WHAT CAN YOU DO IF LOOTERS ARE AT YOUR DOOR?

how's it on everybody in this video I'm be talking about a question that I've been getting a lot recently because of what's going on in our society and that is in California what can you do in regards to if looters are trying to loot your home or if litters are trying to loot your business what are you allowed to do what is California law say about that so as a quick disclaimer although I am a licensure practicing attorney in the state of California this in no way is legal advice this is just gonna be some background knowledge on what exactly California law says some of the laws and regulations and I will point you to some various codes and some various language that you can look up for yourself what this video is going to do is just give you some general knowledge about what California says generally so this is going to be a broad overview video so real quick before we jump into this video I'd like to mention that this channel is supported by us CCA and if you're considering maybe you might have to take some sort of self-defense action protect your house protect your business or if you carry just firearms and generally if you have a CCW here in the state of California you may want to consider getting some sort of legal protection or some sort of carry insurance so if you would like to take a look at you with CCA I will pin a comment on this video and also put a link to us CCA in the details so first up is can you protect your home your house your place of residence from looters from rioters so when it comes to looting and rioting and how it may affect your home like we're seeing people going around and looting homes this would most likely fall under the castle doctrine here in the state of California so if you're not familiar here in the state of California we have a thing that's called the castle doctrine and essentially what it is is your home is your castle and therefore you are allowed to protect it and you were allowed to protect your life and those other individuals in your house if they are threatened in some way and if you would like to take a look at the castle doctrine you can find this in California Penal Code 1 98.5 and in California there is a legal presumption which means this is a automatically attached to when you are having to defend your life or defend others in your home there is an automatic presumption that you are in fear of imminent threat of harm or great bodily injury and so what this means is a prosecutor will have to overcome that general presumption which is attached to situations that happen within your home so when exactly does the Castle Doctrine apply and when would it apply to these factual scenarios when we're talking about rioting and looting so the castle doctrine applies when an intruder unlawfully and forcibly tries or actually enters your home now I know with this a lot of people ask okay well what about the porch what about the front yard stuff like that there are some cases in city California that actually say that if someone's on your front porch that does not qualify as them trying to forcibly enter your home or a part of your home that entryway of your house does not count they actually have to be entering your home or trying to into your home then just standing on your porch or them just standing in your front yard does not qualify under some of these case laws here in the state of California the second part of whether or not the castle doctrine applies is is whether the resident knew or reasonably believed that the intruder was unlawfully or forcibly entering or trying to enter the home and so this is the belief or the like understanding the sort of mens rea of mens rea is not really precisely the right word but it goes to your state of mind what did the what did the homeowner believe at the time what was the reasonable belief or did they know that someone was trying to forcibly enter your home or they were forcibly entering your home another part of this is it does not apply if the individual trying to enter your home or actually entering your home is a family member or someone who resides in the house this does not apply in that scenario so that's just a quick thing I would like to throw in there probably doesn't apply in this specific instance where we're talking about looting and rioting and the fourth and most important element when you're looking at whether the castle doctrine would apply in some sort of justifiable shooting or something like that and it goes to the force in what you used against an intruder now as I mentioned there is a presumption that you are in fear of great bodily death or injury if someone is entering your home so you have this general presumption and then it goes down to the fourth element what type of force did you use and the castle doctrine applies when you use some sort of force which is intended to cause some great bodily injury or to actually cause some sort of death and so this would apply to the use of firearms and so for the castle doctrine applied the main two things that you need to consider is what was your knowledge at the time did you know that they were trying to enter your house or did you have a reasonable belief that they were trying to unlawfully and forcibly enter your home and then knowing this did you use the force intending to stop that so a question that could arise out of this whole castle doctrine concept and rioting and looting is whether you have a duty to try to retreat within your home or maybe just generally in a self-defense situation if you have a duty to retreat now this is not gonna be a comprehensive video on self-defense I do have another video on my channel about self-defense and I'll put a link up here that can take you to self-defense generally but there is a concept that will also apply to your home or maybe in this rioting and looting situation and that is stand your ground now California does have a stand-your-ground law or concept which applies now it is not a legislative or statutory law that is on the books that you can look up and it was just say you know California Penal Code xx whatever whatever in California we actually have a stand-your-ground law by proxy and kind of through case law and if you want to take a look at that for yourself that would be Cal Krynn jury instructions I believe it's 5:05 and what these your instructions do is it kind of just has a good quick summary of the laws of state of California and when you look at this California jury instruction when it deals with stand your ground laws it actually says that here in the state of California we do not have a duty to retreat they cannot weigh in with their decision whether an individual retreated or not or they had an ability to retreat or not so I thought I would just throw that in there as well because a lot of people ask about well what about Stand Your Ground laws do you have to retreat in your home just because someone's entering and you can get away do you have to get away in your house something