Duty to Retreat Case Law Examples?

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BLB68

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Does anyone have any examples of problems caused by duty to retreat laws, such as attempted compliance causing serious injury or death, or charges being wrongfully filed leading to all the entailing problems from financial up through conviction?

I happen to think duty to retreat laws can be problematic, but I lack citations for arguing my point, and a current high profile case makes it hard to find cites, since Google keeps throwing up results directly related to the case, rather than older cases.

(Google weighs recent results heavily, and plays a lot of word association games that second guess the searcher's intent. Right now it's assuming everyone is interested in just one case.)

Also, please refrain from mentioning that recent case, as this is an attempt to find help in research, and I'd rather not have the thread locked down.
 
The answer to your question is not available: some people are just stupid by design.

As to your google dilemma you might need to go extremely broad with your search and then refine down after rejecting the first page or two of results (which will capture the current news item we aren't talking about. Maybe start with all civilian shootings for some time period. Google is NOT your friend for academic pursuits--it should come with a warning as such.
 
The peoblem with duty to retreat laws is that they give potentially violent criminals the legal power to ORDER you to leave some place that you otherwise have a right to be.
 
I presume that you refer not to case law but to incidents involving charges or trials regarding the duty to retreat. I think the question is far too broad and likely to bring at best a scattered set of responses relating to a few incidents about which the facts may remain in dispute.

I say that because the duty to retreat goes back to the middle ages. See Blackstone, Book Four, Chapter 14, Of Homicide. Find a modernized version written in today's English. One should note that in those days, killing in self defense was characterized as excusable rather than justifiable; we use different terminology today.

I can name one case--a mother in MA who was convicted after killing an intruder with a gum ball machine in her own home before the law was changed, but discussing it will not support any general conclusions.

As to case law, you would have to research appellate rulings going back to the earliest days of the Republic, and in every state. Some have affirmed the duty to retreat, and some have obviated it.
 
Incidents may be more precise. Only those that went to trial would be case law, of course.
 
Posted by BLB68: Incidents may be more precise. Only those that went to trial would be case law, of course.
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Actually, only those convictions that were appealed on the basis of a legal issue involving the duty to retreat would result in case law.

The problem with your question is that there have been all kinds of assault and battery cases, armed robberies, muggings, murders, rapes, and so forth in which the victims were seriously injured or killed. There is no central file containing all of the details of all of the cases. If there were transcripts of the court records, one would have to read the transcripts of every trial that has taken place in every county court in the nation.

To your point: the duty to retreat worked very well indeed for many centuries. In the ideal case, one would not see "attempted compliance causing serious injury or death", because one was required to retreat only if it was safely possible to do so.

To most of us, having to retreat within or from one's own home, which I believe to be a more recent development, seems ridiculous. Fortunately, that requirement is going away, either though legislative or appellate action, in most jurisdictions.

To a number of people who have little knowledge of legal history, the idea of having a duty to retreat anywhere seems wrong; they seem convinced that their bearing arms puts them in the right in any confrontation and that others will somehow be able to devine that after the fact--just like television.

But let's go back to the days of Blackstone and before. There is a dead man and a killer; the killer claims self defense; there are no witnesses. Was it murder, or excusable homicide? The learned justices who set down the common law decided long ago, after considerable discussion and thought, that evidence of having retreated to the wall was convincing evidence of lawful self defense. That's how we got the requirement. Until a little more than a decade ago, the requirement to retreat was even written into the code in Texas.

To be sure, the requirement originated in the days of contact weapons. One cannot outrun a bullet, and to many of us, it seems that the duty to retreat has largely outlived itself.

However, the requirement to produce evidence of immediate necessity remains with us, and requirement or no, an attempt to retreat, if the opportunity presents itself, can serve one well both tactically and legally.
 
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My understanding of duty to retreat came from the outlawing of dueling,
in that one could not claim it to be self defense in a duel, rather that if one wished to claim self defense they had the 'duty to retreat'

allowing a clear demarcation between mutual combat and self defense.
I know that in many states there still remains case law backing that, such that if you do engage in mutual combat, BUT one party ceases it AND attempts to retreat - non engaging in combat, then they have fulfilled their duty to retreat and at that point can claim self-defense.

