Self-defense

In criminal law, the right of self-defense is the legal protection of an individual's freedom to use force as protection against an attacker. The definition of what constitutes self-defense differs slightly country by country—and, in the United States, state by state—but most legal systems require that the level of force used in self-defense be proportionate to the aggressor force. If all the legal stipulations in a court case are met, the use of self-defense, even that resulting in the death of the assailant, is generally regarded as justified.

Legal Considerations

The United States federal government and each of the fifty states’ courts support the invocation of self-defense as legal rationale in court cases of violent incidents between persons. Each state, however, crafts its own stipulations to its self-defense allowances.

Overall, however, Americans share a general, homogenous definition and view of self-defense: that given certain sets of circumstances, using violence to prevent harm to oneself or another is and should be legal. For this violence to be excused in a criminal court, however, assault victims must be able to prove that several elements were present at the time they defended themselves.

Imminent Threat

A court's first concern in examining an individual claiming to have resorted to self-defense would be determining whether the individual was immediately threatened when the violence took place. An assailant must have been attacking the victim at the time, or joining threatening words with corresponding actions that would make the victim fear imminent injury or death.

Laws concerning imminent threats are generally rigid. For example, menacing words alone, when the speaker possesses no observable means of executing the words' intent, would not constitute an immediate threat. Therefore, an individual who attacked this speaker could not legally claim that self-defense was used for protection.

Additionally, the ceasing of an assault also terminates the attacker's status as an immediate threat to the victim. If a victim assaults the attacker after the attacker had attempted to flee, for instance, the victim would be charged with assault and could not justifiably cite self-defense in court.

Reasonable Fear of Harm

Self-defense can sometimes be used as a legitimate legal defense if a person only perceives another's action as an imminent threat. If someone interprets a person's entirely innocent movement as a credible danger and reacts violently to fend off the threat, in some cases that person could avoid being charged with assault by claiming self-defense.

In court, the important factor in such cases is the true belief of the individual who felt victimized. Legal systems can appeal to the concept of the "reasonable person" to decide the innocence or guilt of the individual claiming to have possessed a legitimate fear of harm. Though the reasonable person is a legally subjective device, subject to wide and varied interpretation, its core element is the symbolic intelligent, rational, unbiased individual who reacts to the world in only logical, understandable ways.

In the case of the perceived imminent threat, if the court determines that any reasonable person would have reacted in the same way as the individual on trial for assault, then self-defense would be confirmed as that individual's legitimate legal defense and no conviction would ensue. This is because the court would treat the situation as if it were the reality that the victim truly believed it to be.

Proportional Response

A third factor that courts consider in self-defense cases is the question of whether the force used by the victim was proportionate to the force used by the assailant. In American criminal law, self-defense must be employed conservatively, only until the immediate physical threat to the victim has been neutralized, and with the objective of minimizing the general violence of the incident.

For example, in an assault case in which a person is in danger of suffering minor bodily injury but not death, the victim may use force to repel the attack only to a degree that helps the victim avoid the injury. However, if death was not an imminent concern and the victim responded to the assault by killing the attacker, it is the victim who will be charged with either murder or the lesser crime of manslaughter.

Other Self-Defense Laws

Aside from the standard violent-crime laws that are generally applied in court to decide cases involving self-defense, some U.S. states and other countries around the world have implemented separate legislation intended to cover all incidents of certain types of self-defense. This legislation includes the duty to retreat, stand-your-ground laws, and the castle doctrine.

Duty to Retreat

In the twenty-first century, the duty to retreat is a relatively unpopular law that is found only in a few places in the world, including England and some U.S. states. It requires victims of violence to attempt to retreat from their assailants at the first safe opportunity rather than engage with them in self-defense.

While opponents of the duty to retreat admit that fleeing from an attacker may in fact save the victim's life, they also assert that it infringes upon the victim's civil rights to occupy and move about in public spaces. This, they argue, essentially gives attackers dominance over the activities of their victims.

Stand-Your-Ground Laws

Stand-your-ground laws are much more widespread than the duty to retreat and can be found in much of mainland Europe and a number of U.S. states. The laws lift the requirement of assault victims to flee from their attackers and allow them to combat force with proportionate force. In countries and states that support stand-your-ground laws, assault victims can legally claim self-defense to justify any violence done to an assailant so long as the violence matches that of the attacker. Thus, the purpose of stand-your-ground laws is to assert the rights of individuals always to be secure from physical harm.

Castle Doctrine

Similar to stand-your-ground laws is the castle doctrine, which permits individuals to use whatever force is required, including lethal force, to defend themselves from intruders in their homes. Although the violence against an attacker must be proportionate, victims of forceful intrusion can in many cases commit justifiable homicide by invoking their legal jurisdiction's castle doctrine.

Bibliography

"Defense, Self-Defense." Lectric Law Library. Lectric Law Library. Web. 10 July 2015. http://www.lectlaw.com/def/d030.htm

Palmer, Brian. "Do Other Countries Have 'Stand Your Ground' Laws?" Slate. Slate Group. 16 July 2013. Web. 10 July 2015. http://www.slate.com/articles/news‗and‗politics/explainer/2013/07/is‗stand‗your‗ground‗unique‗to‗the‗united‗states.html

"Self-Defense Overview." FindLaw. Thomson Reuters. Web. 10 July 2015. http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-law-basics/self-defense-overview.html