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Law of Self Defense Tag

Posted by Andrew Branca on February 17, 2015 60 Comments
Wayne Davis, the jury foreman in the Michael Dunn re-trial that found Dunn guilty of the first-degree murder of Jordan Davis, was interviewed for the first time this past week by News4Jax. Remember Dunn? He's the one charged with 1st degree murder for the shooting death of 17-year-old Jordan Davis. The State believed Dunn shot Jordan out of anger over Jordan’s loud music, whereas Dunn claimed he shot in lawful self-defense. The State's argument won out, raising questions about lawful self-defense vs. premeditation standards in modern criminal law. You can read a transcript, and watch a video of the interview (also embedded at the bottom of this post), here. What particularly caught my eye from this interview was the considerable weight the jurors placed on the many physical steps Michael Dunn took in retrieving, preparing, and brandishing his handgun, and how the jury concluded as a result that Dunn acted with premeditation.  This finding of premeditation was necessary in order for the jury to unanimously find Dunn guilty of first-degree murder, as opposed to second-degree murder or manslaughter. As Wayne Davis, jury foreman, put it in the interview:

Posted by Andrew Branca on February 15, 2015 32 Comments
It has long been standard prosecutorial practice in Massachusetts to put any use of deadly force in claimed self-defense in front of a jury.  The attitude of prosecutors is that it might have been lawful self-defense, but it might not have been, so they're going to make you prove it to a jury before they'll cut you loose. Of course, with a trial defense of a murder (or similar) charge easily running into tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, this policy has the effect of "making the process the punishment."  Even if acquitted, one's life is largely destroyed economically, and likely emotionally. Even here in the Commonwealth, however, there is the occasional act of self-defense that is so obviously justified that the authorities are simply unwilling to present it to a jury as legitimate grounds for long-term incarceration. Once such case occurred last week in Springfield MA, a town I personally would never visit unless armed, hence my very rare visits--and then only to go to the Smith & Wesson facility still located there.   Indeed, it was such an open-and-shut case of lawful self-defense, even by Massachusetts standards, that the police announced within hours that they did not intend to bring charges against the defender.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 09, 2015 43 Comments
Houston area Black Panther leader, Quanell X, is changing his tune after training with the Missouri City Police Department. Quanell X is Houston's own personal Al Sharpton. Wherever an incident can be construed as race-related, Quanell X is there with his activists, rambling to local news crews about the violence inherent in the system. Or at least he was before what appears to be a sincerely eye-opening experience. Recently, Quanell agreed to train with the Missouri City Police Department, located in a suburb of Houston. The experience dramatically altered Quanell's perception. "Wow. Damn," he said, after unloading countless paintball rounds at a mock suspect who was refusing to stand down in a routine traffic stop scenario. Quanell went through four scenarios where he was required to, "shoot, hold fire, or use his taser," KHOU News reports. "Shoot him in the leg? I was very close because he kept coming," an obviously distressed Quanell said.

Posted by Andrew Branca on January 25, 2015 106 Comments
Thanks to a tip from commenter Gremlin1974 right here on Legal Insurrection I was directed to this relatively high-quality body camera footage of a police officer engaging a suspect with gunfire, following the suspect pointing a pistol at the officer. Further details of the event were reported by local news station Fox 23 and by Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller. The shooting took place on January 16, 2015 in Muskogee, OK. The ex-girlfriend of 21-year-old Terence Walker, black, was getting married, an event to which he took umbrage. His solution was to threaten to shoot her on her wedding day, including such details as noting that he had a particular bullet selected just for her. When the bride approached her pastor in tears and shared these threats, he immediately called 911, saying of Walker: "He’s here with a gun,” Jones said of Walker on the 911 call. “I need a police officer because I got to stop this. I got a whole bunch of people here, and I don’t need nobody hurt." Police Officer Chansey McMillin, white, was dispatched to the scene. The body camera released begins as his vehicle is pulling into the church parking lot, captures the shooting itself, and continues for several more minutes until the crime scene has been secured and McMillin is on his way to the police station for debriefing.

Posted by Andrew Branca on January 22, 2015 53 Comments
The Bridgeton NJ police department has released dash camera video of the shooting of violent felon Jerame Reid by two of its police officers during a traffic stop, reports NBC 4 news in New York.  Both Reid and the officer who first shot him, Behame Days, are black.  Days' partner, Officer Roger Worley, who is white, also shot Reid after the gunfire began. The South Jersey Times reports that last summer Officer Days was involved in the arrest of Reid for heroin and cocaine possession, and resisting arrest. The same source reports that Reid has previously served thirteen years in prison for shooting at New Jersey State Police Officers. Given Day's previous experience in arresting a non-compliant Reid it seems quite possible that he would have been aware of Reid's history of shooting at police, knowledge which would naturally have contributed to his reasonable fear of death or grave bodily harm at the hands of the once again non-compliant suspect. The video begins with the suspect vehicle, in which Reid was the passenger, making a rolling left turn through a stop sign (0:06) while directly in front of the patrol car occupied by officers Worley (driving) and Days.  This immediately initiated the traffic stop (0:22), which begins amiably enough with a typical verbal exchange (0:36), but degenerates into Days drawing his service weapon within 22 seconds of his first words with the suspects (0:58).

