When I tell you that you must assume that everything the news media has to say about self-defense law and events is 100% wrong until proven otherwise, this is why: CNN: “What you need to know about ‘stand your ground’ laws”.
The errors on “Stand-Your-Ground” in particular and self-defense law in general, whether...
Every once in a while a federal court in the 9th Circuit hands down an opinion consistent with the actual meaning of the Second Amendment, and the Universe threatens to lose its mind. (Generally, of course, any such 2A-favorable decision is shortly reversed en banc, c’est la vie.)
One such decision was...
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri issued a statement about the shove-shoot case. He gets a lot right in this statement, but he also gets a lot wrong. In the interests of time (and because I have a full-day Law of Self Defense LEVEL 1 Class to teach today in Sacramento CA),...
There’s been a shooting in Florida (naturally?) that resulted over an argument about a non-handicapped person parking in a handicapped parking spot, and it was captured on a rather poor quality surveillance camera recording, according to news reports.
I’m often asked to describe the most common way people screw up their self-defense claim. The truth is there isn’t a single most common way. Too many people manage to find an apparently infinite number of ways to step outside the bounds of the law. Often, there were a bunch of...
This case of the week involves an armed employee stopping a vicious bare-handed attack in the kitchen of a Milwaukee restaurant:
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This week’s case is a recent criminal trial sentencing out of Connecticut that purportedly involves principles of “Stand-Your-Ground,” but that in reality, of course, has nothing to do with “Stand-Your-Ground” at all.
The defendant in this case was Jeffrey Sumpter, 21 years old, who was working his...
Law of Self Defense Case of the Week is a new weekly series by Andrew Branca
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This case of the week involves the recent murder trial of a Texas man, Terry Thompson, who got into a barehanded fight with a drunk, John Hernandez, in a Denny’s parking lot. Thompson choked Hernandez to...
The Supreme Court just handed down a police use-of-force decision, Kisela v. Hughes (
Last week Idaho’s Governor Butch Otter allowed a substantive change to the state’s self-defense law to take effect, albeit without his own signature, reports the Idaho Spokesman-Review and other sources. Although Senate Bill 1313 (embedded below) mostly just summarized in statute form Idaho’s already existing self-defense law, one provision, in particular,...
Today the University of Cincinnati announced that it would settle a grievance brought by former UC police officer Ray Tensing by paying him almost $250,000 in back pay and $100,000 in legal fees he incurred, reports NBC and other sources.
Just days ago, on Friday, March 16, Wyoming became the 36th state to join the large majority that qualify as “Stand-Your-Ground” jurisdictions, furthering a trend that has been moving in only a single direction for quite a few years.
Former South Carolina police officer Michael Slager has been sentenced to 20 years after pleading guilty to Federal civil rights charges in the April 2015 killing of Walter Scott, reports ABC News and other sources.
The sentence was based upon Slager’s pleading guilty to a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242, Deprivation of...
Attorney Alan Gura has scored another huge win for civil rights in today’s Wrenn v. DC decision out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal District of Columbia Circuit (you know, the one Harry Reid blew up the fillibuster for in order to load it up with Progressive...
Two years ago tomorrow University of Cincinnati Police Officer Ray Tensing, who is white, shot and killed black motorist Sam DuBose during a traffic stop.
The stop, DuBose’ attempt to drive away while dragging Officer Tensing down the road, and the fatal shot were largely captured on Tensing’s body-cam. Today, after trying...
“Stand-Your-Ground” was back in the headlines against over the just-concluded Independence Day weekend, thanks to a 14-page decision by Miami-Dade Circuit judge Milton Hirsch that recent legislative changes to Florida’s self-defense immunity law were unconstitutional, reports the Bradenton Herald newspaper and other sources. (That decision is embedded below.)
Specifically, the recently signed law...
Yesterday, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed into a law a modification to the state’s self-defense immunity statute, according to Reuters and other news sources.
The self-defense immunity, generally mis-identified by media as a “stand your ground” law, provides for criminal and civil immunity for a use of force that is determined to...
