Statutory Law on Self-Defense and Use of Deadly Force

Statutory Law on Self-Defense and Use of Deadly Force

Introduction

Self-defense and use of deadly force is an issue that has attracted a lot of public discourse in the USA. The use of deadly force in self-defense or otherwise is a controversial issue for police enforcement officers judicial cases as much as it brings controversy for civil cases. The USA constitution, under the 1791’s Second Amendment, gives the right of owning firearms to any persons within a regulated militia. However, this law, for a long time, had been subject to different interpretations by the courts. In a bid to regulate gun ownership, many state legislations have differed in stipulating the manner of owning and using such firearms. Numerous controversial court cases have either justified the use of deadly force or the right to bear and carry weapons in public.

One of the landmark cases was the District of Columbia v Heller, where the court determined that the second amendment protects all citizens’ right to bear arms. In another recent case of Zimmerman v State of Florida, the courts also explained the application of the ‘stand-your-ground’ law of 2005. According to the law, an individual is within legal rights to use force against an imminent assailant without fleeing the danger. In the case, the courts determined that the ‘stand-your-ground’ law protects the use of lethal force in a bid to protect one’s own life or the life of another. According to Post Staff Report (2012), the introduction of the ‘stand-your-ground’ law has led to a drop in convicted homicide cases and a subsequent increase in justifiable homicides in the USA.

The controversy around the use of lethal force is not unique to civil cases alone. There are also cases involving police officers who used unnecessary lethal force without justification. The law justifies the wielding of firearms by persons recruited into organized militia groups, such as police officers and military personnel. However, there are clear guidelines on the circumstance within which to use such lethal force. Numerous police officers, therefore, have found themselves fighting legal battles on manslaughter charges for unleashing deadly force against persons of interest. There have been numerous convictions of state police officers who used deadly force unjustifiably. One recent example is the Ruszczyk v Noor where the court convicted a Minneapolis police officer, Mohamed Noor, of third-degree murder for fatally shooting an unarmed civilian.

The use of lethal force by law enforcement officers, however, is lawful under certain circumstances as stipulated by the USA constitution. Among such circumstances are in case of self-defense or when the officer has reason to believe that the suspect is a threat to own and others’ lives. In other states, the use of lethal force by civilians can be lawful in similar circumstances. The ‘castle doctrine’ is one of those laws that justify civilian’s use of deadly force on another. According to the law, a civilian in his home or area of sojourn can use lethal against an intruder. Later in 2005, Florida’s governor signed into law the ‘stand-your-ground’ law, which expands the jurisdiction in which the law protects civilians’ use of deadly force. However, the statutory laws that protect the use of deadly force in self-defense or otherwise have brought the fierce debate on their applicability in civilian and police officers cases and have often led to controversial case rulings.

Self-Defense and Use of Deadly Force Case Statistics in the USA

The average total cases of homicide in the USA since 2000 have been sixteen thousand cases per year (Post Staff Report, 2012; Statista, 2019b). According to Statista (2019a), California reported the highest number of homicides and manslaughter in 2018, with one thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine cases. The total number of homicide cases in the USA seems to have remained constant. However, reports indicate that the number of justifiable-homicides in the USA has been increasing since the introduction of the castle and ‘no duty to retreat’ doctrines. According to Post Staff Report, the justifiable homicide statistics had nearly doubled in 2010 compared to the 2000’s statistics. Also, Statista (2019a) report shows that both justifiable-homicide cases involving police officers and citizens have increased since 2007. According to the report, civilian justifiable-homicide cases in the USA have increased by almost fifty percent in the ten years. However, such cases involving law enforcement officers have increased by a slight margin from 398 cases in 2007 to 410 cases in 2018.

