News/Q&A Show: Oct. 29, 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.

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.

In today’s News/Q&A Show for October 29, 2020 we touched on a broad range of questions submitted for the show, as well as questions submitted live, including:

• Proportionality in the Non-Deadly Force Continuum: How’s It Work?
• Will Use-of-Force Law Differ if I’m a Security Volunteer at My Church?
• What if Attorney Learns Client Is Lying About Self-Defense?
• Are BJJ-style Chokes Non-Deadly Defensive Force?
• Self-Defense Immunity: How’s it Work?
• Great Bodily Harm: How Is It Defined?
• Best Self-Defense Weapon, Legally Speaking, OTHER Than a Gun?
• When Does Using a Weapon Constitute Deadly Force As a Matter of Law?
• Statutory Definition of Serious Bodily Injury: Texas Penal Code §1.07
• Why Does LOSD Prefer CCW Safe Over USCCA?
• What About the Reality That Punches Can and Do Kill Victims?
• Difference Between Castle Doctrine and Stand-Your-Ground?
• Is My Car Covered Under the Castle Doctrine?

Enjoy the show!

Two-Week Law of Self Defense Trial Membership: Just 99 cents!

If you enjoy this kind of content and would like to get more, I’ve got great news—you can try out Law of Self Defense Membership for two weeks for a mere 99 cents—even better, in the unlikely event you decide it’s not for you during those two weeks, let us know and we’ll refund not just 100% of your money, but 200% of your money.  That’s a negative risk offer, folks.

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:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/trial

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 to another weekly Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Show. For those who may not know I am Attorney Andrew Branca. Come on in.

The Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Show airs live every Thursday at 4pm. Eastern time. For those of you who are Law of Self Defense members, you can access the show on your member dashboard over at http://lawofselfdefense.com/.

The chat function is working there. So if you have any questions or comments you’d like to make during the show, those are prioritized first.

We’re also airing the show live on the Law of Self Defense, Facebook page, at http://facebook.com/lawofselfdefense. This is the only content of the week that is open access, people do not need to be a Law of Self Defense member to participate in our weekly Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Show. It’s the one piece of content we produce every week that is intended to be free, freely accessible, so we can help grow the Law of Self Defense community.

So if you’re watching this not yet a Law of Self Defense member, you may might want to consider becoming a member. If you are a member, you might want to consider making sure your friends and family are aware of the opportunity to enjoy this show.

If you are watching the show live, if you’re watching a recording, you don’t need to bother doing this folks. But if you are watching live, you can it would be very helpful if you could please put your city and state in a comment, especially in Facebook, particularly in Facebook. If you comment, it helps us helps trick Facebook into sharing the show more widely. If you could click that like thumbs up button, above the comments, at least on the desktop version of Facebook. And if you could click that share arrow, that’s also greatly appreciated.

We have a ton of stuff to cover here today, folks. Now normally, it’s the nature of the Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Show that we cover some use of force events that happened to be in the news that week. And we also answer your questions now the questions might have come in from Law of Self Defense Platinum members, they have their Platinum level form to submit questions directly to me those questions get answered either publicly on the show or privately if they prefer.

Anyone can send us questions for consideration by email before the show to show@lawofselfdefense.com.

And let’s see what else or you can ask questions live during the show itself. And we’ll do our best to answer them as time allows. We have a ton of questions this week from our Platinum level members really excellent questions. So I’m not sure how much time we’ll have to address non-member questions. But as always, we’ll do our very best.

Today’s Sponsor:  CCW Safe

So before we jump into things, of course, I feel obliged to mention our sponsor, our sponsor is CCW Safe. They are providers of legal service memberships. So many people mistakenly call self-defense insurance in effect, they promise to pay their members legal expenses if the members involved in the use of force event. And those expenses start big and get bigger, fast, folks.

Imagine a scenario in which you feel threatened, you present your gun to deter what you believe to be an attack upon you. The bad guy runs away, no shots are fired, nobody’s injured. But now you find yourself charged with aggravated assault with a firearm good for 10 to 20 years felony time in most states. If you need to retain an attorney for such a charge, and you do, you’ll find that your retainer to that attorneys on the order of 30 to $50,000. It’s a lot of money, folks. And that’s not for trial. That’s for pre-trial, expensive trials.

On top of that, if you have had to use your gun and you ended up killing your attacker, you’re looking at a killing charge like manslaughter or murder. It’s very easy to go through $100,000 or $200,000 pre-trial. And again, the trial costs it’s just on top of that.

So unless you have that kind of money stuffed in the mattress just in case you have to defend yourself it can be helpful to have a financial partner standing behind you to provide the kind of resources you need to fight that legal battle the way you want it fought as if your life depended on it because for all practical purposes, your life depends on it folks winning that legal battle.

CCW Safe is one of the organizations that offers this kind of service. There are others out in the marketplace. I’ve looked at all them as you might imagine and found that CCW Safe is the best fit for me personally, I’m a member of CCW Safe my wife Emily is a member 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, you can save 10% off your membership with them. At that URL http://lawofselfdefense.com/ccwsafe using the discount code LOSD10. That’s LOSD for Law of Self Defense and the number 10, when you sign up as a CCW Safe member.

And as time goes by folks, my belief that they are really the top tier provider of this kind of service only strengthens.

Recent Law of Self Defense Membership Content

So that’s out of the way, what else do I want to share with you? Before we dive in? Oh, of course, as I mentioned, this is the only content we produce every week that’s open access that’s freely accessible, that you don’t need to be a Law of Self Defense member to access most of our content, therefore, is limited to Law of Self Defense members. To give you a sense of the kind of stuff we cover. These are examples of what we covered this week, this week was a little sparse in terms of number of offerings of content for our membership. But that’s only because one of them was so incredibly in depth. I’ll come to that in a moment.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

But earlier in this week, we took a look at the decision of the courts in the George Floyd case, that had to answer the question of whether or not as the defendants claimed there was not sufficient probable cause to justify the criminal charges. The killing charges brought against the four officers involved in the George Floyd case.

The court heard those motions from the defense issued its decision last Thursday, that decision is 107 pages long. We do include it in the post that covers that decision. So if you’d like to read the decision in its entirety, and I always encourage you to do that you can find the decision in that blog post. Of course, the post is only available to members.

And our evaluation of the merits of that decision of the court essentially found concluded there was probable cause for all the criminal charges against all four officers, except for one charge that was dismissed for lack of probable cause against officers. Chauvin Chauvin was the officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck, but by and large, all the charges were found by this court to have sufficient probable cause justify going to trial. I strongly disagree with that assessment.

