Deadly Force in Self-Defense: What You Need to Know - Critical Mas(s) Ep. 03 with Massad Ayoob

[Music] hey guys masada yup here for wilson combat uh reminding you to subscribe to the wilson combat channel and be sure to press that little notification bell to keep you alert to some of the other brain food that hopefully is coming down the pike i've been asked to talk to you today about when it's justifiable for the private citizen to use lethal force and self-defense the great colonel jeff cooper said famously owning a stradivarius doesn't make you a violinist and owning the finest of defensive pistols doesn't make you a gunfighter you need to know how but every bit is important if not more so you need to know when so what does justify the use of deadly force by a private citizen first let's quantify the term deadly force or lethal force the terms are interchangeable is that degree of force that a reasonable prudent person would consider capable or likely to cause death or great bodily harm the states will define great bodily harm differently but generally it means crippling or disfiguring injury well consider you have had to shoot someone in self-defense your your defense which is going to be a plea of self-defense picture it resting on a table that's supported by three legs the top of that table is the set of circumstances the situation that justifies deadly force that's a situation of immediate otherwise unavoidable danger of death or great bodily harm to yourself or some other innocent person that you have a right to protect that situation that set of circumstances that table stands on three legs that are the criteria which create the situation different schools have used different terms but the oldest and most commonly used set of terms is ability opportunity and jeopardy ability means the opponent has the power to kill or to [ __ ] it's most obvious when he's armed with a per se weapon he has a gun he has a knife he has a club it can also uh be a situation of what the law calls disparity of force disparity of force means your opponent is ostensibly unarmed he doesn't have a weapon per se but his physical advantage over you and the course of violent assault is so great that with bare hands and bare feet he can cause death or great bodily harm and that in this in essence his that physical advantage is so great it becomes the equivalent of a deadly weapon and a law warrants your recourse to a per se deadly weapon like one of these a disparity of force can take any of a number of forms force of numbers uh two or more attackers and you're alone in defense significant disparity of size or strength that favors the opponent over you the opponent is known or obviously recognizable to have extremely high skill and unarmed combat perhaps you know he used to be a professional boxer a black belt of the old saying of the black belt registering his hands or you've seen him sidekick a six foot two security guard through a plate glass window close enough you realize this is a physical force that you can't compete with with bare hands it could also be an able-bodied person attacking a handicapped person uh even if the handicap has taken place in the course of the instant assault it can also be a position of disadvantage that is the let's say you and the opponent are equal in size to strength perhaps he's even smaller than you but he has you in a position where he's banging your head against a brick wall and you know if this continues you're going to die or be profoundly brain damaged and there's no other way to stop it another common element is generally male attacking female the law generally recognizes that the male has greater size greater upper body strength than the female of our species and is also more culturally predict predicated toward physical violence the opportunity factor means he's capable of immediately employing that power to kill a [ __ ] let's say he's armed with a deadly weapon and let's say he's got a knife for a club let's say he's about a football field away from you and he's yelling i'm going to slash your throat well he's threatening death he has the power to kill but at that distance he cannot employ it if at the same distance he has an ak-47 rifle and he's yelling i'll kill you while now he has ability and opportunity and jeopardy and now he is an immediate deadly threat generally the opportunity element will comprise distance and or obstacles between him and you the third element is jeopardy and jeopardy means manifest intent that's intent manifested by words and or actions to cause death or great bodily harm maybe he's never uttered a word but he's coming at you with his lips drawn back in a snarl his eyes are narrowed on you with a target focus and he has an upraised knife this is probably not an itinerant cutlery salesman come to show you his wares he can reach you very quickly as to the classic example of the opportunity factor is dennis tuller's research going back to 1983 that showed the average adult male from a standing start could close seven yards 21 feet and afflict a fatal knight spoon in an average time of a second and a half and we've seen people close that gap and strike in a little under a second so the manifest intent element is in an armed society often the most fungible i'm sitting here in a studio there are at least four of us in the room at least half of us if not more are carrying lethal weapons we're all armed we're all close enough to kill each other with knife or gun and none of us are shooting the others because none of us is manifesting to the others an intent to kill or [ __ ] so with weapons present the jeopardy factor will generally be the deciding element let me give you an example of the ability opportunity jeopardy triad being applied in the case probably all of you are familiar with to some degree state of florida versus george zimmerman henry the death of trayvon martin the shooting occurred in late february of 2012 in sanford florida and the acquittal took place uh after i think seven weeks of trial on july 13 uh 2013. republican been told uh innocent uh child skipping down the street with a box of skittles gunned down to satisfy the bloodlust of a racist to understand why the self-defense claim was totally accepted by the jury we have to analyze those three points ability opportunity and jeopardy the ability the power to kill element was really two-fold uh it's the the evidence was clear that zimmerman was down on his back and his head was being pounded on the concrete by the taller young man above him that's deadly force in and of itself as don west the co-counsel said in his summation for the defense the sidewalk had become the weapon and really it's not going to matter if i pick up a chunk of concrete and smash you in the base of the skull with it or i smash the base of your skull under the concrete the damage is going to be much the same what was also going on in that element zimmerman testified while he didn't testify at the trial but he stated to the police and that statement did go into the jury that in the instant before he drew the gun and fired the young man on top of him had observed the gun