Given that the average total cases of murder in the USA have remained constant since 2000, one would only assume that the majority of what would be homicide incidences in the early 2000s is now justifiable by law. The increase of justifiable-homicide cases attributes from the introduction of the stand-your-ground, castle, and no-duty-to-retreat doctrines by the majority of the fifty states in the USA. According to Post Staff Report (2012), statistics show that more than sixty percent of justifiable homicide cases involved persons who were strangers to each other. Also, the report indicates that eighty percent of justifiable homicide defendants used firearms to injure the victims fatally. These statistics show the close relationship between justifiable homicide cases and gun ownership in the USA. However, citizens’ gun ownership in the USA has been increasing by two percent annually. Second Call Defense (2020) reports that more than one in every three households in the USA has a registered firearm. Therefore, the rise in gun owners in the USA increases the probability of more homicide cases in the future.

Statutory Laws behind Self-Defense and Use of Lethal Force

Reports have shown that firearms are the most common weapons used in homicide cases in the USA. However, the constitution protects the possession of firearms by civilians for self-defense purposes or otherwise. The second amendment of the USA constitution, which became part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, gives the right to citizens to possess firearms. It states that no one should infringe on the right of any well-regulated militia to own firearms.

The Second Amendment law has received protection against state legislations over the years, which may undermine the freedom of gun ownership. Two of the most notable court cases that reaffirmed the right of citizens to bear firearms were 1939’s United States v Miller and 2008’s District of Columbia v Heller. In 1939, Luke Miller sued the government for what he called the “infringement of gun ownership rights” by the National Firearms Act (NFA). The NFA required all firearms, which must not include automated ones, be subject to government registration and taxation. However, Miller argued that the taxation process was hefty and sought to undermine the legal ownership of firearms by USA citizens. The courts ruled in favor of Miller and declared that any process that seeks to stifle the right to bear arms was unconstitutional. Also, the court further buttressed this ruling in another more recent landmark court case in 2008. In 2008’s District of Columbia v Heller, the court reaffirmed that the Second Amendment gives the right of possessing firearms to individuals regardless of militia affiliation. This court ruled that District of Columbia’s law, which required all firearms to remain stored in an unloaded and trigger-locked state, had infringed that right.

The Second Amendment, however, does not elaborate on the circumstances under which the use of firearms is legal. The law that gave the right to own firearms did not guarantee immunity in their usage. Therefore, numerous persons faced conviction for using their arms. However, a law protecting self-defense homicide first came into existence in the 1980s. In 1985, the legislature of Colorado coined the Make-my-day Law, which gave immunity against legal liability to any persons using their firearms to repel an intruder in their home (Wilbanks, 1990). Numerous court proceedings referred to the law later as the castle doctrine, which was common and undocumented law. The castle doctrine was simply a set of principles assumed as common law. These principles included the notion that a person’s home is his or her castle. Therefore, the common law implied that a man was not liable to any legal or judicial punishment for taking action against an intruder in his or her home. The common law, however, included the duty to retreat for any person before engaging the intruder with lethal force (Weaver, 2008). Courts often measured the immunity of the homeowner with the actions taken to avoid any violent confrontation.

In 2005, Florida’s legislation committee made the first attempt to document the castle doctrine in its state laws. The committee tabled a Senate bill known as the “protection of persons’ use of force bill” (Weaver, 2008). The bill sought to protect individuals that use lethal force against intruders from any criminal or civil consequences. The bill also removed the obligation to retreat first for any such cases, which had been a mandatory threshold for acquitting attackers using the castle doctrine. Various advocates of the law argued that it was necessary because it enabled law-abiding citizens to take action against crime. This Senate bill passed Florida’s legislation process with little opposition and became the first of its kind- “stand-your-ground” law.

The stand-your-ground law took effect in Florida on October 1, 2005 (Weaver, 2008). This law clarified several issues around the previous common law or castle doctrine. First, it clarified that persons had no duty to hideaway from the intruder before using deadly force. This clarification meant that manslaughter defendants did not require proving the efforts they made to avoid any sought of violent engagement. Secondly, the law expounded on the definition of a castle that the common law did not define. According to the stand-your-ground law, a castle can be any area where a person had legal jurisdiction to be there. Such areas include the owner’s house, gated estate, and place of work, car, or area of vacation. However, the law clearly defines that it only protects persons against others who do not share equal rights to be in the castle. Therefore, defendants cannot use this law when the attacker and victim both live or sojourn in the area where the assault took place. The statistics of justifiable homicides support this definition of the castle doctrine since more than sixty percent of justifiable homicides involved strangers (Post Staff Report, 2012).