And I explained why in this blog post in considerable detail. In my opinion, this decision is simply a hot mess. It’s not really based on legal merit. It’s based on the politics that are a wash of this case. But you can learn all about my thoughts on that and my own legal analysis of that court order finding probable cause, in that blog post, the George Floyd case probable cause for criminal charges against the officers question mark. To my mind, there’s a huge question mark.

People v. Jones, Court of Appeals IL 2020

We have another post we’re putting out this week just for our members. Looking at a court of appeals decision out of Illinois the cases people verse join Jones. It’s a decision handed down just this past Friday. It’s a very interesting decision that the facts themselves are not very complicated. It involves three guys who get into a fight and one guy hits the other with a pipe, break some ribs, hits him in the head hits the victim in the head gets charged with aggravated assault gets convicted, and then the Court of Appeals is hearing the appeals from their case. So the underlying facts are not staggeringly interesting. It’s a pretty routine aggravated assault type of case.

http://lawofselfdefense.com/blog

What’s interesting about it is the Court of Appeals decision, which is relatively short, it manages to touch on a bunch of very interesting self-defense law issues, including, let’s see, I pull up my little list here. They touch upon as you might expect, now, the guy who hit the victim with the pipe, he’s the defendant in the case, he’s arguing, of course, self-defense as justification for hitting the guy with the pipe. So the Court of Appeals naturally steps through the elements of self-defense, although in a slightly different way than the five elements of self-defense, you’ll be familiar with as a member of the Law of Self Defense community.

They talk about the cumulative nature of those elements, that the prosecution doesn’t have to disprove self-defense in its entirety. But it only has to disprove any one of the required elements of self-defense.

The court talks about how to regain innocence by withdrawal and communication. If you might have been the initial aggressor in a confrontation.

It talks about the burdens of proof meaning the burden of production versus the burden of persuasion and how they’re different from each other.

It covers the distinctions between a bench trial and a jury trial because the underlying trial in this case was in fact a bench trial without a jury.

The relevant charges here are aggravated battery. But of course, that touches itself upon the distinction between assault and battery, as well as simple assault and simple battery versus aggravated assault and aggravated battery.

It touches upon the issue of the use of an opportunistic deadly force weapon. This was a pipe picked up off the ground, basically, actually taken off the Victim in the case.

It talks about the issue of taking a weapon away from your attacker and using it against your attacker.

It talks about pursuit of an aggressor. So you’ve been attacked, and now you’re pursuing the person who attacked you.

And it’s a rare instance of an appellate court actually reviewing the trial evidence itself. Normally appellate courts don’t review the evidence presented a trial, all the appellate courts generally have to work with our transcripts from the trial. And of course, the arguments that are being made by lawyers on appeal, but they don’t typically look at the actual evidence that was presented at trial, but they do in this case. So that was interesting as well.

So the way I’ve stepped through this case is I’ve done kind of my typical analysis of the case, but then I’ve done a deep dive on each of those separate legal issues explaining how they work. So it’s kind of a mini seminar in and of itself. So that might be particularly interesting for all our members.

Again, that post two will be limited to Law of Self Defense members. However, the good news is, membership is not just cheap, it’s dirt, cheap, normal standard Law of Self Defense membership, that gives you access to all that content, is only about 33 cents a day, it’s less than $10 a month. And if you’re not yet a member, you can sign up for a trial membership for two weeks for just 99 cents folks gives you the same access, as if you were paying the full well 33 cents a day.

And if you decide you don’t like it in that two week trial period, just ask for your money back, we’ll give you a 200 and 200% refund. So it’s a negative risk opportunity. So if you like this kind of content, I would like a lot more of it very inexpensively, world class education, insight information on Self Defense Law, and how it’s applied to real people in the real world. I would urge you to take advantage of this trial opportunity. You can find out more by clicking the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/trial

Just 99 cents, folks.

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

That’s http://lawofselfdefense.com/freecourse.  It costs absolutely nothing folks.

Okay, so let’s get back to today’s questions, ton of questions we had this week, especially from our Platinum members.

Proportionality in the Non-Deadly Force Continuum: How’s It Work?

So the first one I’ll tackle is from Trevor G.  He didn’t tell me his state or if he did I forgot to write it down but he’s a Platinum level member of Law of Self Defense. And he asks, Can you talk more about proportionality as a relates to the non-deadly force continuum?

It’s pretty obvious and I often say this myself a finger poke is not proportionate to a punch in the face. It’s obviously a lesser degree of force.

And one of the things I often mentioned folks is that in terms of proportionality in terms of intensity of force in a confrontation, the law really puts the force into one or two buckets a deadly force bucket or a non deadly force bucket.

If you’re in the deadly force bucket, there’s no longer any varying degrees of force all deadly force is equal to all deadly force.

If you’re in the non-deadly force back If however, there there are varying degrees in deadly force as Trevor points at here, a finger poke to the chest is a lesser degree of force and a punch to somebody’s face. And you do have to make sure to maintain proportionality, not just between the non-deadly force bucket and the deadly force bucket, which obviously you do have to do, but also maintain proportionality within the non-deadly force bucket.

Again, that’s not an issue that tends to come up in the deadly force bucket, but it does come up rather routinely in the non-deadly force bucket. So here Trevor’s asking about that and the more subtle types of facts situations and can arise.

He says, For example, one of the finger poker and his two friends are standing near the victims residence, it’s an isolated residence and the defender, the victim is not confident he can get back inside his house or his car or whatever his shelter is highly defensible property before being followed, and compromising the safety of that shelter would an escalation from the finger poke?

I guess he’s really asking, would it be appropriate for the defender in that circumstance, to use pepper spray, for example, in response to a finger poke, where it might not be appropriate to use pepper spray in response to a finger poke if there was not this fear about the aggressor, for example, attempting to make it into your home?

Well, all those factors, Trevor obviously changed the dynamic of the non-deadly force confrontation. So, when I talk about things like a finger poke being a lesser degree of force and a punch to a face, and perhaps OC spray not being an appropriate response to someone poking you in the chest with a finger, that’s exclusive of these other more complicating factors.

As you add more complicating factors, the analysis begins to change.

You mentioned, for example, that it’s not just the person poking their finger, it’s his two friends standing there by Well, does it appear that his two friends are part of the act of aggression? Are they acting in support of this person, or they just happen to be standing by. If they’re part of the aggression against you, then it’s not just one person poking you in the chest. It’s someone poking in the chest, what I would argue is an act of provocation. And you’re facing two other people.

