News/Q&A Show: Nov. 12, 2020

Welcome to this episode of our ONLY open-access content, our weekly News/Q&A Show. A transcript of the show is available below my signature, for those who prefer to read rather than view. Also, Law of Self Defense Members can access the show in audio form in the members-only Law of Self Defense Podcast.

In today’s News/Q&A Show for November 12, 2020 we touched on a broad range of questions submitted for the show, as well as questions submitted live, including:

NEWS

• Update on Kyle Rittenhouse case. Now jailed in Wisconsin, having been extradited from IL. Also, friend in WI charged with two gun felonies for having provided Rittenhouse with the AR he used to defend himself.
• Cop in CA being prosecuted for shooting a bat-wielding attacker; why?
• FL governor expanding scope of deadly defensive force to include violent looting.

Q&A

• Where did the legal duty to retreat come from, and why was it considered a good idea?
• What’s single most important thing to do, post-fight, for purposes of winning the legal fight?
• What are legal liabilities for an employee who defends against attacking customer, for employers who provide self-defense training to employees, for employees who use defensive force to counter insulting behavior?
• Is holding a gun at low-ready ever brandishing?
• Can my martial arts training be used against me in court?
• Does Andrew work with CCW Safe members?
• What happens if I belong to both CCW Safe and USCCA?
• Can I avoid hyper-aggressive prosecutors by staying out of their districts?
• Difference between the Castle Doctrine and Stand-Your-Ground?

Be sure to mark your calendar to never miss a News/Q&A Show–they air LIVE every Thursday, at 4pM ET of the Law of Self Defense Members Dashboard, our Facebook page, and our Youtube channel, and playback recordings are available on each of those platforms.

A transcript of the show is available below my signature, for those who prefer to read rather than view. Also, Law of Self Defense Members can access the show in audio form in the members-only Law of Self Defense Podcast.

CCW Safe:  Our Sponsor

Now before we jump into the substance of today’s show, I do, of course, need to mention today’s sponsor, CCW Safe, a provider of legal service memberships, what many people mistakenly call self-defense insurance. They in effect promise to pay their member’s legal expenses if their member is involved in a use of force event.

And those expenses start big and get bigger, fast, folks. For example, aggravated assault, where you were threatened, you displayed your gun, you didn’t fire a shot didn’t hurt anybody. You’re looking at a retainer to your lead counsel in the order of $30,000 to $50,000. And that’s for pre-trial work, folks, that’s not for going to trial. If it’s a murder, case, manslaughter or murder, you’re easily looking at $100,000 or $200,000 pre-trial expense, and just multiply that for the trial.

So, if you don’t have that kind of money stuffed in your mattress, it can be useful to have a financial partner standing behind you to make sure you have the resources you need to fight the legal battle, the way you want it fought—as if your life depended on it. Because, really, it does.  And that’s what CCW Safe offers to do.

There are several companies out there that offer similar services. I’ve looked at all of them, as you might imagine, and I found that CCW Safe is the best fit for me personally.  I’m personally a member of CCW Safe, my wife Emily is personally a member of CCW Safe.

Whether they’re the best fit for you is something only you can decide. But I do encourage you to take a look at what they have to offer by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe

And if you do decide to become a member of CCW Safe, you can save 10% off your membership at that URL http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe, using the discount code LOSD10.

Enjoy the show!

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Really, it’s hard to imagine why you anyone wouldn’t try  out Law of Self Defense Membership for 99 cents for two weeks.

Now, after the two-week trial, membership does go to the normal cost, which is still a very low, ~33 cents a day, less than $10 a month. Obviously, if you don’t feel the content we provide is worth 33 cents a day you shouldn’t become a member but I would hope that most of you would agree that it is, especially the content you won’t be able to get moving forward unless you’re a Member.

Plus, as a Law of Self Defense Member not only do you get access to our great Law of Self Defense content, you also get commenting member’s only chat and commenting privileges at the Law of Self Defense web site, so you can continue to participate and learn past the end of any LIVE show.

You can learn more about our 99-cent, 200% money back guarantee, two-week membership trial by clicking the image or link below:

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NEW & FREE: Law of Self Defense Mini-Course

The other big piece of content we put out. So far this week is something brand new from us. It’s a free mini course on Self Defense Law. Many of you watching this show have taken our full day Law of Self Defense advanced course seven hours of instruction. We’ve taught it personally, hundreds of times all over the country. More commonly, these days, we teach it once or twice a year as a webinar, we just had a webinar advanced course a month or so ago. That’s a full day course, seven hours and it’s a fire hose of information. It’s obviously a big commitment of everybody. And of course, it costs money to attend that course, what we’ve done is we’ve created a very concise, abridged version of that course, a four module mini course on many of the most important topics covered in that full day course, each module is about, I think they average 10 to 15 minutes in length. So it’s something just under an hour’s worth of content. But it touches on the peaks of information, the mountain tops of information you need to know obviously, we can’t go into the same depth in an hour that we can in seven hours. But it provides you with the most important pieces of information you need to know.

And then it offers you the opportunity to dive deeper at considerable savings if you’d like to dive deeper with our more advanced courses, but the mini course itself is absolutely free. You can take advantage of that by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/freecourse

OK, folks, until next time …

Remember

You carry a gun so you’re hard to kill.

Know the law so you’re hard to convict!

Stay safe!

–Andrew

Attorney Andrew F. Branca
Law of Self Defense LLC

 

TRANSCRIPT

Hey everybody, welcome, welcome. Come on in to this week’s Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Show for November 12 2020. I am of course attorney Andrew Branca. Thank you, thank you very much. Always greatly appreciated, very kind of all of you. So come on in, folks, come on in.

Hopefully you’re watching live, we do make a recorded playback of this available. But right now this is airing live on our Law of Self Defense Members page dashboard. So if you’re a Law of Self Defense Member, I would encourage you to enjoy the show there, your questions and comments will get prioritized.

Otherwise, we’re broadcasting on Facebook, for sure, I can see it there. If you are watching live on Facebook, if you could hit that thumb likes up button and that share arrow, I would appreciate that that helps fool Facebook into expanding the reach of the show more broadly than Facebook itself would normally be inclined to do.

So we got a bunch of great questions for today’s show. And some very interesting news items as well give you a sense for what we’ll have coming up in the course of this show. So you can make a affirmative decision now whether you want to invest for the hour so that we’ll spend together.

First I have an update on the Kyle Rittenhouse case. This, of course is the the shooting case out of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Last week, I mentioned that Kyle had, in fact been extradited from Illinois to Wisconsin. So he’s now sitting in a Wisconsin jail with the various charges of murder against him. But there’s further news in the case as well, that I think is quite interesting. not favorable to Kyle.

