Self-Defense Court Cases

consistent with human nature (Justia 2015).” Interestingly, in the case of Brown, the defendant was in the same situation as the defendant in Allen v. United States. In each case, neither of the defendants were on their own property, instead they were located in a public place. While these court cases helped shape self-defense laws in today’s society, as seen these rulings still left a lot to be desired. While the court rulings settled the case, ambiguity resided in regards to what the rulings meant for future cases. Many state courts failed to recognize the self-defense doctrine because during the Beard case, the court did not make it clear that their wording, “where he had to be,” meant at home (Ross 2015). Therefore, the courts took advantage the non-specific wording and argued that this wording could include places outsides of one’s home. When the court ruled in Allen v. United States
According to common law, anyone who is subject to an unprovoked attack can protect themselves. However, as time has gone on, self-defense doctrines have changed as well. Today, “in order to justify the use of deadly force, the defender has to honestly and reasonably believe that he or she is faced with the choice of “kill, or be killed (Samaha 2015, 166).” Over the course of this section, the paper will examine the four elements of Self-Defense, as well as an example of when a claim would or would not work for each element. The first element in self-defense, is that the defendant has to be a non-aggressor. Therefore, the self-defense claim isn’t going to be used as defense in court, if the defendant was the initial aggressor. Unless, the defendant meets the withdrawal exception. This exception occurs if the “initial aggressor completely withdraw from attacks the provoke, they can defend themselves against an attack by their initial victims (Samaha 2015,