So it’s a one on three confrontation, there’s a disparity of numbers here, which does not automatically by itself escalate the degree of force, but it’s certainly a reasonable basis on which to be concerned about an escalation of the intensity of force against you.

Once you bring up things like you’re worried they might try to get into your residence compromised your residence compromise your other highly defensible property like your car. Well, first of all, you can’t just speculate that you didn’t have a rational basis for suspecting that to be the case, are you taking steps towards your residence and they’re pursuing you towards your residence, that might be evidence from which you can make a reasonable inference that they intend to go into your residence. If they actually do attempt to go into your residence in most states, that would trigger a legal presumption that they represent a reasonably perceived imminent threat of deadly force harm, and that their intent is to commit a deadly force act against you or someone else in the residence.

So that becomes pretty clear cut, if they’re actually trying to get in. If we’re just speculating that we’re trying to get in, obviously becomes a less compelling argument to justify the use of at least deadly defensive force.

But it does buttress your claim for a non-deadly use of force, like OC spray. The dangerous here to keep in mind, of course, is that the people who will be evaluating your defensive force after the fact, the police who show up the prosecutor reviewing the investigative case, the jury, or the judge, none of them know what actually happened.

All of them are going to be concerned because especially the legal professionals, the police, the prosecutor, the judge, they hear bad cases, bad claims of self-defense all the time, fabricated claims and self-defense all the time. The more speculative your justification sounds, the more it looks to them, like a fabricated case of self-defense. So you’ll want as much concrete evidence that you can articulate to support the reasonableness of your decision to use pepper spray as you can possibly have in your favor.

There’s no circumstance in which I can tell you this is absolutely going to be deemed a clean-cut case of self-defense if you use OC spray. Because there’s no way for me to know what those other people are going to do with their own discretion and their own decision-making. All we can do is try to show you how to have as strong a narrative of self-defense as you can possibly have to present to those other decision makers.

Will Use-of-Force Law Differ if I’m a Security Volunteer at My Church?

John C. from Idaho, also a Platinum member. He asked, if I work as a security volunteer at my church. Is there an advantage legally, that is available over myself as a citizen protecting myself and my loved ones in the event of a shooting.

A little unclear on the exact intent of the question. But I can tell you that the law of self-defense does not change. If you’re a security volunteer, the same five elements apply as whatever apply, they apply to you, they apply to cops, they apply to everybody.

No, the flavor changes a little bit, you might have a more defensible defense of others narrative. If you were defending members of your church, in your church from some stranger’s attack, for example, that is a more compelling defense of others narrative, especially if the church has assigned you that role, right? That’s a more compelling defense of others narrative than if you were just walking in the street and turned a corner and saw a fight and decided to intervene in someone else’s fight.

But the black letter of the law for defense of others doesn’t change, it’s exactly the same. So you’re not getting any black letter law benefit from being a security volunteer.  The context, the circumstantial evidence around your use of force may be more favorable than would otherwise be the case. But the law itself doesn’t change in terms of when you’re privileged to use force, how much force you’re privileged to use, when you need to stop using force and so forth. It’s the same five elements of a claim of self-defense.

Now, there could be actual complications from being a security volunteer at a church. I mean, this gets into very detailed aspects of law, in fact, and we can only address your question here in the hypothetical, so I can’t give definitive answers.

But for example, say you have some form of quote unquote, self-defense insurance, they may attempt to argue if your use of force was in the context of your volunteering as security at your church, that they’re only obliged to cover your personal acts of self-defense, they’re not obliged to cover you if you decide to volunteer as a security guard someplace, that’s on you. So you may find that your self-defense insurance policy excludes these kinds of volunteer activities.

And frankly, it wouldn’t be unreasonable in the sense that anybody providing quote unquote, insurance, and none of these policies are really insurance, but they tend to work in a similar fashion. They’re agreeing to cover you based on some understanding of the risk that you’re incurring the risk that you’ll get into a violent confrontation.

Obviously, if you’re volunteering as a security guard, whether at a church or anywhere else, you’re escalating your risk of getting into a confrontation. So it would be well within the rights of any of these organizations to say, Hey, we don’t cover that if you want that get some kind of Professional Liability Insurance of some kind, although liability insurance normally wouldn’t cover you for criminal liability, but only for civil liability. So that’s a concern that I would I would want addressed if I were myself, an active security volunteer at my local church.

What if Attorney Learns Client Is Lying About Self-Defense?

Okay, then we have Steven B. He sent in his question via email. And he asks, If an attorney were to take on a defensive shooting case, but came to suspect that the shooting wasn’t self-defense, but may instead have been premeditated or arranged orchestrated in some way? Would the attorney be obligated to continue representing the defendant self-defense claim to the best of their ability? Would they be allowed expected to excuse themselves from the case? Or are there other options available to them? I’ve always wondered how the attorneys belief that the client is innocent interacts with their commitment to represent that client.

Well, first of all, the client being innocent has nothing to do with the provision of criminal defense legal services. In my experience in the criminal defense world, most of the people who are being represented as clients are guilty of something. There’s no way to know right? I wasn’t there when they committed or allegedly committed the acts of which they’re being accused. Invariably, the client has some exculpatory story that they’re willing to tell everybody including their defense attorney.

The job of the criminal defense attorney is not to like their client or love their client or believe their clients innocent or prove their clients innocent. None of that is the role of the criminal defense attorney, the role of the criminal defense attorney is to hold the state to their obligation to prove that client guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So if you’re a criminal defense attorney, you don’t actually care if the client’s guilty. What you care is, well, can the state prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

That’s our legal framework in America. That’s what has to be done before the government can put you in a cage with a bunch of unpleasant people. So the job of the criminal defense attorney is to hold the state to that standard. And then the client gets convicted beyond a reasonable doubt, well, that’s the way the dice rolls, probably the client did that to themselves, in most cases. Politically motivated prosecutions are, arguably, the exception to that generalization.

So I always assume that when I’m first exposed to a case that the client involved is guilty, it’s not my job to make that determination myself, it’s my job to before that client can be put in jail that I hold the state to their obligation to prove the client guilty, beyond any reasonable doubt, to the unanimous satisfaction of a jury, that’s my job.

Now, it’s true that what you can’t do, what you’re not supposed to do, is to knowingly allow your client to, say, lie on the witness stand. So, if you somehow knew a particular fact is “A” and now your client’s on the witness stand saying “B”, you’re supposed to inform the court about that.

