16Oct06

"Necessity"

At last weekend's Glock Summit in Orlando, FL, Skip Gochenour presen ted a wonderful lecture on the subject of legitimate self-defense and what needs t o be in place for it to be even considered by the Court during a criminal proceeding.

Skip emphasized that the trial judge at your murder trial, as his option, may (1) instruct the jury to consider the issue of self-defense, or, conversely, he may (2) instruct them that they may not consider it. The ju ry is the " trier of fact," but the judge is the "trier of law,=80 and he will determine what laws and presidents apply and which do not, what the jury is allowed t o hear and what it is not, and what the jury may include and consider in its deliberation and what it may not.

Like claims of "insanity," claims of =80=9Cself-defense " by the defendant may well be determined, by the judge, to be bogus. If so, he will instruct the

jury that they must find the defendant either guilty or not guilty, but that they may not find him "not guilty by virtue of self-defense.=80 He will, in fact, specifically forbid them from weighing, or even looking at, the issue

self-defense. Thus, as sympathetic as the jury may be to the hapless defen dant, they may have no choice but to find him guilty of murder.

The legitimacy of claims of self-defense will rest on several tenants, the most important of which is "necessity." Simply put, every b low delivered by the accused to the injured party must have been "reasonably necessar y" in order to prevent the accused from sustaining lethal or crippling injury at t he hands of his attacker. Blows delivered when no substantive threat exists, or delivered after such threats have clearly gone away will be deemed =80

unnecessary." When there is a preponderance of such unneeded/unnece ssary blows, which, by definition, served no logical purpose, claims of "self-def ense" by the defendant will quickly be stripped of legitimacy.

It gets back to a training issue: Those of us who have trained ourselves to

fire our pistols continuously, until the threat goes away, run the risk of producing several entry wounds in the side and back of the attacker. When most entry wounds are in the front, with only one or two in the back, a claim of

self-defense may still be sustainable, as the attacker twisting as he is bei ng shot has been chronicled and is explicable and comprehensible. However, many entry wounds in the attacker's back will predictably create pro blems for the defendant.

A superior way to address the issue, in my opinion, to insert a deliberate " burst-limiter" into your shooting kata. That is, train yourself to stop shooting after a certain number of rounds (we use four), move laterally, and access, resuming firing when necessary. Thus limiting yourself to four rou nds from any one position simultaneously (1) confuses your attacker as to your exact position and (2) insures that all your shots are "necessary " and that you will stop shooting when the threat is clearly abrogated.

Our imperfect justice system rests in the hands of imperfect judges and imperfect juries. Our righteous claim of self-defense must be confirmed by " necessity."

/John