Unfortunately, we also have in the news, a police officer in California is being prosecuted for shooting someone who attacked him with a baseball bat in a Walmart store. I actually covered this case in great detail when it first happened because there’s quite a bit of video associated with it. Both cell phone and body cam videos, the confrontation occurred in a Walmart and I did one of our after action analysis shows on this event. And it seemed to me pretty clear that it was a lawful use of defensive force by the officer. But now the officer has been charged with manslaughter. So he’ll be going off to trial. And one of the this is both in news and we got a question about it from one of our members asking why why is the cop being prosecuted under the circumstances. So I’ll share with you some of the video of that actual use of force confrontation. And we can dive into a little bit of why these kinds of rather, sketchy cases are being brought to trial.

And we also have a new story about Florida Governor desantis, who’s pushing to expand the scope of deadly defensive force, lawful, deadly defensive force under Florida law. He sent in various legislative proposals to the well, the Florida Legislature. We don’t know what will happen with those. But it’s interesting to discuss how he’s approaching this issue.

We also have a bunch of really good questions that came in from members and others.

One is a question that was actually asked last week I didn’t get you from Will Parker, one of our Law of Self Defense Instructor Program graduates. And he had asked because someone asked him, where did the legal duty to retreat come from? What’s kind of its historical basis? And why was it considered a good idea, at least at the time by those who pushed it?

Another question is, what’s the single most important thing to do after the physical fight, to position yourself to win the legal fight that follows?

What are the legal liabilities for an employee who defends against an attacking customer? Or for employers who provide self defense training to employees, or for employees who use defensive force to counter a customer’s insulting behavior for example?

Another question is, is holding a gun at low ready, ever considered brandishing?

Does the Tueller drill distance of 21 feet change if there are multiple attackers coming from different directions?

And under what circumstances can I lawfully resist a police officer’s order to surrender my firearm?

So those are all the questions that were sent in ahead of time that we’re planning to cover in the show, time permitting. You can also of course, feel free to post up questions if you’re watching this live. If you’re watching this recorded, I won’t see your questions in the comments, folks. But if you’re watching right now live, you can post questions up in the comments, both on the laws of the fence members dashboard page, and on the Facebook Live comments as well. And we’ll get to those as time permits.

We do try to stick to no more than an hour on the shows out of respect for everybody’s time, both yours and my own.

Of course, I should mention this is the only non-member content that we produce every week, is this weekly Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Show. We produce a lot of other content every week, but that content is locked down for our Law of Self Defense

Members. So if you listen to this free open access show, and like what you hear, you might consider becoming a Law of Self Defense Member and getting access to all the other content we put out over the course of the week.

And really, if you’re not yet a Law of Self Defense Member, I have to ask why not?

You can try out Law of Self Defense Membership for two weeks for just 99 cents, folks. And if for some reason you decide within that two weeks you it’s not for you, you can cancel, no questions asked, and we’ll refund 200% of your money.

But really, folks, people who try a membership very, very rarely cancel their membership. And the standard membership in any case is only 33 cents a day, folks, it’s less than $10 a month.

So to give you a sense of the additional content, we’ve provided our Members since last week’s News/Q&A Show, so just in the last few days, we did a blog post—and all this content, by the way is provided in video form, text form, with appropriate links as warranted, and in our Law of Self Defense Members-only Podcast, so if you prefer a podcast form and delivery, we provide all our content, video, text, and audio as a podcast.

But last week, last Friday, we did a post on the Ahmaud Arbery case, in particular the prosecution’s claims that they have dozens and dozens of pages of text messages, social media posts by the defendants in the Arbery case, suggesting racism on their part, which would obviously suggest a motive for a use of force against Ahmaud Arbery that’s inconsistent with self defense. So we discussed that in some detail.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

We had another blog post involving a recent court decision out of Washington State and appellate court decision involving a marine with PTSD, who kills a man who had first threatened to kill the marine himself. And the question is, well, what is this use of force isn’t murder is the prosecution claims? Is it self defense, as the defense claimed in part, or is it because of the PTSD a case of diminished capacity, essentially a form of insanity defense. So we covered that at great length as well.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

We did another post earlier this week on how prosecutors are being taught a lesson in real politic to encourage other prosecutors to act in particular ways in particular to be hyper aggressive in prosecuting cases involving white defendants defenders, purported defenders, and black victims of that purportedly defensive use of force, such as the Marbury case, and many other cases we see in the news. A lot of these prosecutorial decisions appear to me to be made based not on the legal merits, but in a defensive manner by prosecutors to avoid essentially, professional political assassination at the hands of the angry mob. So we talked about that at some length in specific context of some very particular cases.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

And just I guess, was yesterday we put up a post about a killer ballerina, no joke, a real life professional ballerina shot dead, her estranged husband, under circumstances in which they were the only two witnesses, the killer ballerina and the husband. She claims she shot them in self-defense. And that often comes up that people say, well, there’s only two people involved and one of them shot dead, then we only hear the shooters story, right. That’s the only narrative we get from the case. In fact, that’s not true because almost invariably, there’s lots of other evidence, forensics evidence, indirect physical evidence, circumstantial evidence, all of which may tell a very different story than the shooters claim of self defense and we have that happening in this particular case.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

So those that’s all content folks that are members received for a mere 33 cents a day, over the last week that is not available to non-members. So again, if this kind of content is of interest and you’d like to get a lot more of it, then I would encourage you to take advantage of our 99 cent less than $1, folks, two week trial membership on Law of Self Defense.

You can take advantage of that two-week trial membership by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/trial

Let’s see what else we have. I should mention again, as for today’s live show that you’re watching, we do these Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Shows every Thursday at 4pm Eastern Time. These This is the only open access content we produce each week. So I urge you to mark your calendars so you never miss one. If you do miss a live show, you can always catch the recorded replay over at the Law of Self Defense Blog at http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog, we do keep those open access there. You need not be a Member to access the News/Q&A Shows over at our website.

And by the way, folks, if you do enjoy these shows and find them informative, even if you decide for whatever reason not to become a member of Law of Self Defense, I don’t really understand but whatever. It’s everyone’s personal choice, if you find if you find this information informative, you may want to share with friends and family the opportunity to at least get access to these free open access news and q&a shows every week. So if you can make a modest effort to tell a friend about these shows that would be greatly appreciated.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

Again these News/Q&A Shows are every Thursday 4pm Eastern Time, live on Facebook for non-members or available as a recorded replay at the Law of Self Defense Blog. For non-members we keep it open access there as well.

Let’s see what else we have.

CCW Safe:  Our Sponsor

Now before we jump into the substance of today’s show, I do, of course, need to mention today’s sponsor, CCW Safe, a provider of legal service memberships, what many people mistakenly call self-defense insurance. They in effect promise to pay their member’s legal expenses if their member is involved in a use of force event.

