Will I be prosecuted if I shoot someone during the course of defending myself in a “live or die” situation?
Share
Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people's questions, and connect with other people.
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
Will I be prosecuted if I shoot someone during the course of defending myself in a “live or die” situation?
In many states in the United States you may be justified in taking a life if you do so in the course of an attack to protect your own or the life of an innocent person. However, the law recognizes degrees of violence. If you are attacked by an armed assailant and in the process you killed your antagonist, you have probably not committed a crime. If, however, you disarm your attacker, and you kill him as he tries to run away, in most states you have probably committed manslaughter (because he attacked you, but the threat is now gone). If you disarm him, disable him, and he falls unconscious to the ground, and at that point you put a pistol to his head and blow his brains out, that’s murder. You are no longer defending yourself.
Whether or not you can legally kill someone in self defence depends on whether or not the force you use is proportionate to the threat that you reasonably believe that you are facing. If you, reasonably, fear for your life because you, reasonably, perceive someone to be a threat then you would be justified in using lethal force to defend yourself, so you could do so legally but if you kill someone due to them poking you then you will probably be done for murder.
If lethal force is not justified but pushing them away is then it would still be a legal act of self defence if you push them away and they happen to fall onto a spike that kills them.