But that’s all theory. As a practical matter, you don’t really know if it’s “A”, you don’t really know if the client’s lying. I mean, again, you don’t know what really happened. And none of that’s really your job.

And of course, certainly, you can’t tell your clients a lie. That’s not permissible. Now, of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t coach your client, coaching is different than telling your client lie. Coaching is, well, normally, you know, clients are like any normal people. And if you just let them start talking, they’ll talk talk, talk talk talk, a lot of what they’ll say is irrelevant. Some of it can be interpreted harmfully, you don’t want any of that to happen.

So when you coach a client, in the unlikely event, you’re going to allow your client to take the witness stand, but if you are, you’ll coach them to make sure they focus on the legally relevant facts. And of course, they’re not obligated to give up anything incriminating. It’s the prosecution’s job to dig that out of them on cross examination if the prosecution wants to make that attempt, which they surely will want to make that attempt if you put your client on the witness stand, which is why you rarely see a criminal defense client on the witness stand.

And by the way, prosecutors are awfully good at doing that digging out that incriminating information from your client on cross examination.

Are BJJ-style Chokes Non-Deadly Defensive Force?

Here’s a really interesting case question I should say from Mike, our Mike’s a Law of Self defense member, he’s also an attorney in well, doesn’t matter what state. He’s an attorney. He’s a graduate of our Law of Self Defense Instructor Program. So very knowledgeable, obviously, on many levels about Self Defense Law. He’s also a practicing martial artist. And so specifically BJJ, as well as I believe other martial arts as well.

And so he’s got this exposure to both right self-defense law as both an attorney and very advanced student through our Law of Self Defense courses of instruction, and a martial artist who’s in that community and interacting with those people. And he notes that there’s a trend in BJJ circles to teach practitioners a strategy for handling a street fight that involves blocking or avoiding strikes, which is awesome closing distance. Well, I mean, if you have to, but [closing distance] can make you look like an aggressor in the confrontation.

But closing distance, clinching with the opponent and applying a choke and usually we mean a carotid type choke here to cut off blood flow to the brain, not a respiratory strangulation, or asphyxiation. You want to avoid that for sure, because you can because it’s easy to cause permanent damage to the airway, difficult to cause permanent damage to the carotid arteries.

But in any case, you can apply a carotid choke to the aggressor and they lose consciousness within seconds once the blood flow is cut off to the brain. And he says this strategy is taught for handling a fistfight with a single opponent who’s unarmed.

Now, he notes apart from being very safe and effective for the BJJ practitioner. It’s believed in BJJ circles that choking the opponent out rendering them unconscious, is actually a measured response to a non-deadly force attack, which is what we’re talking about here.

A single opponent throwing a fist is invariably treated by the courts as a non-deadly force attack unless there’s some aggravating circumstance. So, he writes, it’s believed in BJJ circles that choking the opponent out is a measured response to a non-deadly force attack because it brings a quick end to the altercation without damage that would arise from battering the attacker with fists, elbows, knees, or kicks. if done properly, and release at the appropriate time, the choke will not result in any significant or lasting injuries.

Of course, if done improperly or held too long, it could result in a crush trachea. That’s the respiratory damage if it’s done really wrong, or brain damage or even death if the blood flows cut off to the brain for too long, which does happen folks in real life fights I’ve seen carotid chokes applied Maybe by people who were not at a high level. Often these are drunken fights and parking lots, no surprise there. But the person, the victim of the choke, dies as a result of the choke. And that becomes very awkward to explain away especially the intent of the choke was to be non-deadly force against a non-deadly force attack.

So, there’s a lot of complexities that arise in the context of this question. And one is that, generally speaking, inducing unconsciousness in someone is deadly force. Remember, the definition of deadly force is not just force that’s reasonably likely to cause death, but force reasonably likely to result in serious bodily injury. And unconsciousness is generally serious bodily injury in many states. It’s explicitly serious bodily injury, and therefore deadly force as a matter of law. Many states define have an enumerated list of the kinds of things that qualify as serious bodily injury, and unconsciousness is one of them.

Now, probably when the legislators write those statues, they’re thinking, you know, someone was knocked unconscious by a baseball bat to the head. Clearly that should be serious bodily injury deadly force. But the statute doesn’t say that it simply says unconsciousness. They don’t really care how you induce the unconsciousness, strangulation also, often explicitly serious bodily harm. And as a court or jury, you know, they’re not BJJ practitioners are they going to differentiate between an airway strangulation and a carotid blood flow? chokehold?

I wouldn’t count on it. So if you’re inducing unconsciousness in somebody, it’s almost there’s a real risk that’s going to be characterized as a use of deadly defensive force, which is normally only permissible if you’re facing a deadly force attack, which a dude a single dude throwing a punch is almost never going to be considered by the courts to be a deadly force attack that would justify a deadly force response.

So that’s the difficulty you’re engaging in conduct this carotid chokehold, inducing unconsciousness, that’s likely they will be perceived as they use a deadly defensive force. And now you better be able to articulate that you are facing a deadly force threat, which some drunk throwing the punches not going to be deemed a deadly force threat, absent aggravating circumstance now, I think one of the complicating factors here for the BJJ community and I don’t mean to call them out specifically, I find this true in martial arts generally, whether it’s traditional, say show karate, or Taekwondo, or it doesn’t matter any of them is, of course, people who engage in that kind of martial arts activity, if they keep at it with any kind of consistency, tend to be pretty skilled Martial Artists a high level of fighting skill, and it’s normal for people to assume that others are likely to have the same level of skill they have.

Now, when I mentioned that a thrown punch a barehanded attack is invariably treated by the courses a no- deadly force attack, unless there’s some aggravating circumstance. Well, one of those aggravating circumstances is if the person committing the barehanded attack has some exceptional finding ability. So if they themselves have the attacker is a black belt, trying to commit a barehanded attack I knew well, that black belt is readily capable of committing death or serious, serious bodily injury upon you that would be a deadly force attack against which deadly defensive force would be appropriate whether it’s gun or a knife or a chokehold.

Trouble is, if we presume that everybody out in the public with whom everybody who tries to punch us has that level of skill, we’d be making a demonstrable error because very few people have that level of skill. The courts for sure are not going to simply accept as an assumption, a reasonable assumption that the person attacking you have that level of skill when they know darn well that 99.9% of the population does not possess the ability to readily cause death or serious bodily injury with a thrown punch. The courts see lots of fistfight defendants in their courts, and virtually none of them result in death or serious bodily injury. So that’s the presumption the courts bring to the table.