And those expenses start big and get bigger, fast, folks. For example, aggravated assault, where you were threatened, you displayed your gun, you didn’t fire a shot didn’t hurt anybody. You’re looking at a retainer to your lead counsel in the order of $30,000 to $50,000. And that’s for pre-trial work, folks, that’s not for going to trial. If it’s a murder, case, manslaughter or murder, you’re easily looking at $100,000 or $200,000 pre-trial expense, and just multiply that for the trial.

So, if you don’t have that kind of money stuffed in your mattress, it can be useful to have a financial partner standing behind you to make sure you have the resources you need to fight the legal battle, the way you want it fought—as if your life depended on it. Because, really, it does.  And that’s what CCW Safe offers to do.

There are several companies out there that offer similar services. I’ve looked at all of them, as you might imagine, and I found that CCW Safe is the best fit for me personally.  I’m personally a member of CCW Safe, my wife Emily is personally a member of CCW Safe.

Whether they’re the best fit for you is something only you can decide. But I do encourage you to take a look at what they have to offer by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe

And if you do decide to become a member of CCW Safe, you can save 10% off your membership at that URL http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe, using the discount code LOSD10.

Alright, let’s dive into the substance of the show. First:

NEWS

Rittenhouse Friend Charged with Providing Rifle

Now first, some news has come out in the past week about the Kyle Rittenhouse case and the news isn’t about Kyle per se. As much as it is about the person who provided Kyle with the AR style rifle. He used to defend himself that night in Kenosha, and the person who gave Kyle that rifle was a 19-year-old who lived in Wisconsin.

It’s being claimed by prosecutors that Kyle provided this 19-year-old whose name is Dominic Black with the money necessary to purchase the AR, which would of course be a classic straw man purchase. Kyle was not able lawfully to purchase the gun himself, being an Illinois resident, and he didn’t have the required firearms license needed for such a purchase in Illinois. So the prosecutor is arguing that this 19-year-old Dominic Black, Wisconsin resident, 19 years old, not a minor like the 17-year-old Rittenhouse, purchased the rifle with Kyle’s money for Kyle’s use.

That Dominic Black has now been charged with two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a person under 18, causing death. And if convicted on those counts, he’s subject to punishment imprisonment for up to six years per count. Now he’s been arrested, he’s been charged, he’s been released on bail.

But of course, what’s really happening here is a legal full court press by the prosecutors. What do you imagine a 19-year-old, an otherwise law abiding 19-year old-who’s never been in trouble with the law before day in their lives, might be willing to say on the witness stand to get favorable treatment from the prosecutor and not spend the next 12 years of their life in prison?

Just about anything, right?

So the prosecution here has charged Dominic Black, I would expect at least in part, to apply pressure to Black to come up with testimony that the prosecutor will deem helpful, and other testimony that would be harmful to Kyle Rittenhouse. Perhaps statements that Kyle made prior to the shooting, that might suggest a motive other than self-defense, a motive of malice, that Kyle came there with the purpose of killing looters, for example, as opposed to simply protecting property and himself.

Now, we don’t know what Black is going to say, obviously. But he’s certainly, this kind of pressure brought by prosecutors is certainly well recognized in legal circles as a kind of pressure that can induce favorable testimony that might not otherwise be available to the prosecutor.

And of course, we see much the same thing happening in the Ahmaud Arbery case, right, the gentleman who filmed the attack by Arbury on the McMichaels, from his car on a cell phone, the video that got released that kind of brought that case to the nation’s attention. He’s been charged with felony murder predicated on attempted unlawful for false imprisonment, a charge I’ve never seen brought before. Certainly not based on anything related to similar facts as in the Arbery case.

It seems far more likely that Bryan was simply wanting to record events, so there’d be a record of the events as they happen. But in any case, it’s a way to bring pressure against a third party in the case, now this William Roddie Bryan, and perhaps he’ll say things that are harmful to the McMichaels defense and thereby get a more favorable treatment by the prosecutor. So that’s what’s happening in the Kyle Rittenhouse case.

Officer Who Shot Bat-Wielding Steven Taylor Charged with Manslaughter

We also have news about the Steven Taylor case. Now this may be less familiar to many of you. Steven Taylor was a I believe 33-year-old black male in the California Walmart threatening people with a baseball bat. The police were called. And an officer tried to take the bat from Taylor .Taylor resisted, he pulled back, he kept the bat, he raised it. Eventually he advanced on the officer who had his gun drawn already. And the officer ended up shooting Taylor.

Now the officer had first tried to TASER Taylor ,tried twice, shot him with the TASER, was ineffective. Hit him, the button on the TASER again, it appeared that cables were still attached, ineffective. That was after the second taser hit that Taylor advanced on the officer and the officer ended up shooting him.

Now I’m going to, with all of these I will link to very appropriate news stories in the text version of today’s content. So you can read those news stories yourself. But we’re seeing about this case in particular, is very typical these days, where the much of the quote unquote news media is really more of a propaganda machine.

These particular news stories are obviously just repeating the narrative of the case that the prosecution wants repeated. So, for example, one of the headlines I came across on the story recently was “California cop charged with voluntary manslaughter after killing black man in Walmart for shoplifting.”

Well, the victim here was not shot for shoplifting. He was shot for advancing on the officer with a bat. Now maybe the circumstances didn’t justify the shooting. They certainly seem to. to me, an argument can be made there, but it’s not as if the victim here was trying to sneak out the bat under his coat, and the officer just walked up and shot him, which is what the headline would suggest.

So I’m going to share with you a couple short videos I have of that shooting, I don’t believe there’s profanity in the videos or is talking and shouting in the background. But I can’t promise no profanity. So if that’s a high-risk situation for you, you may want to turn down your volume while these video clips are playing. They’re both quite short, I believe they’re both under a minute.

And they’re just different perspectives of the confrontation between Steven Taylor and the officer who shot him. The first video clip I’ll show you is actually kind of two combined, it’s on the left is a cell phone video that was made by bystanders there. And that’s about one third of the left of the image two thirds of the right of the image is the police officers body camera, the police officer who would fire it the fatal shot. So that’s the first video we’ll see two different angles, both facing towards Stephen Taylor largely from the police officer’s perspective.

Then I have a second short video I’ll also show the same event, but from behind Stephen Taylor just to provide a different perspective. And I kept the audio in these despite the fact that the bystanders were rather noisy, because it’s possible to hear the discharge of the TASER. The second click lick of the taser attempt. And finally, the gunshot at the very end, I did cut the video before there’s any gore that might be seen, because there is some gore that appears later on in the video, but we won’t see that in these clips. And then I’ll come back to the news stories. So here is that first video clip. The combined one with the bystanders cell phone on the left and the police officer body camera on the right. So here we go with that:

So that was the first video clip, it’s pretty clear that Taylor was in fact advancing on the officer with the bat when the officer fired that shot. Here’s the second video just a kind of a reverse perspective. So this bystander was standing behind Taylor, by the way, is it prudent to be standing behind someone when an officers downrange, pointing a gun in there and your direction? I can’t imagine being in this position and standing there to take this video but nevertheless, here it is.

