3307

Stand your ground laws would tend to differ with you on that.

3308

Background

  1. Even though it’s not in the law, the California Criminal Jury Instructions (CALCRIM) do allow a jury to acquit someone based on a stand-your-ground defense. The instruction appears in CALCRIM #505 and #506, both of which deal with justifiable homicide:

“A defendant is not required to retreat. He or she is entitled to stand his or her ground and defend himself or herself and, if reasonably necessary, to pursue an assailant until the danger of (death/great bodily injury/<insert forcible and atrocious crime>) has passed. This is so even if safety could have been achieved by retreating.”

So in California, not only could you stay and fight, you can even chase your attacker if it will neutralize the threat to your life.

  1. California’s stand-your-ground defense as part of the justifiable homicide rules has several conditions. Aggressors are not eligible for this — you must be defending, not striking first. You, as a reasonable person, would have to believe the danger is imminent and not a threat at some time in the future. Also, you had to have believed that deadly force was necessary, and you had to have used just enough force to defend yourself. However, a defendant does not have to be correct about having actually been in danger. A jury can acquit if they think the defendant reasonably believed that mortal danger was truly there.

Turning your back on an assailant is dangerous, so I’m certainly sympathetic to this argument.

NPR

The courts have actually erred the other way. As long as the defendant has a reasonable fear of harm then the response need not be proportional.

3309

Well, that’s in California.

Arizona’s law:

13-411. Justification; use of force in crime prevention; applicability
A. A person is justified in threatening or using both physical force and deadly physical force against another if and to the extent the person reasonably believes that physical force or deadly physical force is immediately necessary to prevent the other’s commission of arson of an occupied structure under section 13-1704, burglary in the second or first degree under section 13-1507 or 13-1508, kidnapping under section 13-1304, manslaughter under section 13-1103, second or first degree murder under section 13-1104 or 13-1105, sexual conduct with a minor under section 13-1405, sexual assault under section 13-1406, child molestation under section 13-1410, armed robbery under section 13-1904 or aggravated assault under section 13-1204, subsection A, paragraphs 1 and 2.
B. There is no duty to retreat before threatening or using physical force or deadly physical force justified by subsection A of this section.
C. A person is presumed to be acting reasonably for the purposes of this section if the person is acting to prevent what the person reasonably believes is the imminent or actual commission of any of the offenses listed in subsection A of this section.
D. This section includes the use or threatened use of physical force or deadly physical force in a person’s home, residence, place of business, land the person owns or leases, conveyance of any kind, or any other place in this state where a person has a right to be.

3310

Obviously most of those don’t apply, since there was no murder, kidnapping, robbery, or sex going on. “Aggravated assault” seems to have an unusual definition in Arizona. Most places it means assault with a weapon, be it a knife or club. Hands don’t qualify. Arizona, however, has a bunch of cases where weapon doesn’t matter - punching someone inside their own home is aggravated assault, and they can shoot you if you do. Punching a wide variety of public service people, including teachers and doctors, is aggravated assault and they can shoot you.

At least, that’s how I read the law.

3311

So on first blush, this

Sounds like you could shoot the guy getting laid by your 17-year-old daughter if you can prove that killing him was the only way you could get the two of them to “immediately” stop.

That sounded silly, but here’s 13-1405:

A. A person commits sexual conduct with a minor by intentionally or knowingly engaging in sexual intercourse or oral sexual contact with any person who is under eighteen years of age. [it goes on to say that younger ages represent worse crimes]

I have to say, Arizona has always seemed like a land of crackpots, but as the father of a couple really attractive daughters, I may have to move there. And buy a gun too, I guess… though it sounds like a stout 2x4 would work just as well and be (slightly) cheaper.

3312

The guy can argue that he thought the other guy was going to kill him.

A person is presumed to be acting reasonably for the purposes of this section if the person is acting to prevent what the person reasonably believes is the imminent or actual commission of any of the offenses listed in subsection A of this section.

3313

I have a hard time accepting that someone thought they were going to die, in a fistfight at a Wal-Mart.

3314

Me too. It’s crazy what people can get away with.

3315

Right? It’s almost like you’d think nobody has ever been beaten to death, or killed with a punch. Oh, wait…

3316

Yeah, I believe duty to retreat should be the standard everywhere, but I would like to point out that Damien Falgoust, one of our own, damn near died from a single punch (with an assist from a curb). There is a situation theoretically possible where defending yourself with a gun is a reasonable response to an unarmed assault. This is probably not it (isolation and physical mismatch would be possible factors), and it’s damn sure not such a reasonable response that he shouldn’t have been arrested.

3317

Arizona resident with a ccw checking in. You can shoot an unarmed assailant provided you can prove that you were in fear of your life and you were not the aggressor. If the shooter in the above story started the fight, then he could very well be found guilty of whatever they want to charge him with.

I can pretty much punch someone to death. I have the ability and strength. I could do it without even breaking a sweat. Does that mean someone could not use lethal force to stop me if I went on a punching death spree?

3318

So in Arizona the burden of proof for a self-defense plea is on the defendant? That’s a good thing in my opinion. Part of the fucked-up nature of the recent Florida cases is that the state had to prove that the lethal force was disproportionate.

3319

Is the standard in AZ fear for your life or fear of grievous bodily harm? I would imagine the latter would be much easier to prove.

3320

Getting killed with a punch is about as likely as being eaten by a polar bear and a grizzly bear, at the same time. Yes, it happens. Given the thousands of fistfights happening in most cities right now, it’s not something you should really worry about unless you’re elderly, especially frail or up against a 250-lb muscleman trying to kill you.

Beaten to death? In Wal-Mart? Again, unless the other guy is high on bath salts or something, or it’s someone from a rival gang, that’s about as likely as winning the lottery.

This is two guys in line at a Wal-Mart, not someone attacked in a dark alley on the way home. While we don’t have all the facts, this looks like another one of those, “I got into a fistfight, and I’d rather murder the other guy than lose.” Which is ridiculous.

I would like to know who started it. My money is on the shooter.

3321

Planning on killing someone in self defense? Ex-Virginia governor has a deal for you! For $10 a month you can get insurance that is not insurance to be automatically defended by ken and his crony lawyers. I guarantee this will lead to more George Zimmerman type events but the scary thing is people will be more careful to cover their tracks.

3322

Yay, uniformed hyperbole followed by character assassination based on object ownership! I’m really glad you decided to come over to the other side, though, since deaths from fist fights are now the metric for what we actually have to worry about. Fortunately there’s twice as many homicides caused by fists as there are by rifles, so we can stop all this assault weapons nonsense. Also, you’re 3 orders of magnitude off for bears of any type, you can do the math for two simultaneously.

Hmm . . . if living in a bear-prone region, as has often been conceded around this thread, is a justifiable reason to carry a gun, and if you’re 1000+ more times likely to be killed by fists, to say nothing of blunt object, knives, and guns, doesn’t that logically mean that it’s the people who carry guns for personal protection from human criminals are the logical ones? Since we’ve decided bears warrant such measures, why wouldn’t people when they are ~10,000 times more likely to cause a death?

3323

I think you’re getting bogged down. I think his point was that, while we have the right (per Robin Williams) to arm bears, we also have a responsibility not to.

3324

Have you seen Robin Williams from the early days? He clearly meant that he personally had bear arms, and he was right!

RUN!

3325

Attackers in China stab 28 people to death and injure another 113. To give it some perspective, if it had been a shooting in the US it would have been the second most deadly, assuming nobody dies from injuries.

Obligatory sarcastic remark about China needing to ban knives.

3326

attackers