So I think there’s a real danger that A skilled Martial Arts practitioner may make the mistake of presuming that the person attacking them has a similar level of skill, meaning a deadly force level of skill responded with deadly defensive force, when in fact the people reviewing that use of deadly defensive force are not going to see the attack in that way. They will see the attack as merely a non-deadly force attack against which unconsciousness is not an appropriate defensive response.

Now, having said that, perhaps the martial artists defending himself with the chokehold, perhaps they know that their attacker or they have reason, evidence-based reason to infer that their attacker is also a skilled Martial Artist, how would they know that? Well, they might know the person right, the person attacking them may not be a stranger to them. And if you know that person has an exceptional fighting skill, well, that’s a different circumstances we’ve already described, you’re allowed to treat them as if they have an exceptional fighting skill and defend yourself appropriately, if their bare hands can readily cause you serious bodily injury. And by the way that would include inducing you into unconsciousness. Well, that would be a deadly force attack against which a deadly defensive response would be appropriate.

Or they may use you may not know them. But they may adopt a fighting stance or recognizable fighting stance, or you may find them using grappling techniques that you know, because of your degree of expertise. Only someone else who shared a similar level of expertise would be using those techniques, for example, that’s real evidence from which you can make a reasonable inference that your attacker has an exceptional level of fighting skill, but you would, that’s what you would need to be able to articulate not well, for all I knew he was a black belt. That’s, that’s nothing folks. That’s speculation, that’s imagination.

But I assessed that this attacker had an exceptional degree of fighting ability, because they were using this hold or moving this body in their particular this particular way. And based on my own training and experience, and having used those same techniques, myself having defended against those same techniques, were where I’m a BJJ student, I was able to recognize that as the indicia of a high level of fighting skill. But notice that’s different than just speculating or imagining it that’s based on actual observations, actual evidence, from which you’re making reasonable inferences, reasonable inferences based on evidence are totally fine, folks, we everyone does it. It’s perfectly acceptable in the court of law. It’s real evidence, speculation and imagination are not real evidence.

Self-Defense Immunity:  How’s it Work?

Another question here from another Platinum member, john V. in New York, and he asks, If you apply for self-defense immunity pre-trial, which is when it’s normally done, and you lose, so you’re not granted self-defense immunity, you’re denying self-defense immunity? Does that disqualify your self-defense claim when you go to trial?

And he also asked us New York even have self-defense immunity. So the short answer for John is Nope, New York does not have self-defense immunity. So the whole concepts not relevant for you, or anyone else who’s defended themselves in the jurisdiction of New York State self-defense immunity is not an option.

But in many states, self-defense immunity is an option and where it is an option, the best way to think about conceptualized self-defense immunity is as a kind of accelerated way to get a determination of self-defense without having to go to trial, it’s a way to have a court determine that your use of force was self-defense, pre-trial so much more quickly than a trial much less expensively than a trial in weeks and for a few thousand dollars instead of in months or years and 10s, or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And the court does conclude that your use of force with self-defense in this pre-trial hearing, they can grant you immunity from criminal prosecution or immunity from civil suit, or either or both. Depending on the jurisdiction, some states cover both, some states only cover one or the other.

And the pre-trial hearing itself is often a kind of very abbreviated, almost a mini trial. So the defenses, Your Honor, we argue that our client use force and self-defense and they provide their narrative of self-defense to the court.

Now, there’s no jury in a pre-trial hearing. So it’s just the judge hearing this narrative of self-defense. And then the prosecution has an opportunity to respond and say, we believe it’s not self-defense, because whatever their argument for why it’s not self-defense. And in most states with self-defense immunity at this pre-trial hearing, the burden of proving self-defense is on the defense.

So in the pre-trial, self-defense immunity, the defense has to prove self-defense by a majority of the evidence by a preponderance of the evidence. And if they do that, obviously to the satisfaction of the judge here in the case, he makes the call on whether they’ve proven self-defense by a preponderance of the evidence. If they do that the judge can grant them or shall grant them immunity from prosecution and or civil suit. So the state’s obviously trying to do the reverse the state prosecution in that paradigm is trying to disprove self-defense by a majority of the evidence.

Now, there are states that do things a little differently. In Florida, for example, they periodically change their standard for self-defense immunity. The existing standard is at that pre-trial hearing the burden on self-defense is on the state to disprove self-defense. By clear and convincing evidence, nobody really knows what that means except it’s more than a preponderance. And it’s less than beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s somewhere in the middle there between those two extremes, I should say. So Florida does things a little differently.

But most self-defense immunity states, if you want to try to claim self-defense immunity, you have to convince a pre-trial judge. Normally the same judges will be in charge of your trial, but a pre-trial hearing before that judge convinced him by a majority of the evidence that your use of force was lawful self-defense. If you do that, he can grant you self-defense immunity, what have you failed to do that to his satisfaction? Well, then he doesn’t grant yourself-defense immunity and off to trial, you go.

So your effort to get that accelerated, finding a self-defense in your favor was not successful. But it doesn’t hurt you in a legal sense of technical legal sense. You don’t lose your privilege to then argue self-defense to trial, you get to make the same argument at trial as you made at the pre-trial hearing.

And in fact, at trial, your burden is much, much, much less than at a pre-trial hearing. First of all, a trial, it’s not you trying to prove self-defense at trial, the state has to disprove self-defense. even further, the state has to disprove self-defense. beyond a reasonable doubt.

Remember, at the pre-trial, self-defense immunity hearing, the state essentially had to disprove self-defense by a majority of the evidence 51% of the evidence. at trial, the state has to disprove self-defense beyond any reasonable doubt, to the unanimous satisfaction of the jury. Now, there’s not a nice mathematical figure like 51% is for preponderance, there’s no nice mathematical figure for beyond a reasonable doubt. But let’s imagine it’s 90% 95% of the evidence.

So the state has a much bigger challenge at trial than they do at the pre-trial immunity hearing. And that’s one of the reasons, you’re allowed to argue it again, because just because you were not able to sustain self-defense, by a majority of the evidence at the pre-trial hearing, doesn’t mean you can sustain a reasonable doubt about self-defense at the trial, you might very well be able to do that, because it’s a much lower standard that you have to meet.

Now, having said that, the self-defense immunity hearing doesn’t cost you anything from a technical legal matter matter, because you’re still allowed to argue, self-defense at trial. There are many criminal defense attorneys who avoid seeking self-defense immunity as they’re permitted to do at a pre-trial hearing. Because you are essentially setting out for the whole world to see including the prosecution, what your narrative of the difference is, you’re telling them your story, before the trial long before the trial weeks or months before the trial. And so now the prosecution has essentially seen your entire legal battle plan.