Okay, so those are those two video segments of the Steven Taylor shooting, which happened earlier this year, April 18. of this year. So clearly, Taylor was armed with a deadly weapon, right, the bat is clearly a deadly weapon. Clearly he was within Tueller range, right the 21 feet of the Tueller drill, and really the 21 feet of the Tueller drill is, is much reduced in this context, right? Because you have a bat that’s three feet long. You have your arm that’s three feet long. That’s six feet off the Tueller drill’s, 21 feet right there.  But in the case, Steven Taylor was well within that distance he was advancing on the officer.

I guess the one thing you could say is he was advancing in a way where at the moment the shot was fired, the bat was kind of angled downward. That certainly wouldn’t be decisive. For me, it would look more aggressive if the bat was raised, but you can swing the bat from either direction. And all the officer needs is to have this weapon struck out of his hands, for example, and he’d be effectively helpless against the bat attack at that point, and of course, Steven Taylor knows he’s advancing on an officer who’s got his gun drawn and the muzzle on him.

The officer tried to TASER twice ,it was ineffective, as sadly TASERS often are. Listen, I’m a fan of TASERS when circumstances are consistent with safety that they can be tried. If you can stop an aggressor with a TASER and not have to shoot them, that’s better for everybody.

But it’s not unusual for TASERS to be effective. It’s extremely common, in fact, doesn’t mean they’re not worth having, doesn’t mean they’re not worth trying in appropriate circumstances. But they’re certainly not a Star Trek phaser set to stun by any means.

So, again, we look through these news stories and we can see the descriptions, the news media is provided, or really, the descriptions the prosecution would most like communicated to the public.

The April 18, 2020 killing of Steven Taylor by a San Leandro, California Police officer who responded to a call about an alleged shoplifter.

He was inside the store who was holding the bat now, we have some official police correspondence about this case. And in fact, the 911 call to the police the information that would have been communicated to this officer was that Taylor was threatening people with the bat. He wasn’t simply trying to shoplift. Sorry, with the bat. He wasn’t simply trying to shoplift the bat. He was holding it up threatening to hit people with it, which obviously would be an infliction of deadly force. Force readily capable of causing death or serious bodily injury.

So the cops are going to a deadly force confrontation. That’s the call they’re responding to. It’s not somebody trying to shoplift some lipstick, for example, there is an imminent threat of deadly force here.

The new story continues, a surveillance video showed the officer pulled out a service pistol and at the same time, he tried to take the bat from Taylor.

While he tried with his hand, he tried to take the bat from Taylor, but Taylor pulled away retaining possession of the bat. But that’s a non-deadly force effort by the officer to resolve the confrontation.

Then the news report continues, Taylor pulled the bat from the officers grasp and stepped away.

So far, so good. And then the news media takes a big jump: Shortly after the officer shot Taylor twice with his TASER. And as Taylor struggled to remain standing, Fletcher shot him in the chest with a service pistol.

No mention in the new story that the officer didn’t shoot Taylor until Taylor was advancing on him with the bat, and was only a few feet away. And again, the bat and the arm holding the bat are six feet of extension right there.

So the new story declines to mention, and does not include the video, by the way, declines to mention that the officer only shot when Taylor was advancing on him. And by the way, as you heard from the background noise, there was lots of bystanders around, the notion that the officer is supposed to, I don’t know, run from the scene until the ,what, Taylor has an opportunity to carry through his threats to use the bat on bystanders is rather bizarre.

But here’s the criticism and the news story. He’s reporting this as if as simply a factual matter that everybody should accept, quote, a 20-year police veteran, the officer did not wait for backup and instead tried to grab the bat from Taylor than fired his taser and his service weapon all in less than 40 seconds.

According to Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, she said Officer Fletcher did not wait for his cover officer and immediately contacted Mr. Taylor in the shopping cart area. A thorough review of the statements of witnesses and involved police officers, physical evidence, and the review of multiple videos of the shooting shows that at the time of the shooting, it was not reasonable to conclude Mr. Taylor posed an imminent threat of death or great bodily injury to the officer or anyone else in the store.

Anybody agree with that assessment based on the video we just saw? Again, the news story on this chose not to include the video. So people can’t make their own independent judgment. They just have to accept all this at face value.

The prosecutor continues, Officer Fletcher’s actions coupled with his failure to attempt other de-escalation options, rendered his use of deadly force unreasonable.

So he’s now been charged with manslaughter, has been arraigned and will be going off to trial.

Now, I think this case, much as many of these cases we’re seeing these days, including the Marbury case, the McCloskey case, particularly in St. Louis, are examples of what I would characterize as hyper aggressive prosecution.

So prosecutor knows if they’re going to bring use of force charges in a purported self-defense case, they’re going to have to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s a very high threshold. So if you imagine, if the case was being evaluated for trial on the merits, the prosecutor would say, in one scenario that the prosecutor might say, Well, yeah, we have overwhelming evidence this is not self-defense. So there’s some profound defect in one of the five required elements for claim of self defense in California really four, and those elements apply similarly in police use of force events of the officer, to claim self defense as they do for non-police. Slightly different flavor of elements, but fundamentally the same elements apply.

So you would imagine a prosecutor, they said, Well, we have a we have a very clear defect in one of the elements of self-defense, high prospect of being able to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt, we’re taking that one to trial. . Makes sense.

Or you can imagine the case that’s more ambiguous, or maybe it’s kind of 50:50. And it’s all going to depend on how effective the prosecutor’s arguments and rhetoric are. So it’s not a an obvious win on self-defense with the prosecutor, but it’s got a shot. And maybe he decides because of the facts of the case or his interest in the case, or he’s got not much going on at the moment, yeah, let’s take this one a trial, see what happens.

Okay, maybe not unreasonable from a legal merits perspective. I mean, the cost paid by the defendant, of course, is extraordinarily high, even if they’re acquitted, their life is effectively destroyed, given the legal costs of going through any kind of felony criminal trial. But at least you can imagine the prosecutor has some reasonable expectation of a chance of getting a conviction.

But increasingly, I’m seeing cases where the prospects of disproving self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt, absent a runaway jury, which can happen, an irrational runaway jury, but absent an irrational jury, which is not supposed to happen, ithe chance of conviction is really close to zero.

And yet these cases are being brought to trial anyway. And I don’t think there’s a strong case here for disproving self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt, given the totality of circumstances in the case that Taylor had already been reported to 911 as threatening bystanders. bystanders were present, he was threatening the officer with the bat, he’d raised the bat, he was closing on the officer. Manual means to strip the bat had not worked, TASER had not worked. And now he’s advancing on the officer with that same bat, so I don’t think the prospects for disproving self-defense here on the part of the officer are reasonable.

