{"id":3630,"date":"2019-08-09T14:08:07","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T18:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/?p=3630"},"modified":"2019-08-22T16:10:51","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T20:10:51","slug":"the-legal-elements-of-self-defense-reasonableness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shutokarate.us\/2019\/08\/09\/the-legal-elements-of-self-defense-reasonableness\/","title":{"rendered":"The legal elements of self-defense: Reasonableness"},"content":{"rendered":"
This series has covered the elements that constitute a legally justifiable act of self-defense. This topic is usually presented for cases in which a person uses a firearm to defend himself, but we have been applying it to hypothetical cases in which a person trained in martial arts used their “empty hand” techniques to inflict lethal force<\/em> against an attacker. Recall that “lethal force” is defined in statutory law as force that results in death or serious bodily injury. Under this definition, a technique that broke an attacker’s jaw could be construed as “lethal force.”<\/p>\n This series draws from Andrew F. Branca’s book The Law of Self Defense.<\/em> The four elements we’ve covered so far, which must be satisfied for any legitimate act of self-defense, are Innocence, Imminence, Proportionality, <\/em>and Avoidance. <\/em>In other words, your actions must not have provoked the conflict, the threat you faced must have been “right here and right now,” your actions must have been commensurate with the degree of threat, and you must have taken any available chance to safely avoid or escape the danger.<\/p>\n The fifth and final element can be thought of as an umbrella over the other four: all of your judgements and actions taken in an act of self-defense must have been reasonable<\/em>. That is, you have to be able to demonstrate that a “reasonable person” would have responded the same was you did, if he or she were “in your shoes.”<\/p>\n