like that under California you do not have a duty to retreat so next let's look at the hot topic right now of what's going on with all the writing eluding and that is what do California laws say about you trying to protect your business or property of some sort so I'm just going to say real quick generally across the board almost all throughout the US there is a general presumption that you cannot use deadly force to try to protect your property where you're in fear of your life or the life of other self-defense automatically kicks in and you are justified in using some sort of deadly force or you know defending their life something like that but when it comes to property there is not this automatic presumption that applies there are some other things that have to happen for the use of lethal force deadly for something like that to apply in protecting your property and so I'm gonna read to you real quick what the California jury instruction says about an individual protecting their property or protecting their business generally so this is California criminal jury instruction three four seven six and what it says is the owner of property may use reasonable force to protect that property from mn harm a person may also use reasonable force to protect the property of a family member guests master-servant ward from immediate harm reasonable force means the amount of force that a reasonable person in the same situation would believe is necessary to protect the property from imminent harm when deciding whether to the defendant use reasonable force consider all the circumstances as they were known to and appear to defendant and considered what a reasonable person in a similar situation was what similar knowledge would have believed if the defendants beliefs were reasonable the danger does not need to have actually existed the people have the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant used more force than was reasonable to protect property from imminent harm if the people have not met this burden you must find the defendant not guilty so really what you would look at in a business or protecting your business it's all gonna come down to the force and what you use and wasn't reasonable and what a reasonable person in the same scenario use that same amount of force so in this situation we're hearing about a lot of people wanting to use firearms to protect their businesses and so if you had to use some sort of lethal force or some sort of deadly force the question is then submitted to the jury whether that type of force was reasonable in your scenario and ultimately that is left up to the jury that is left up to a jury of your peers which is kind of a scary thing so California actually has a justifiable homicide exception for an individual who is trying to protect their property now the supplies in specific scenario so let's talk about the factors of wind this would actually kick in now this is a defense so this is what would happen is you probably will be prosecuted and your defense counsel will try to find a way to justify what you did or justify you having to shoot someone or shoot looters or riot or something like that so they will try to construct some sort of fence and that's when this justifiable homicide to protect your property would probably play in now there are elements to that and so let's talk about some of those elements so first you will have to be defending your property in some way second you have to show in some way that the intruder was committing some sort of violent act third you would have to prove that you had a reason belief that the threat of harm was imminent to you or imminent to the property and fourth you would have to prove that you reasonably believed that deadly force or that lethal force was reasonable and necessary to remove that threat and finally that you use reasonable force to guard against that threat so again these are just the general rules and these are just the general factors that will go in into proving your defense that you were justified in using deadly force to protect your property now is this a perfect defense you may believe in your heart that you were justified in using this deadly force but again it is left up to a jury of your peers to determine whether that is the fact or not so really is a roll of dice that you will have to make in regards of protecting your business or your property now I think it's maybe a little bit more of a clear-cut rule when it comes to actually defending your house or defending those individuals within your house if you have riders or looters trying to intrude or forcibly break into your home and loot your home or something like that because there is a presumption in the city of California that you're in immediate fear of great bodily injury or death that presumption is automatically granted to individuals in their home residents but it's not automatically granted to individuals and their businesses or trying to protect their businesses so if you have any questions about this or maybe if something was a little bit confusing to you go ahead and write in the come section below I do monitor the comment section fairly often so I'll try to answer the questions the best that I can also I want to mention if you are a first-time viewer or you found this channel for the first time maybe you're new gun owner or you're concerned about the things that are going right now go ahead and hit the subscribe button I try to answer a lot of these questions especially a lot of these topical questions to give you a lot of you piece of mind when it comes to these kind of uncertain questions that are going on right now not only in the state of California but just you know in society-wide when there's things going on and there's uncertainty my goal is always to give you some sort of peace of mind or give you some information or some education so that you can make a decision for yourself if you found this video helpful and you'd like to support the channel one of the best ways to do that is to join the patreon and I'll put a link to the patreon page down the details also by using the various affiliate links that you can find the details that also helps support the channel so as always thanks you guys for watching don't forget to Like subscribe and never forget and nation that draws a great distinction between its scholars and warriors of its laws or my cowards and wars fought by fools

Channel: Armed Scholar

Views: 142,863

Keywords: protecting business from looters, looting, protestors, riots, rioting, protecting your home from looters, self defense laws, castle doctrine california, castle doctrine, stand your ground law, stand your ground, stand your ground law explained, george floyd, george floyd protest, business looters, protests looting, george floyd protests, protecting home from thieves, protecting home from intruders, los angeles protest, black lives matter, protecting business with guns

Id: vZXKhZ9EzKQ

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 03 2020