But maybe that’s not the point of the prosecution. And that’s what I’m increasingly seeing in many of these cases, that the actual point of the prosecution is not getting the conviction or not advancing on the legal merits, but rather it’s political.

Prosecutors are learning that if they fail to be hyper aggressive in these cases, they’re likely engaging in career-ending decision making. I mentioned earlier, one of the members-only pieces of content we did earlier this week was on the Ahmaud Arbery case, it’s the one on which I talked about prosecutors being taught a lesson.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

And it turns out that the first three days of the Arbery case, there was a local prosecutor who was assigned the case in the normal manner. And within three days, she realized she had a potential conflict in the case because one of the McMichaels, the father, had worked in her office as an investigator for the prosecutor’s office.

So she handed off the case to a different prosecutor who did not have that conflict. Well, she was up for re-election last week, and she lost re-election she lost to a challenger.

Prosecutors never lose reelection. In her particular case, she had taken enormous heat for having failed to aggressively prosecute the McMichaels in the Arbery case, and instead handing the case off to a different prosecutor due to her apparent conflict in the case.

And part of the criticism of her was, well, she had it for three days, she should have gotten rid of it immediately [if she had a conflict]. While, of course, we don’t know how soon to recognize the conflict, for example, but in any case, the mere fact that she had the case for three days, made no substantive determinations about the case, but within three days, handed it off to a completely different prosecutor ,was enough to cost her political career.

And if you think other prosecutors are not watching that happen, and seeing the consequences of not being hyper-aggressive in these cases, especially these racially energized cases, you’re crazy.

Prosecutors don’t want to lose their job any more than anybody else. So if you find yourself involved in one of these cases, where the person you defended yourself against may have been a different race. the merits of the case hopefully will be argued at trial. Hopefully, you’ll have a good legal defense and you’ll be able to fight the legal fight the way you want it to be fought. But the prospects of not going to trial is approaching zero, folks, you’re almost guaranteed to go, because prosecutors won’t be willing to take the political risk of not being hyper-aggressive in your case, even if it appears that the chances of getting an actual conviction of you on the facts and law approach zero.

And folks, that might be a reason why some of you might want to really consider our Law of Self Defense Platinum Protection Program.

This is our highest level of Law of Self Defense Membership, you get all the benefits of normal membership plus a lot more. Plus, you get the guarantee that I’m personally available to work on your legal team. These are the only cases I take these days, folks, are those of Platinum Protection Program members, I simply don’t have the luxury of taking most of the cases that are sent to my office for consideration.

It’s just it’s not worth my time and effort to do most of those cases. And I have to charge so much money to make it worth my time and effort, that I feel bad taking them. But if you’re a Platinum Protection Program member, you are guaranteed to have me work on your case, for no additional cost beyond your just membership payment.

So you can learn more about that by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/platinum

I’m proud to say in virtually every case, we get charges dismissed or the client put into a deferred program where they keep their nose clean for a certain number of months. The charges are dismissed almost every case without having to go to trial. Those are pretty good outcomes as far as I’m concerned. And as far as the client is concerned, I I’m not much of a scotch or bourbon drinker, folks, but I have a lot of nice bottles of scotch and bourbon because of appreciative clients. All right.

Florida Governor Seeks to Expand Deadly Force Justification

The other news story I wanted to cover today is about Florida, Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis. He had made mention of this some weeks or months ago, but now he’s taking some concrete steps that would effectively expand the scope of circumstances under which deadly defensive force would be lawful under Florida law.

Now, generally speaking, deadly defensive force is lawful only in defense of innocent life. The one big exception to that is Texas, where there are circumstances under which deadly defensive force can be used in defense of mere personal property. Texas is the only state that allows for that. But it is allowable, folks.

Now, I always discourage people from using deadly defensive force in defensive property, even where it is lawful. Because I don’t think the risks are worth the benefits. I don’t think there’s a piece of personal property that’s worth incurring the risk of going to prison for the rest of your life, for example.

But from a legal perspective, there’s no reason the law can’t allow for the use of deadly defensive force in defense of mere personal property. Texas, does it. If you’d like to read that Texas statute, you can find it at http://lawofselfdefense.com/942

And there’s no reason that other states couldn’t allow it. There’s no reason why it couldn’t be generally permitted across the US to use deadly force in defense of property. If the states wished to allow that there’s no constitutional prohibition, for example, it’s just that with the exception of Texas, the states don’t allow it.

So we don’t live in that world. But we can imagine a world in which that was permissible in more states than just Texas. And it appears Governor DeSantis is suggesting that it should be more permissible to use deadly defensive force in Florida.

Now, one of the way he’s doing this is Florida has an existing statute, it’s 776. point eight. If you’d like to read it, you can point your browser to http://lawofselfdefense.com/77608.

It’s in their chapter on justifiable use of force and it’s the forcible felony justification for deadly force. And basically, it’s an enumerated list of forcible felonies, the defense against which is permitted to use deadly defensive force.

Now read some of these, I won’t go through the whole list, but it defines forcible felony as treason murder, manslaughter, sexual battery, carjacking, home invasion, robbery, burglary, arson, kidnapping, Aggravated Assault, Aggravated battery, aggravated stalking, aircraft piracy, etc.

Now, what do all these things have in common? what they all have in common is, although some of them are phrased as property crimes like arson, for example, they’re really all felonies that involve the use or threat of deadly force against an innocent person. The real threat in arson is to the people in the building, right. It’s not the building. And that’s why arsons always been traditionally considered a deadly force attack upon persons against which deadly defensive force can be used.

So Florida has an enumerated list and it’s really all felonies that involve the use or threat of deadly force against innocence anyway. But there’s no reason you can expand the list to include things like looting, for example, which doesn’t necessarily require in eminent use or threat of force. against innocent persons. And then we would have a Florida provision for the use of deadly defensive force in the context of merely a property crime absent a threat of harm to persons.

So that’s apparently what Governor DeSantis is proposing to do is to expand the enumerated list under 776.08. To include property crimes of looting, riotous type of nature, for example, what might otherwise simply be a shoplifting charge, that’s occurring within a certain number of feet of an ongoing right situation, for example.

Other things DeSantis is trying to do is to enhance criminal penalties for people involved in violent or disorderly assemblies. Remember, folks, the First Amendment protects peaceable assembly. It doesn’t protect violence or writing or looting or arson.

He’s proposing making it a third degree felony to block traffic during a protest. Interestingly enough, in the Ahmaud Arbery case, the charge against William Bryan, the video taker, is felony murder predicated on attempted unlawful false imprisonment, which really blocking traffic is, right, now you were imprisoned in your vehicle.

So there the prosecutors have no trouble applying it in that context, but apparently not applying it to the protesters who are unlawfully obstructing traffic.