And if it is successful, obviously, everything’s over, you got your immunity. But if it’s not successful, now, you’re going into trial, with the prosecution having seen all your cards, there, a lot of criminal defense attorneys don’t want to take that risk. They want to hold their cards close to their chest and get every possible advantage they can. That’s possible at trial, because the prosecution doesn’t know exactly what the defense arguments going to be. Remember, at the trial itself, the prosecution goes first. So the prosecution has to present the jury with their narrative of guilt first, and then they rest their case, and then the defense gets to go.

So normally, in the process of the trial, the defense gets to see everything the prosecution has to offer. Before the defense has to do anything, that’s a, that’s a nice advantage to have. If you do the self-defense immunity hearing, however, well, then the prosecution gets to see everything that defense has to offer, before the prosecution has to present their first argument at trial to a jury.

And a lot of criminal defense attorneys aren’t willing to take that hit in exchange for the mere possibility that they might get self-defense immunity. So there is it’s not a you don’t lose self-defense as a legal defense as a technical matter if you’re denied immunity at that pre-trial hearing. But you could really compromise your trial defense by having exposed it to the prosecution ahead of time at that pre-trial hearing. And that’s something a lot of criminal defense attorneys don’t want to do.

Great Bodily Harm: How Is It Defined?

Question from another Platinum member David from Georgia, he asks, Is it possible to define great bodily harm, how much harm is great? Then he starts talking about a home invasion and three armed intruders burst into your home that changes everything. That’s a different question, then. What qualifies as great bodily harm.

If there’s a home invasion, we’re talking about highly defensible property with forcible unlawful intruders in many states, including Georgia. that triggers a legal presumption In that you’re, you’re reasonably perceiving an imminent deadly force threat. It’s pretty hard for a defender to screw that up legally. Obviously, the physical fight has real risk, but from in terms of legal liability, very difficult to screw that up.

And in many states, it also triggers a legal presumption, not just that your perception of a threat of imminent unlawful harm is a reasonable perception, but also illegal percent presumption that that other person is there to kill or maim somebody.

So, having an invader forcible unlawful invader in your home really shifts virtually every element of self-defense onto your side of the equation.

But independent of that, generally speaking, what qualifies is great bodily harm. Well, different states take different approaches here. So the concept, the general concept is the same everywhere. It’s less than death, obviously, or we just be talking about death. And it’s more than minor injury, it’s more than a show, it’s more than typically a punch. It’s more than a finger poke to the chest. It’s some serious degree of injury.

Now, many states define great bodily injury in some detail, they’ll talk about the loss of a bodily function, they’ll talk about an injury that causes either substantial scarring or disability for some even a short period of time, or even minor scarring or disfigurement. If it’s for a long period of time. They’ll talk about broken bones, specifically, they might talk about blindness, they might specify loss of consciousness. So some states become will have kind of a laundry list of things that automatically as a matter of law qualifies serious bodily injury. Even when they have a detailed list, it’s also left kind of open ended, or it typically the list will end or any other form of serious bodily injuries, which leaves it open.

Obviously, other states don’t have an enumerated list, the statute will simply say is say, you can use deadly defensive force to defend yourself against imminent unlawful death or serious bodily injury. And if you want details on what qualifies a serious bodily injury, if it’s on the margin, some things are obvious, right? If you have a traumatic brain injury, that was serious bodily injury, but if the case is on the margins, well, then you have to go look at the court decisions and see how they’ve characterized on a case by case basis, what qualifies a serious bodily injury and try to find a case that matches the facts of your case. That’s what an attorney would do.

So if a client has say it’s something relatively obscure, non-obvious, has was the victim of an attack, and they suffered, you know, nerve injury in their elbow that impairs the function of their hand, for example, well, you’d want to look for cases that had similar kinds of outcomes, loss of function on the hand, and see if those court decisions characterize it as serious bodily injury. If you can’t find the case, then you’re doing it de novo yourself. You’re making your own argument of first impression in that trial, that this injury constitutes serious bodily injury. And then that’s what you know, that’s what you’re paying your lawyer to do is make that claim. convince the jury or convince the judge

Best Self-Defense Weapon, Legally Speaking, OTHER Than a Gun?

David, oh, same David from Georgia again, same Platinum member. He asks other than a gun, is there from a legal standpoint and optimal self-defense tool? In other words, if you ignore guns, I guess he’s imagining so you were in a jurisdiction where you can have a gun? If you’re going if you were going to have to defend yourself. Say in a home invasion situation, you looked around your house saw bad pepper spray can kitchen knife hammer, hatchet traffic flare? Would it make any difference legally, which item you used?

I always hate to say the answer is yes and no. But in terms of the legal analysis, we do have to differentiate between, Well, what harm can we expect our defensive tool to inflict? Is it only non-deadly force harm, like pepper spray? Or is it deadly force harm? Because the law does care about that. The law cares about the degree of force you’re using in self-defense.

The law doesn’t really care about the specific method. Say you’re in the deadly force realm, the law doesn’t really differentiate between different types of deadly force, doesn’t differentiate between a gunshot to the head and baseball bat to the head, a piano dropped from a great height onto your head. If it’s force likely to cause death or serious bodily injury, it’s deadly force period. And they don’t really care how the deadly force is carried out per se.

They do care about whether or not deadly force period is justified. If it is, they don’t really care about the specific method of deadly force. If it’s not, they also don’t really care about the specific method deadly force, it’s just not legally justified.

So the law does care about which defensive tool you’re using in the sense of well, is it non deadly force? Or is it deadly force in that application? If you’re dealing with, again, home invaders, forcible unlawful entry, there’s a legal presumption that you’re reasonably perceiving an imminent deadly force threat, well, then you’re in the deadly force realm, and you can use really anything to as deadly defensive force to protect yourself from that attack, whether it’s a hatchet or traffic flare, or a knife or gun or a hammer, or piano dropped from the balcony, or whatever the case might be, it doesn’t really matter.

So is there a, an optimal tool, I mean, you know, the, the real tool of self-defense is up here, folks, right? It, this is the real tool. All the other stuff are just ways to execute the decisions that you make inside your head. So the important thing is to understand where those legal boundaries are, what it is you’re allowed to do, and then the law doesn’t particularly care what implement you use.