Posted by Andrew Branca on December 19, 2014 22 Comments
A Texas Court of Appeals has ordered a new trial for a Houston man, Raul Rodriguez, convicted in 2012 of murder for the shooting death of a neighbor, Kelly Danaher, in 2010, on the grounds of defective jury instructions on self-defense, according to reports by ABC news and other news agencies.  (A full-length copy of this order is embedded at the bottom of this post.) The first trial found Rodriguez guilty of murder, and resulted in him being sentenced to 40 years. The facts of the case are somewhat ambiguous on detail, but in general they consist of an amalgam of a loud, drunken party, long-simmering neighborhood disputes, and incredibly poor judgment on the part of a retired fire-fighter in electing to exercise his concealed carry license by bringing his pistol to a confrontation.  A tragic outcome was entirely predictable. A particularly remarkable part of this case is that Rodriguez himself recorded the events of the conflict in an almost 20-minute video.  A portion of the video recorded by Rodriguez is here.  Roughly 15 preceding minutes are missing from this version, but the relevant end-stages of the conflict are captured, and the video ends with the first gun shot.  Reportedly several shots were fired, including one which injured another party goer, in addition to the fatal round that struck Danaher.

Posted by Andrew Branca on October 11, 2014 15 Comments
Marissa Alexander was back in the news, as her lawyers try to preclude state prosecutors from getting truthful but damaging evidence against her before the jury (details on this below). With her trial now only about 6 weeks away, the misinformation machinery will be spinning up to top speed. As a reality-based counterweight I thought it might be useful (and fun) to refresh our recollection on the truth behind Marissa Alexander and her (self-acquired) legal travails. Without further ado, here are three big lies about the Marissa Alexander case that you--or, if not you, too many others--believe to be true.

1. Marissa Alexander Merely Fired a Warning Shot Into the Air

I’ll start with the best one first: the notion that Alexander merely fired “into the air” as a warning shot. Literally speaking, of course, any time one fires a gun one is firing it “into the air”—unless, I suppose, one is firing the gun under water. Substantively, however, this statement is an outright and deliberate lie, and proven to be a lie by both the further misleading characterization of the shot as being “fired into the ceiling” and the forensics evidence shared by the prosecutor’s office with the media and public. The term “warning shot” is, of course, intended to convey the firing of a shot in a “harmless” direction, or at least not deliberately near any particular person. The purpose is to forcefully communicate the will to fire more accurately and with greater effect if necessary to stop the other person’s offensive conduct.

Posted by Andrew Branca on October 10, 2014 18 Comments
It all started when an 8th grader decided to wear his mother's wig to school as a joke. What could go wrong? Apparently, a great deal. By the end of the day that awesome judgment call had cost the wig wearer an eye, within weeks leading to a juvenile hate crime conviction on the 7th grader responsible for the injury, and as of this week led the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York to reverse that conviction on self-defense grounds (PDF of the decision and order to reverse is embedded below). (Note: New York is one of a small number of states in which "Supreme Court" does NOT refer to the highest court in the state.  In New York that highest court is instead referred to as the Court of Appeals--a term that in most states refers to the court of intermediate jurisdiction.) On June 5, 2012, the (then) 8th grade complainant, as mentioned, decided to wear mom's wig to Junior High.  Shockingly, other students began to taunt him over this, among them a group of 7th graders that included Mondy E., the appellant.  Also shockingly, their taunts included anti-homosexual/transgender epithets, thus opening up the "hate crimes" can of worms. The complainant asked the taunters to stop, which had the efficacy one might expect under the circumstances.

Posted by Andrew Branca on October 04, 2014 25 Comments
So, people send me stuff. Which I love. And sometimes what they send makes me want to both laugh, and cry. Today I was sent a link to a video on the Bloomberg news site, about a company named Hardwire that has for years provided high-tech armoring materials to combat vehicles in the Middle East wars. Of course, those wars are drying up (ha-ha, right), so companies serving that "market" now find themselves seeking alternative customers. In the case of Hardwire they've decided to take their high-end armor material, Dyneema, and use it to make small bullet-proof whiteboards for use in schools as shields--no, I'm not kidding, as shields--against active shooters who may attack as in Sandy Hook. Bloomberg's video embeds early an utterly trite quote from Obama, and then starts with the company's pitch:

Posted by Andrew Branca on September 25, 2014 1 Comment
I was interviewed by Chris Samples of KXDJ radio, way WAY up in the Texas panhandle, on the subject of (naturally) self-defense law.  This radio interview was triggered by the recent scheduling of a Law of Self Defense Seminar up in the Amarillo area of the Lone Star State. I don't have the entire interview recorded, but KXDJ was kind enough to send me a couple of brief portions, and Professor Jacobson has been kind enough to let me share them with you. Because these two clips are somewhat removed from the broader context of the interview as a whole (in particular, they each start off with my reply to a question you can't hear), I'll try to set them up a bit.