He’s also, Governor DeSantis, suggesting that immunity, criminal immunity, perhaps civil immunity ought to be offered to drivers who unintentionally kill or injure protesters who are blocking traffic. So that mob in front of your car, you push your car through the crowd to escape. And in the course of doing that you incidentally, the purpose is not to harm anybody, but you incidentally end up injuring someone, that you should be granted immunity from legal liability for such conduct.

So that’s all interesting. We’ll have to see what happens there. Now one of the funniest parts about this is a little piece I saw in one of the news articles on Governor DeSantis, his efforts, by a former Miami Dade prosecutor, Aubrey Webb. And he had a particular quote about this.

“He was aghast at the proposed expansion of the state’s Stand Your Ground law.”

First of all, this is not the state’s Stand Your Ground law. This is simply justification law, self-defense justification. Stand your ground, all stand your ground does is relieve the defender of an otherwise existing legal duty to retreat. Three quarters of the states are stand your ground states standard ground touches upon just one of the five elements of a self-defense justification.

What’s happening here is we’re just expanding the scope of criminal conduct that can be lawfully defended against with deadly defensive force.

But in any case, former Miami Dade prosecutor Aubrey Webb says quote:

“The Boston Tea Party members would have been lawfully shot under Florida’s law by the British East India Tea Company, he said.”

Well, I guess they don’t teach history anymore, folks, because the British East India Tea Company was in India. And the Boston Tea Party was not in India. It was in Boston, the other side of the globe. So not a very apt example.

NNow perhaps he was thinking in his head, not the Boston Tea Party, but the Boston Massacre. Of course, nobody was shot or killed during the Boston Tea Party. Several were shot and killed during the Boston Massacre confrontation between an angry mob and British soldiers.

Almost all those British soldiers, by the way, including their commander, were acquitted at trial. So their use of force was deemed lawful. Only two of the seven or eight that were tried, were actually convicted. Those were convicted of manslaughter, those two, but everybody else was acquitted.

Okay, so those are the news items I wanted to cover. Let’s dive now into the questions that were sent in and that we chose to cover here. So one of those, I believe I have my question list with the actual names of the people who sent it in? Yes, I do. And then after we get through these, I’ll turn to I’ll turn to any questions that may come in live during the show.

Q&A

Where did the legal duty to retreat come from, and why was it considered a good idea?

So the first was from our good friend Will Parker, a Law of Self Defense Instructor Program Graduate. He asks, Where did the legal duty to retreat come from? Why was it considered a good idea?

Well, its roots are really, at least for American law purposes. its immediate roots are from Old English common law, which of course was our law. Before we were in independent nation. And under Old English common law, there were a couple of drivers behind pragmatic considerations behind imposing a legal duty to retreat.

One is that, you know, they were subjects of the crown rather than free citizens like Americans are. So to some extent, all the people under the crown or the crowns property in the crown did not want his property harmed, if it could be avoided, and that meant it didn’t want its its subjects to be harmed if it could be avoided. So if you could avoid the use of deadly force by retreating from the confrontation, that’s what the crown wanted you to do.

Also, at the time, this rule was developed and imposed. Most of the means of inflicting deadly force were contact weapons, not firearm, certainly there was no rapidly repeating firearms. So we’re talking about clubs and knives for the most part things along those lines.

Well, if your aggressor is armed with an impact weapon, attempting to retreat to create distance between you and the aggressor, may well be a pretty effective way of neutralizing that threat of removing the eminence of the threat. If you leave the room, you’re no longer under imminent threat of that club or knife. If you simply create more distance, you may no longer be under imminent threat of that club or knife. So simply by going through a doorway, creating some additional distance, you could effectively save yourself from the apparent threat.

In a world several hundred years later, where firearms are common. You don’t just save yourself from the threat of a firearm by stepping through a doorway or creating some distance. Bullets travel at high speed with deadly effect. If the aggressor with a gun can see you, he can probably hit you with the firearm.

So in that circumstance, in the more modern world, where firearms are common, retreat becomes a much more complicated, less reliable means of securing safety than it would be where the aggressor had only impact weapons.

And of course, America is of a later era. So it’s never been the common rule in American law, that there was a legal duty to retreat before you could lawfully defend yourself assuming of course, you met the other conditions of lawful self-defense, but in otherwise lawful defender didn’t lose his self-defense justification, because he violated a legal duty to retreat. That’s a American creation that happened in only a minority of states.

Later in our nation’s development, mostly what we would call today, blue states. Although again, most of the blue states themselves are not duty to retreat states. So about three quarters of the states are, in effect, stand your ground states because they do not impose a legal duty to retreat before you can otherwise lawfully defend yourself. So that’s kind of the historical context.

What’s single most important thing to do, post-fight, for purposes of winning the legal fight?

Another question came in from Dean W. right here in Colorado Springs, which is not where I live, but I live not far from there. I can see Colorado Springs from my backyard, so to speak, certainly from down the street, from where I live.

And he asks for post incident action, what would you say is the most crucial thing to pay attention to like getting a witness to corroborate what happened or gathering evidence? What typically carries the most weight in bolstering a defense?

Well, I guess I’d have to say, Dean that the single most important thing is not to do anything harmful to your defense, so don’t start blathering away.

Most of the time when a possibly reasonable claim of self-defense gets gutted. It’s because the defender himself provided the prosecution with what the prosecution needed to get that defense. So you certainly don’t want to say anything incriminating. If there’s a risk that you might say something incriminating, then you ought not be saying anything at all.

Unfortunately, the longer I’m in this career, the less confident I am that defenders are able to constrain what they say to only exculpatory information. If they can do that. That’s awesome. That’s what I would characterize as the professional’s approach, but I’m not sure it’s realistic for most people given the stress that’s involved in defending against a life threatening attack.

Now, assuming you can avoid that fate of blathering away, it would be very helpful if you could point out exculpatory evidence like evidence at the scene. That’s the basis of your reasonable perception for why you are facing an imminent deadly force threat.

If you’re attacked by some guy with a knife, and you then use deadly defensive force. And now there’s a dead guy there. And you’re having to explain why you shot that person to police, to prosecutors to a judge to a jury. And your reason is he came at you with a knife, it would be pretty important that the knife isn’t evidence, you don’t want that knife disappearing, picked up by somebody in the crowd who shows up after the police shooting, or missed by the cops because it’s slid under a car or flew into a bush, you want that piece of evidence collected. Because if it doesn’t exist in the evidentiary record, it doesn’t exist for legal purposes. And you your claim of self defense begins to look like something fabricated after the fact.

Witnesses are nice if you can get them and they’re sensible. But frankly, I would prefer, really, physical evidence, even over eye witnesses. You know, we all know if you take five eye witnesses, and you separate them, you don’t get the same story from all of them, you get five variations of the story. Plus witnesses are subject to memory recall defects to political and societal pressures. So I personally find that eyewitness testimony is far from the most robust form of evidence to corroborate that your use of force was lawful. It can be, but I would certainly not count on it being so.