Of course, the law cares about the degree of force, the law cares that the threat be eminent the law cares that you were not the aggressor, the law cares that you stop using defensive force. Once the threats no longer eminent the law cares a great deal about the five elements of the claim of self-defense, not so much about the tool in particular.

Now, the tool can get complicating, not in a self-defense law perspective. But in a weapons law perspective, if it’s a weapon, you’re not allowed to have in that jurisdiction. In that case, say you’re in a state where you’re not supposed to have a gun, and you use the gun to defend yourself. That can be awkward, because you can be charged not just with the use of force event, crime for the use of force event, but you might be charged with a weapons crime, for having been in possession of the gun completely independent of the use of force event per se, completely independent of any self-defense justification.

And you could be totally cleared on the use of force charged the jury completely by that that was totally justified self-defense, and still they convicted on the weapons charge. So the particular weapon can be relevant in that limited context. But that’s not really the self-defense context. That’s a weapons lock context.

Another way though the weapon can be relevant, is again, not really in a self-defense law context, per se. But if it’s found, for example, that your use of force was not justified self-defense, so it was aggravated battery, for example, the jury didn’t buy your story of self-defense. So you’re convicted of the aggravated battery, and now you’re going to be sentenced.

The fact that you use the gun to commit the battery can be an aggravating factor in your sentence, it’s very common for states to have firearms sentencing enhancements, you know, because so to save the children from all the gun crime, where an aggravated battery you might have committed with a baseball bat, would result in a substantially lesser sentence than an aggravated battery, you committed with a gun, because the gun ends up as a sentencing enhancement on top of the underlying crime. In fact, it’s not uncommon in many states that the the gun sentencing enhancement actually ends up giving you more time in prison than the underlying crime for which you were convicted. So the weapon can be a relevant factor there. But again, that’s not really that’s the sentencing law dynamic, not really a self-defense law dynamic.

When Does Using a Weapon Constitute Deadly Force As a Matter of Law?

Oh, he also asked him, he says a gun seemed to be presumptively deadly force, where other objects might not be. And that’s true. In most states, if you discharge a gun for sure, that’s going to be presumptively a use of deadly force. Unless you’re trying to argue warning shot. Hopefully nobody’s doing that.

But if you fire a gun at someone that’s deadly force, as a matter of law, there’s really no disputing that at all. If you were using a, I don’t know, a walking stick to strike somebody, then it could be an open question whether the manner of use of that walking stick constitutes deadly force or not. If you’re striking someone in the leg with it, probably not deadly force, if you’re striking them in the head with it, probably deadly force and the manner of use becomes more important in the context of some defensive tools.

Where it’s ambiguous whether it’s used was deadly force, as opposed to other defensive tools where it’s legally unambiguous, whether it was deadly force like a gun or a knife being used offensively to cause injury.

How are we doing on time. Well, we’re just about out of time. So those were all the questions we got ahead of time. Let me take just a moment to flip through some of the questions that have come in first, I’ll check the membership dashboard. Hello, everybody. Hello, Oscar.

Statutory Definition of Serious Bodily Injury: Texas Penal Code §1.07

Yeah, so on the membership dashboard last self-defense membership dashboard. Oscar was kind enough to punch in the Texas Penal Code definition of serious bodily injury. I’ll read it just because it provides context. Even if you’re not in Texas, it’s fairly representative of the kinds of definitions of serious bodily injury that states use. It reads, and this is Texas Penal Code 1.07, which is a definitions statute. This is one of the definitions in the statute, there’s a ton of them.

It reads, serious bodily injury means bodily injury that creates a substantial risk of death, or that causes death, obviously, or serious permanent disfigurement or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member organ. That’s a pretty common form of definition of serious bodily injury. Thanks, Oscar. I appreciate that. Let’s step through the comments here on Facebook.

Why Does LOSD Prefer CCW Safe Over USCCA?

Brad asks, What made you go with CCW Safe over USCCA?

Really, I guess there’d be three top things one is, and I see John Gammon touching on one point in here in the comments, and that is that the coverage that USCCA provides is just too low. If you’re involved in a killing case, so you shot and killed someone and self-defense, you’re facing a charge of manslaughter or murder, I believe the highest level of USCCA coverage is $250,000 for criminal defense. In the killing case, folks, you’ll go through, it’s easy to go through a couple hundred grand pre-trial before you even get to the trial.

So $250 grands, not a lot.

Plus, say you get convicted and you want to appeal your conviction. USCCA says, well, we’ll pay for your appeal to which is nice, but they still only pay up to the cap of that coverage. So if you exhaust the $250k in your trial, and if it’s a murder case, you will exhaust $25k0 in your trial, I guarantee it. If you exhaust the $250k in your trial, they’re promised to cover your appeal cost is meaningless, because while they only cover you up to the cap of your policy, and the policy is exhausted, sorry, there’s no money left to cover your appeal. So that’s one reason.

Another reason is I prefer CCW Safe is their national trial counsel is attorney Don West was one of the attorneys for George Zimmerman and his trial. I watched every minute of that trial every minute of the pre-trial proceedings. And that legal defense was perfect, folks. It was absolutely perfect. I think the world of Don, as a criminal defense attorney, anyone who has done on their legal team is way ahead of not having him as part of your legal team. And he comes with the CCW Safe membership. So that’s that’s a huge advantage right there. As far as I’m concerned.

The other problem is maybe a temporary issue, I don’t know. But USCCA is currently getting sued in federal court because they’re refusing to cover the legal expenses of one of their Platinum members. And I’ve asked them why they’re not covering the member. And they won’t say.

Now maybe they have a perfectly good reason. I don’t know. I can’t know because they won’t tell me. But until I hear a perfectly good reason for why they’re not covering the legal expenses of a paid-up member. I simply can’t recommend them because it begins to look like well, you know, we’ve got your back if we feel like it, but if we don’t feel like it too bad, you’re on your own.

I just I can’t recommend the policy like that. If you’d like to learn more about that federal lawsuit, you can point your browser to http://lawofselfdefense.com/uscca. And I’ve written on it rather extensively over at our blog.

What About the Reality That Punches Can and Do Kill Victims?

Larry Newsome says what did you get knocked down and there’s no referee to stop the fight, you’d be at the mercy of your attacker. That’s absolutely true. So a lot of times, and I, I presumed me speaking here of a barehanded attack, someone throws a punch at you. And the fact that I mentioned that the courts generally are going to deem a thrown punches a non-deadly force attack.