and the inside the waistband holster on his hip and said you're going to die tonight and had reached for the gun and zimmerman testified he batted the hand away drew and fired the single shot that ended the encounter fatally that was two elements of ability right there opportunity the capability of employing it they were in direct physical contact the evidence was consistent with zimmerman's account that he was down on his back with young martin on top of him head and hands pounding his head into the pavement and essentially a martial arts mixed martial arts mount otherwise inescapable finally the elements of manifest intent when you've been punched in the face and the evidence showed that he had been and knocked down on your back and someone's pounding your head into the pavement that physical action is basically homicidal the statement that you're going to die tonight as the man reaches for a gun whether or not it's your gun that he's reaching for is another manifest intent to kill element so all three of those came together and i thought mark o'mara and don west did a very good job of explaining to the jury that this was a situation of immediate otherwise unavoidable danger of death or great bodily harm now there's another element that has to be considered my opinion separately called preclusion and the reason i say considered separately ability opportunity in jeopardy speak to your opponent what he or she is capable of doing to you preclusion speaks to you did you start the fight if so you were the initial aggressor and self-defense is no longer going to be a competent defense for you in court some states require a retreat or at least some attempt to retreat before using deadly force and self-defense no state requires that when you're attacked by an intruder in your home castle doctrine going back to the common law principle that one's home is one's castle and attack there they need not retreat but even there things can be functional in a domestic dispute where both people live in the same home they share castle doctrine and the attackers essentially cancels out the defenders and now we're back to straight-up self-defense with no legal advantage on either side uh now the determination will be who was the aggressor who was the innocent victim with the right to fight back using deadly force if it was a deadly force attack continuing with the zimmermann case we spoke of the element of preclusion what could you the defendant have done to avoid the situation or to mitigate it the accuser said that zimmerman had started it that he was the initial aggressor that he had hunted the guy down the narrative went that he was a self-appointed community watch the record showed and the facts showed at trial that he was in fact the elected captain of the area's community watch the sanford police department testified as such and his job had been to be the as in any neighborhood watch group to be the eyes and ears of the police and if they spotted something to call them on this particular night he was not on community watch patrol he was going out to the grocery store to do an errand and on this dark rainy night he sees this young man pausing looking into windows which in an area where there have been burglaries and home invasions was particularly suspicious so he called it in uh the the phone call is a matter of record you can listen to it on youtube at one point the uh the dispatcher says uh you've lost sight of him where did he go now pause briefly human nature we're videoing now in the wilson combat studio if somebody behind that camera asked me mass where did bill wilson go my reaction will be i don't know i'll go find them for you and essentially that was zimmerman's reaction now remember he's supposed to be the eyes and ears of the police department the dispatcher who asked that question is the voice of the police department that's at that point you hear the ding ding of his car door opening and you hear the wind on the microphone the dispatcher asks are you following him and he said yes and he said you don't need to do that and the wind in the microphone stops because he stopped moving forward and that was when he turned around broke off the conversation went back to the car to wait for the police and it was shortly after he had hung up his cell phone that he was attacked by trayvon martin so basically the preclusion element showed that he had done nothing wrong and he was not in fact the instigator but all of those things will have to be addressed in a successful defense as they were successfully dir successfully addressed in the zimmerman case so essentially you want to make sure you've maintained what the courts call mantle of innocence you didn't start the fight you didn't go looking for the fight you didn't keep the ball rolling when someone else started the fight bear in mind when you're carrying a gun you bear what the courts call a higher standard of care you were the one who knew a deadly weapon was present and on physical altercation fisticuffs could at any moment turn into a killing situation responsibility comes with the power they they have to be kept in an equal balance those are the basic rules insofar as uh retreat requirement some states as i said require it some do not some have required in the past and rescinded the so-called stand your ground laws at the same time the states that do require retreat do not despair because all the states that have had that law if you actually read the fine print and look at the case law the case law is the determinations of the higher courts the courts of appeal to guide the lower courts the trial courts and how the basic principles of the law need to be applied if you look at all the states retreat has never been demanded unless it can be accomplished and complete safety to oneself and other innocent parties it's hard for me to picture a situation where if i could have simply walked away i wouldn't have and would have wound up using a gun on someone so basically those are the the primary standards it must be a situation of immediate otherwise unavoidable danger of death or great bodily harm to yourself or another innocent party those three criteria need to be present it's not two out of three isn't bad you need all three ability the opponent possesses the power to kill opportunity he's capable of immediately employing that power against you or the person you're protecting and finally jeopardy the manifest intent element he is manifesting an intent by words and or actions to kill or to [ __ ] essentially think of it as a three-point triangle ability opportunity jeopardy when the three of them close together they're sort of shaped like a spearhead and when that spearhead points at you at that moment and really only at that moment deadly force is justified under american law and standards i'd like to thank you for watching and remind you to subscribe and stay tuned to the wilson channel [Music] you

Channel: Wilson Combat

Views: 936,132

Keywords: wilson combat, wilson, combat, 1911, custom, gun, handgun, pistol

Id: pA5_pdmBI2E

Length: 17min 2sec (1022 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020