What are legal liabilities for an employee who defends against attacking customer, for employers who provide self-defense training to employees, for employees who use defensive force to counter insulting behavior?

So what else do we have legal liabilities for an employee who defends against? This is from john G. sense, sent it in via email.

What are the legal liabilities for an employee who defends against an attacking customer? Well, that’s just a straight up self-defense scenario from a use of force law perspective.

Now, of course, there’s all kinds of employment issues. Your boss may not like the fact that you used force, even if it wasn’t lawful self-defense. So you may find yourself out of a job. I don’t do employment law, so I can’t speak to that. But from my use of force law perspective, nothing changes about your privilege to defend yourself against attacks simply because you’re in employee environment. The only thing that could be weird there is if—it doesn’t really change anything, that I can think about it.

I mean, obviously, most workplaces don’t want you to have weapons on the property. So there could be prohibitions on having the weapon. But unless those prohibitions carry legal force, in other words, that the carrying a weapon becomes not just a violation of your terms of employment, but some kind of criminal violation, I wouldn’t expect it to have any influence on your claim of self defense, and perhaps not even then.

For the most part, folks, the mere fact in most states the mere fact that you might have been engaged in some non-violent unlawful activity at the time you had to defend yourself. That does not diminish your claim of self-defense. All this we talked earlier about Kyle Rittenhouse and his buddy Dominic getting criminally charged for having provided Rittenhouse with the weapon. First of all, those are criminal charges against the friend not against Rittenhouse. But even if the conduct could also result in charges, some kind of gun law violation charges against written as under Wisconsin law that would have no effect on his claim of self-defense at all. His claim of self-defense under Wisconsin law is not contingent on not having been violating gun law at the time he had to defend himself.

What about legal liability for employers who provide self-defense training to employees? Well, for the most part, employers don’t do that, because it can create legal liability for them, especially civil liability wouldn’t create criminal liability I wouldn’t expect although these days who knows the prosecutors are increasingly creative in the charges they come up with to press criminal liability.

But if you train your employees to use force under certain circumstances, well, then you open up the door to a plaintiff, someone who’s been injured by your employees’ use of force, arguing that your training was deficient, or the employee used it outside the scope of that training, or any number of avenues by which the company might find itself now exposed to lead liability it did not have before.

So most companies are simply going to prefer to take the approach of, Hey, don’t get into fights with customers, period. If you do, you’re fired. And leave it at that rather than assume the risk for having trained employees in the use of force and creating that legal liability for themselves.

Then john asked, Well, what about employees who are being verbally abused, and counter with the physical defense? Well, if all you’re being subject to is verbal abuse, then no physical response would be appropriate would be lawful. You’re allowed to use physical force to defend yourself against physical threat, not against mean words.

If you smack the customer because they’re saying mean words, in the absence of an imminent threat against you, you’ve just committed a simple assault. So that’s a simple battery, rather. So that’s simply criminal conduct on your part, you’re the initial aggressor in that confrontation, your conduct is unlawful and can’t be justified to self defense, you can’t justify the use of defensive force against mere words, mere words are not an imminent physical threat.

Let’s see. We had another question here. from Chris, in California, he says, is holding a gun at low ready ever brandishing?

Well, brandishing is a very soft term generally, and it involves displaying a gun in some kind of threatening manner. But why are you holding the gun at a low ready, obviously, if you’re at, I don’t know, a Steel Challenge match, you start with the gun at a low ready, that’s not threatening to anybody.

But if you’re holding the gun at low ready for the purpose of changing someone else’s behavior, which is what you’re doing when you’re holding a gun at low ready for self-defense, right, you’re making that person aware you have the gun to change their behavior.

Now, you would say, to change their threatening behavior. But of course, they’re going to claim that they were not threatening at all. Now, certainly, if you were just walking down the street, and someone stepped out of a doorway and approached you with a gun held at low ready, would you consider that threatening? I think most of us would.

So the problem becomes that the people evaluating whether or not you’re going to low ready qualifies as brandishing as unlawful threatening. They don’t know what really happened. They weren’t there, they didn’t see it. So all they can do is look at the evidence and try to make reasonable inferences from the evidence.

And unfortunately, these days, if there’s a racial disparity between the brandisher and the brandishee, there might be powerful political forces to bring charges where they normally would not bring charges.

So the question is, can having a gun at low ready result in criminal charges against you? The answer is, it absolutely can. Traditionally, if it looked anything like a self-defense situation, it would have been very unlikely. But I can’t say that anymore. Today, it’s increasingly likely that you will face criminal charges, if you do anything that looks like self-defense, and then the prosecution will simply make, you know, make the process the punishment, even if an actual conviction on a use of force charged seems unlikely.

Well, I had a couple more questions, folks, but it looks like we’re bumping right up against the top of the hour. So let me flip through the comments to see if I can answer a couple of questions from all of you in the live audience.

First, I’ll go through the law of self defense membership dashboard. Here. Let me pull that over. Let’s see. Okay, no real questions here.

Let me look over at the Facebook comments. Thank you, of course, to all of you who joined us live.

Can my martial arts training be used against me in court?

Okay, so we have a great question here from Lorraine. I did want to touch them on this I meant to touch upon it when I talked about the Steven Taylor shooting. So Lorraine asks, How might my Krav Maga training be used against mem should I hurt someone as I defend myself?

Well, we’re all going to be held to the standard of our training and experience, and that can be helpful to us. Training and experience can be why our perception of an imminent deadly force threat was a reasonable perception. For example, the Tueller drill is specialized training that tells us an aggressor with an impact weapon within 21 feet can represent an imminent deadly force threat, even though there’s still 21 feet away. So that’s an example of specialized knowledge being used in our favor in the exculpatory way.

But specialized training can also be used against you if you act contrary to that specialized training.

So in the case of Steven Taylor shooting, for example, the prosecutors justification for bringing charges against the officer is in part that the officer failed to do certain things the officer fail to de-escalate, for example, fail to wait for his backup to arrive. Now, under the circumstances, given the nature of the threat the officer was facing, it doesn’t appear to me that he did anything unreasonable. But if the officer, for example, had extensive and specific training on de-escalating in those particular kinds of circumstances, hey, if you’re facing a guy with an impact weapon, just back off, even if there’s bystanders around and wait for your backup, do not engage, even if he’s advancing on you with the bat, not that kind of training. Sounds kind of crazy to me, frankly.

But if the officer had that training, had those directives and violated those training and directives, well, then yes, the prosecution might say, Hey, listen, if he were just a bystander attacked by somebody with a bat, from a few feet away, maybe he would have been justified in using a gun and deadly defensive force. But he was not just a bystander, he was an officer trained to de-escalate, trained to wait for his backup, and therefore his failure to follow that training makes us conduct unreasonable under the circumstances. And reasonableness is one of the requirements of self-defense.