Well, in fact, the throwing punch can kill you, right, we’ve all seen examples of a single punch. Typically it knocks the victim unconscious, they fall over hit their head on the curb, they’re dead. So a single punch can and does kill people.

The trouble is, it happens so rarely, in the general context of punches thrown, that the courts are not going to presume that a thrown punch is a deadly force attack. The mere fact that it can happen is not enough, it has to be the attack has to be reasonably likely to cause death or serious bodily injury and the thrown punch by most people is not reasonably likely to cause death or bodily injury.

The courts see lots of fistfights almost none of them result in death or serious bodily injury. So the mere fact that a consequence can happen is not enough, folks. Excuse me. Now in those cases where thrown punch does kill the victim, the courts grudgingly agree that Well, yeah, it turned out that was a deadly force punch right there. That’s not very helpful to the victim. Obviously, they’re already dead.

Difference Between Castle Doctrine and Stand-Your-Ground?

Let’s see what else. Buzz asks about the difference between Castle Doctrine and stand your ground. And Mike provides a pretty good response here. Thanks, Mike. They’re related, closely related legal concepts not identical, however, and the number of ways so they both relieve you of an otherwise existing duty to retreat.

So if you would have had a legal duty to retreat as safely possible, before being privileged to defend yourself, you’re relieved of that legal duty under the Castle Doctrine and understand your grant to that extent of the same. But in terms of their individual flavors, they’re different. So the Castle Doctrine applies in the context typically of your home. Sometimes it’s more broadly defined to include a place of business sometimes more broadly defined to include a vehicle less, that’s far less common. The classic definition is, of course, your home, your home is your castle.

Now what the Castle Doctrine does not do is it does not give you broad privileges to shoot people, it’s it merely addresses this duty to retreat. So if you would have had a legal duty to retreat in that confrontation, had it happened out in a public street, you’re relieved of that legal duty to retreat in the context of the attack happening in your castle, sometimes also the curtilage around your castle the area immediately around your home.

Even then, there are exceptions to the Castle Doctrine. So every state has some flavor of Castle Doctrine. Every state has some provision that says, hey, if you’re defending yourself in your home, you don’t have a legal duty to retreat. But some states constrain the Castle Doctrine.

So they still say, well, you don’t have a legal duty to retreat in your home if you’re defending against an intruder. But if you’re in your home defending against a code dweller, in other words, someone for whom it’s their castle to a spouse, an apartment mate, well, then we reimpose the legal duty to retreat, you don’t get the benefit of Castle Doctrine from a co-dweller, only from a genuine intruder. So there are flavors like that you have to be careful about.

But the core thing to keep in mind in the context of Castle Doctrine is that it applies in the context of your home, or other highly defensible property. Stand Your Ground also relieves you of a legal duty to retreat, but out in the general public. out in general space, I should say. So it’s not limited, it’s not constrained to the context of your home or the curtilage. around your home.

Now, in many states stand your ground has its own set of conditions. About half there’s about 35 or 36 stand-your-ground states, the majority of states are stand-your-ground states, about half of them are stand-your-ground by statute.

And where there is a stand-your-ground statute as opposed to stand-your-ground being case law court law, California, for example, as a stand-your-ground state doesn’t have a stand-your-ground statute that stand-your-ground based on court decisions dating back to the 1800s.

But in those states, where stand-your-ground is based on statute, well, anytime statutes are made, there’s debate and compromise and one of the consequences tend to be that statutory stand-your-ground often has a number of conditions that have to be met, that don’t apply to self-defense generally. So a common condition for statutory stand-your-ground is you have to be in a place you have a right to be, you’re not trespassing.

By the way, folks if you’re carrying a gun in a posted property, like a commercial business that’s posted against guns and you carry your concealed gun in there anyway, which I know many people have done thousands of times and no one ever knew because it was being carried concealed. But technically you’re committing and trespass. you’re not on that property by license, you’re violating their terms, their conditions for being on that property. That’s an unlawful activity.

So if stand-your-ground is conditioned on not being engaged in unlawful activity, and you’re carrying your concealed weapon in the store that’s posted against carrying concealed, arguably, you lose your stand-your-ground privilege.

Another common condition for standard ground is well, really, it’s simply that you not be engaged in unlawful activity. And of course, what the legislators thinking there is that they don’t want to give stand-your-ground privileges to someone engaged in an armed robbery or engaged in drug dealing. But again, there are it’s not hard to think of examples where even I nominally law-abiding person might technically be engaged in some unlawful activity and lose stand-your-ground.

Note that if you lose stand-your-ground, you don’t lose self-defense, you have all your normal privilege of self-defense, but you might require that legal duty to retreat a safe possible before you’re privileged to use for some self-defense.

Is My Car Covered Under the Castle Doctrine?

Whether your car is covered, I see Mike says, Yes, your car’s covered in the Castle Doctrine, I would not be so sure. In many states, that’s not the case. So you would need to know your own state’s Castle Doctrine to know whether or not one the car qualifies as highly defensible property.

And two, it can qualify as highly defensible property for some purposes, like the legal presumption of a reasonable fear of eminent deadly force harm from a forcible intruder, and not qualify for the benefit of the Castle Doctrine. Those are distinct legal doctrines that don’t always apply in the same circumstances.

 

Alright, folks, I think that’s all the questions and we are a bit over the hour show ran a little long this week, I apologize for that. I do want to remind all of you, we do have our FREE Law of Self Defense Mini-Course that we’re running. Right now, let me see if I can pull that slide up. Try it again. There it is. This is about an hour long, abridged version of our full day loss of defense advanced course, which is seven or eight hours. So this is obviously just a slice of that. But we try to cover the most important aspects of the full length course, in this hour long mini course. And the mini course is totally free, folks. So I would encourage you to take a look at that, then we do offer you opportunities to go more in depth if you want to, but there’s certainly no obligation to do that.

And you can take a look at our free mini course on self-defense law by clicking on the image or link below:

http://lawofselfdefense.com/freecourse

I folks, I think that’s everything I have to share with all of you today.

Remember, we do this Law of Self Defense News/Q&A Show every week live every Thursday 4pm Eastern Time on Facebook, and for our Law of Self Defense members on their membership dashboard. If you like what you heard today, this week, please encourage your friends your family to take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy this open access content completely free.

And with that said, I’ll just remind all of you that folks if you carry a gun so that you’re hard to kill, that’s why I carry a gun so I’m hard to kill my family is hard to kill. Well, the carry against you hard to kill, make sure you also know the law so that you’re hard to convict I folks, I’m attorney Andrew Branca until we meet again, stay safe.