The use of force by the victim at this point would be considered to be retaliatory instead of self-defense. There are cases when self-defense is justified even if the perceived attacker did not mean the perceived victim any harm. The “reasonable man” is a legal system tool used to determine whether if what the alleged victim perceived as imminent danger justified the use of protective force, therefore if a “reasonable man” in the situation would have perceived an immediate threat of physical harm then the case would hold up in court as self-defense. A good example for this concept would be if two strangers were walking past each other in a city park and a bumblebee landed around one of the strangers’ head. The other one sees this and swats at the strangers’ head in efforts to help. When this happens, the stranger who’s being helped retaliates against the other person, because he believes that he is being attacked. The court will be able to find that the sudden movement of a stranger’s hand near another’s head could cause a “reasonable man” to think that he was in immediate danger or physical harm. When a person has a fear of imminent physical harm that is objectively unreasonable and uses force to defend themselves from the perceived threat, the situation is known as “imperfect self-defense.” Although the person’s claim of self-defense will not get him out of any criminal charges because of the unreasonable nature of his perception, it can reduce the severity of the charges or the eventual punishment. If you ever get in a situation with an attacker, you must remember that the level of your self-defense must equal the level of the threat in question. You as the victim can only use the amount of force that is required to eliminate the threat. If the threat uses minor force and you decide to use deadly force which cause bodily harm or death, your claim of self-defense will not hold up in court. Some states require for a person to attempt to avoid the violence before using force, by retreating or leaving the scene if possible. The stand your ground law is opposite from the duty to retreat, and allows for self-defense even if the alleged victim did nothing to retreat from the threat of violence. This is the most common for situations that do not involve deadly force, however the rule known as the “castle doctrine” allows for people to use deadly force against an intruder who enters into their home. As you can see there are a lot of facets to consider in self-defense, and like anything else in life your reason to defend yourself has to add up and make sense. You cannot shoot and potentially kill a person if they do not have the potential to kill you. Although you use self-defense to protect yourself in threatening situations, you have to be mindful to not jump off the handle and make rash decisions based off emotions. When you utilize self-defense and you are well within your rights, self-defense can be a means of protection at the moment and later in court. Make a decision when protecting yourself in the heat of an altercation, to react in a way that will also protect you later.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 23:22:43 +0000
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