In terms of martial arts training, there’s lots of martial arts techniques that can readily cause serious bodily injury joint locks can destroy a joint for example, now, you might destroy someone’s joint, if you lack martial arts training, you might destroy someone’s joint in a physical fight, unintentionally. But if you have a high level of martial arts training, and you destroy someone’s joint in a joint lock, well, that’s not going to look like an unintentional use.

And that would qualify as deadly force, folks, serious bodily injury is deadly force, which can be justified only if you’re facing a deadly force threat, if you were not facing a deadly force threat than destroying that guy’s joints is not going to be lawful self defense, it might have been accidental, if you had no meaningful martial arts training. But if you have a high level of martial arts training, in those particular techniques, it’s going to look like not an accidental or unintentional, but a deliberate, intentional use of deadly force, serious bodily injury against that person that you now have to justify.

And the distinction between those two scenarios is someone without that training on the one hand and someone with that training and the other. So if you have the training, some high level of specialized training, you’re expected to conduct yourself within the boundaries of that training. And if you don’t do that, it certainly can cause you legal jeopardy.

Does Andrew work with CCW Safe members?

Jay asked, Do I work with CCW Safe members, I’m happy to work with anybody. But if they want me to be available on their legal team, it doesn’t come automatically with CCW Safe membership, you’d have to independently be a member of the Law of Self Defense Platinum Protection Program.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/platinum

So , partner with CCW Safe quite a bit, happy to do that, like those guys, as you know, I’m a member of CCW Safe as well. But there’s no employment relationship, nor being a CCW Safe member in no way guarantees my availability to work on your case.

What happens if I belong to both CCW Safe and USCCA?

Skip asks, what happens if I belong to CCW Safe and USCCA, and I have a self-defense event?

If you’re asking, Skip, is which one would cover you? Or would they point fingers at each other and say, No, you have to go through the other one first.

I don’t know. I don’t work for them. I can tell you that USCCA is currently being sued in federal court because they’re refusing to cover one of their members. You can learn more about that at http://lawofselfdefense.com/uscca.

I’m not aware of CCW Safe finding itself in that predicament. So, you’ll have to make your own judgment.

Can I avoid hyper-aggressive prosecutors by staying out of their districts?

Gary True writes, this is the reason I stay out of the city of St. Louis, even though it’s only 25 minutes away. So, St. Louis is now, of course, because of the McCloskeys, recognized as one of these legal forms in which you can expect a hyper-aggressive prosecution if you’re involved in a racially or political politically charged self-defense kind of case.

And that’s not a bad approach. Generally speaking, if you’re not in that prosecutor’s, that hyper-aggressive prosecutor’s, jurisdiction, well, then you don’t have to worry about being subject to prosecution by them.

Unfortunately, while that’s generally the case, we’re increasingly seeing cases where you’re in a particular prosecutor’s district, that prosecutor decides it looks like self-defense to them.

And then things become politically energized and the state ends up bringing in a prosecutor from a different district entirely. That happened in the George Zimmerman case. It’s happened in the Ahmaud Arbery case. So unfortunately, not being in the district of a hyper-aggressive prosecutor does not necessarily mean you’re not going to end up with that hyper-aggressive prosecutor anyway. It’s a crazy world we live in these days, folks.

Let’s see.

Difference between Castle Doctrine and Stand-Your-Ground?

Jay asked, Can you explain Castle Doctrine in New York State is it the same as standard ground?

Well, Castle Doctrine is kind of a subset of standard ground in most respects, if you think of them as a Venn diagram, of the two circles highly overlap, but not completely overlap.

Castle Doctrine, properly understood, simply says, if you would have had a legal duty to retreat, before using force in otherwise lawful self-defense, and New York State is a duty to retreat state, folks. So, you would have had that legal duty to retreat if safely possible. before you’re justified in using force in self-defense, you’re relieved of that legal duty to retreat if you’re defending yourself in your castle, in your home. That’s how Castle Doctrine applies, generally, that’s how it applies in New York State.

Stand-Your-Ground, in states that are stand your ground states, which is most of them, three quarters of them, they essentially take that Castle Doctrine privilege of being relieved of a legal duty to retreat and they extend it beyond the four walls of your house to the general public. So you’re walking down a public street, you also don’t have a legal duty to retreat before you can otherwise lawfully defend yourself in self-defense.

Now, there are often conditions for qualifying for stand your ground, and Castle Doctrine can get more complicated than you might think.

So for example, it often only applies to you in your castle. If you’re visiting someone else’s castle, you may not have Castle Doctrine privileges, you may have re-acquired a legal duty to retreat. It often applies only in the context of defending yourself in your castle against an intruder, but not necessarily against a co dweller. In other words a spouse, or an apartment mate, someone for whom the castle is their castle, too, you may have required that legal duty to retreat.

So Castle Doctrine does come in different flavors. The scope of the castle varies from state to state. So in some states, the castle includes not just the area inside the four walls of your home, but also the curtilage around your home, the property immediately around your home, that’s part of the normal day to day activity of the home. So if you’re in your front porch, for example, standing on your front porch, you’d still be considered to be in your castle, even though you’re not literally inside the home. But in other states, Massachusetts is one the castle is inside the four walls of your home, the moment you take one foot out of that front door, you’re no longer in your castle for Castle Doctrine privileges, so but those are the general ideas behind Castle Doctrine and stand your ground.

Alright, folks, well, I’ve gone 11 minutes over the hour. I’m sorry about that. If you sent a question in and I didn’t get to it this week, I’ll do my very, very best to address it next week. before everybody goes,

I do want to remind all of you we’re still making available totally free, this doesn’t cost a penny, folks, our Mini-Course on Self Defense Law. Most of you know that we have a full day Law of Self Defense Advanced Course that we teach all over the country several times a year as a webinar. Obviously, you have to pay for that.

But we have done a kind of abridged version, it’s about 15 minutes of the high points of that full day course, and are making it available as a mini course that any of you can access at no cost whatsoever. So that might be of interest to all of you and you can take advantage of that by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/freecourse

I’m not sure how long we’re going to keep that up. So if that’s of interest, I would encourage you to take advantage sooner rather than later. And again, it’s free, folks, doesn’t cost a penny. All right.

With that, I believe I will let all of you go except to remind all of you of my usual admonition.

If you carry a gun so that you’re hard to kill certainly that’s why I carry a gun, so I’m hard to kill, so my family is hard to kill. Then you also owe it to yourself and your family to make sure you know the law, so you’re hard to convict. Alright folks, until next time, remember, I’m Attorney Andrew Branca for Law of Self Defense. Stay safe.