Since the inception of stand-your-ground law in Florida’s state statute, there have numerous similar bills incorporated by the majority of states in the USA. Seven years after Florida pioneered the stand-your-ground law, a majority of thirty-three states had tabled bills to replicate the law in their statutes (Love, 2015). According to Currier (2012), twenty-four states had enacted the law by 2012. This figure increased to thirty out of the fifty states by 2019 (Lopez, 2019). However, some states have incorporated different stand-your-ground obligations for persons in public and at home. One such example is in Delaware State. In Delaware State, the law states that a person has no obligation to retreat from an attacker at their home. However, they have that duty to avoid any sort of deadly force confrontation while in public. Additionally, all the states that are yet to introduce the stand-your-ground law have incorporated the castle doctrine except Vermont State (USCCA, 2020). However, Vermont state laws do also shield persons who kill or wound others in an attempt to protect their household or others from deadly force or violence.

Various lawmakers have given legal attention to the laws around self-defense in civilian circumstances. However, the statutory law describing the use of deadly force by law enforcement officers has been in existence much longer than for civilian cases. The most influential court case that indulged the law regarding police officers’ use of force was Tennessee v Garner. Before the 1985 case of a 15-year-old unarmed Garner shot dead by a police officer, the common law for police states was to use any force necessary to apprehend a felon. However, Edward Garner became the reason why the Supreme Court buried this common law. In the case, a police officer, Elton Hymon, caught Garner fleeing from a house where he had stolen. The police officer ordered the fifteen-year-old to surrender, but Garner chose to flee. In response, the police officer shot the suspect who later died because of the shot.

The Tennessee v Garner ruling became a referencing point for the majority of states statutory since then. In the ruling, the court found out that Hymon demanding Garner to submit to ‘seizure’ orders had infringed his right under the Fourth Amendment. Therefore, the court concluded that the use of deadly force to apprehend Garner was unconstitutional. Since this ruling, the majority of USA states have sought to clarify the circumstances under which the use of lethal force can be constitutional. The use of deadly force, therefore, can only be applicable in cases where the police officer has reason to believe that the suspect poses a threat of great bodily harm or death to himself, herself, or others. This rule means that the use of lethal violence by law enforcement officers is only justifiable in cases where the felon has a firearm or poses a death threat to the officer or citizens.

Although the majority of states that have banished lethal force on non-violent felons, a few states still apply the common law (Flanders & Welling, 2015). For instance, a recent case of unnecessary lethal force in Missouri State went unpunished because of court ruling based on common law. The case involved a police officer, Darren Wilson, who shot dead an unarmed Michael Brown in 2014 (Flanders & Welling, 2015). The story of Brown’s killing brought forth the gruesome truth that state departments still followed the common law or had statutory law mirroring the pre-1985 era. In Michael Brown’s story, the police officer approached and started a violent confrontation with him, which ended with Wilson shooting Brown six times. However, the court overruled any calls for indictment of the police officer citing the common law.

The Thresholds in Civilian Cases That Warrant Use of Deadly Force and Self-Defense

Proving a self-defense immunity against a murder case in today’s courtroom must satisfy several thresholds for the defendant’s case. First, the defendant must prove that he or she had the legal right to be at the place where the homicide occurred. According to Lave (2013), the stand-your-ground law approved by the majority of the states in the USA that individuals have no duty to retreat from where they have a legal right to be. This threshold has been the first measure of the innocence of a self-defense homicide defendant. Examples of places where one has a legal right to be in include the owner’s home, gated estate, apartment, and even inside a vehicle. For instance, in the case of Baker v State, the stand-your-ground law applied to the defendant, who killed one and injured two assailants that attacked him in his car (Lave, 2013).