Posted by Andrew Branca on September 21, 2014 20 Comments
We have covered the recent shooting death by police of a handcuffed suspect in Georgia: By now we've all heard expounded the major theme propounded by protesters that a handcuffed suspect could never present a danger of death or grave bodily harm necessary to justify the officer's use of deadly force. Let's bust that myth. On Friday commenter MikeAT, who runs the very interesting blog A Cop's Watch, was kind enough to provide links to a couple of terrible cases in which handcuffed suspects not only presented police officers with death or grave bodily harm, they actually killed them. Both cases referred to by MikeAT are drawn from the web site "Officer Down Memorial Page."

Police Officer Guy P. Gaddis, Houston Police Department

Officer Guy Gaddis
Officer Guy Gaddis [24-years-old] was shot and killed while transporting two handcuffed prisoners to jail. One of the prisoners had managed to conceal a gun and shoot Officer Gaddis twice in the back of the head. The suspect was convicted and sentenced to death. He was subsequently executed on January 22nd, 2014.

Posted by Andrew Branca on September 21, 2014 20 Comments
A few weeks ago I wrote a post titled "When can you legally use a gun against an unarmed person?"  That post discussed the self-defense law element of proportionality, with a particular emphasis on disparity of force, to explore (as the title suggests) when a gun could be used against an unlawful attacker even if that attacker was armed with no more than their bare hands. Out of Oregon this past Monday comes a classic real-life example of exactly this scenario, in which one man armed with a .38 pistol shot another, completely unarmed man in the chest, killing him, as reported by local KTVZ News 21.  Although the matter has not yet been adjudicated, no arrests have been made and all witnesses are cooperating with the police investigation.  Further, the Sheriff leading the investigation has made public statements emphasizing the disparity of force between the shooter and the victim, strongly suggesting he considers the use of the gun to be justified.

Posted by Andrew Branca on September 13, 2014 45 Comments
The majority Republican Missouri legislature handed yet another victory to pro-children activists yesterday, and a stunning defeat to those who would leave school children vulnerable to murderous psychopaths, when it overwhelmingly overrode the Democrat Governor's veto of legislation allowing teachers to be armed in schools, as reported by the NRA and other news sources. SB656 was passed and delivered to the Governor in May 2014, who vetoed the bill on July 14.  Yesterday the Missouri Senate voted to override the veto by a vote of 23 to 8, and the House by a vote of 117 to 39.  Supporters of the override came from both Democrats and Republicans. A full copy of the bill is embedded at the bottom of this post. SB656 allows the school district to designate teachers or administrators to receive extensive training as school protection officers as well as to carry a gun on school property. The law also included other pro-self-defense provisions, including allowing open carry anywhere in the state for people possessing a concealed carry license. This is very useful even for those license holders who never intend to openly carry, because it protects them from the risk of a brandishing charge in the even they unintentionally reveal their concealed handgun to casual observation. The law also lowered from 21 to 19 the age at which a person can obtain a concealed carry license, as well as other favorable provisions. SB656 will take effect no later than October 23.

Posted by Andrew Branca on September 09, 2014 110 Comments
Well, this weekend I learned there's a guy named Ray Rice who's got a pretty mean left hook, at least when he's punching his wife in the face on an elevator. It seems he also plays something called "football," or at least he used to do so until surveillance video of the punch was released by some kind of news organization called TMZ. What caught my attention about this story was not, of course, Mr. Rice or football or TMZ, about all of which I know pretty much nothing, but a raging series of debates I see on Twitter today about the matter. As is typical of such debates argued in the 140 character "jabs" of the Twitterverse, there's a great deal of mis- and cross-communication, undoubtedly much of it deliberate. (UPDATE: Note that this topic can now also be viewed as a Law of Self Defense University Video Lecture, or listened to as a Law of Self Defense Podcast, here: http://is.gd/1HOsaT) The key issues leading to angry pitchforks and torches appear to be:
  • Is it ever permissible for a man to physically strike a woman?  Here the two sides are "No, never," and "Yes, if done in necessary self-defense."
  • Was Ray Rice's punch to his wife's face an example of a lawful use of force in self-defense?

Posted by Andrew Branca on September 09, 2014 47 Comments
Yesterday I wrote of yet another vicious deadly-force gang attack: "Caught on video: Another black-on-white racially motivated gang attack."   In that post, I cautioned that gang attacks of this kind were likely to end very badly for the attackers once they stumbled upon a victim who was lawfully armed and prepared to defend himself. It wasn't long before I received an example of this type of attack happening in Milwaukee, four days prior to the September 7 attack described in yesterday's post. As reported by the Daily Caller (video embedded below), on September 3 a gang of teens attempted to rob a group of people in Milwaukee. According to police spokesman Lt. Mark Stanmeyer, the gang had been involved in dozens of robberies in prior days,
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