The second threshold for satisfying a justifiable homicide defense is to prove that the defendant believed the victim of the homicide had no legal right to be at the crime scene. The stand-your-ground law does justify the killing of someone who was in a place of his or her legal right. Therefore, a strong defense against homicide would be to prove that the victim was not at a place where the defendant knew to be legally his or her right. This measure was crucial in acquitting two recent cases against Joe Horn and George Zimmerman (Lave, 2013). In Joe Horn’s case, he shot and killed two thieves running away from his neighbor’s house. In this case, the crucial argument by the defendant was that the bulgers had gone into Joe Horn’s legal vicinity without having any legal rights. In another case, the court acquitted George Zimmerman after he shot and killed a 17-year old Trayvon Martin in his gated estate. The courts found that Trayvon had trespassed and, therefore, caused the shooter to assume an unprovoked attack.

Also, the defendant must prove that he or she had reason to believe that the victim was an intruder or had the intention to carry out an unprovoked attack. The stand-your-ground law is clear that lethal force is legal in self-defense against an attacker. Therefore, the third criterion for proving homicide innocence is to show that the attacker had intentions to proceed with the attack unprovoked. The defendant, thus, cannot claim self-defense in any provocation that he or she initiated, such as in the case of State v Williams (Criminal Law, 2020).

Additionally, the defendant must prove that he or she believed that the intruder posed an imminent threat of serious bodily harm or death. The degree of achieving this threshold is the imminence of the danger posed by the attacker. According to Lave (2013), the defendant must prove that the lethal force applied at a time when the attacker was in the process of entering or intending unlawful and forceful entry or engagement. Future danger cannot justify self-defense homicide (Criminal Law, 2020). For instance, a defendant cannot claim self-defense after killing another person that had called to threaten his or her life. Finally, a self-defense defendant must prove beyond doubt that he or she believed the deadly force used was the only way to protect himself or herself against the danger of imminent attacker. According to Weaver (2008), the Florida statute offers legal immunity to self-defense defendants who had a reasonable belief that the application of deadly force was the only way to prevent imminent danger.

The Threshold for Justifying Lethal Force in Police Officers’ Legal Cases

The law orders that law enforcement officers protect the lives and property of citizens. The threshold for warranting the use of deadly force by police officers is less than in civil cases because of their duty to society. Therefore, in homicide cases against police officers, the first threshold for successfully proving a justifiable homicide is proving that the act prevented a criminal act. In most cases, this measure can only justify lethal force using common law. Police officers must protect the lives and property of others. Therefore, a police officer can justify using deadly force by proving that he or she acted to stop a felon who was persistent in the pursuant of a criminal act. Such criminal acts may include damage to property, which may cause physical injury to the owner. For instance, if a police officer catches an assailant attempting to start a fire in a household, the officer may use lethal force whether or not he or she can verify the occupancy of the building.

The second threshold for justifying police homicide is proving that the police officer believed that the suspect posed a danger of great bodily harm or death to the officer or others. According to Flanders and Welling (2015), law enforcement officers can justifiably use deadly force to mitigate a threat from an armed aggressor. Finally, the defendant officer must prove that the force used to engage the suspect was reasonable and necessary to nullify the threat. During training, the majority of police officers get training on the way to manage the potentially violent circumstance. Therefore, in defending a deadly force case, a police officer should prove that he or she had made initial attempts, where applicable, to handle the attacker in a non-violent manner. The defendant can then ascertain that using the deadly force was the only way to take control of the situation.

Conclusion

The issue of self-defense and the use of deadly force has had many years of controversial court rulings and legislation interventions. In the past, various state legislations have tabled bills in an attempt to minimize the risk of firearm confrontations between citizens and police officers. However, in all the cases brought to Supreme Courts, the courts have endeavored to protect the Second Amendment right of gun ownership. Therefore, the majority of state governments have adopted the ‘stand-your-ground’ law, which defines when the use of lethal force can be justifiable. Proponents of the law argue that it has given civilians the power to make their neighborhoods safer. However, recent court cases still prove that the law is not without controversy as persons such as Trayvon Martin lost their lives to minor offenses. I submit that the state legislators should tighten the law to avoid an increase in unnecessary homicides in the future.

References

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