The problem comes from the fact that many gang members will attempt to claim the above as they were just defending themselves. This is were the duty to retreat gains so many supporters (still wouldn't know you would have to retreat in your home or car)

AND why self defense is disallowed for those engaged in criminal conduct or acts.

so I agree, it makes LOTS of sense in preventing duels with swords, not so much for guns, I guess it gives you a clear victim, but most would rather not be a victim.
 
Kleanbore said:
The problem with your question is that there have been all kinds of assault and battery cases, armed robberies, muggings, murders, rapes, and so forth in which the victims were seriously injured or killed. There is no central file containing all of the details of all of the cases. If there were transcripts of the court records, one would have to read the transcripts of every trial that has taken place in every county court in the nation.
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I know there's no central file, but if there's actually a problem with the duty to retreat laws, you'd think someone, somewhere might speak up against those laws if they worked against them or against a loved one.

To your point: the duty to retreat worked very well indeed for many centuries. In the ideal case, one would not see "attempted compliance causing serious injury or death", because one was required to retreat only if it was safely possible to do so.
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You'd see it in a less than ideal case, though. If the person had a poor understanding of duty to retreat and feared prosecution, then hesitation may cause a problem, just as much as a poor understanding of the aggressor clause in the FL SYG seems to have caused several (four that I know of) controversial cases where an aggressor apparently failed in their duty to retreat.

To most of us, having to retreat within or from one's own home, which I believe to be a more recent development, seems ridiculous. Fortunately, that requirement is going away, either though legislative or appellate action, in most jurisdictions.
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Agreed. The concept that an intruder in your house can be met with force goes back to biblical law as far as I know.

However, the requirement to produce evidence of immediate necessity remains with us, and requirement or no, an attempt to retreat, if the opportunity presents itself, can serve one well both tactically and legally.
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Sound advice, of course.

Thanks for the response.
 
So, there doesn't seem to be even anecdotal evidence of duty to retreat causing an actual problem?
 
So, there doesn't seem to be even anecdotal evidence of duty to retreat causing an actual problem?
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I guess that depends on how much info you can glean from interviewing homicides.

I mean, think about it. I'm armed, I'm under attack in my home, I retreat, I get shot, my killer steals my gun and leaves, and somebody finds my body.

Kinda tough for detectives to tell what exactly happened.

Only two people ever did know what happened. Half of them can't testify, and the other half disappeared.
 
That assumes that all crimes are witlessness and that all victims die.
 
I imagine LOTS of people have faced a lot of fear, and a lot of expense for legal fees.

Others have surely faced financial ruin and/or wrongful conviction and imprisonment for actions that were probably morally and legally permissible.

Do they go around talking about it on Internet forums after it all goes away? I don't know.

But I suspect it's one of those uncounted and probably mostly unknowable quantities.

A small number, yes – unless it's you. Then it's 100%.
 
I'm sure that there are cases out there, but they may prove difficult to find, just because of how cases have traditionally been reported. For example, if you're looking for caselaw on cases "where the duty to retreat has led to injury to, or the death of, the victim," the shooter has to be caught, charged, tried, appeal, and the duty to retreat has to be relevant enough to the appellate court's decision to warrant discussion. Then, after all of that, the appellate court has to designate it for publication. If any one of those fail, you're not going to have case law. If you're just looking for examples, you may find them if you run enough internet searches, but you may have trouble verifying them.

As another example, if you're looking for cases "where the duty to retreat has turned a valid SD shooting into a man wrongfully charged," then the (SD) shooter has to be charged, tried, convicted, and appeal on the issue of duty to retreat. If the shooter wins at trial, no appeal. If the shooter takes a plea bargain, no appeal.

I'm aware of a couple of Arkansas cases that at least discuss the duty to retreat, but I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for: examples? Or case law?
 
Roberta Shaffer

I think that's the most famous case of the pernicious effect of a DTR in the home.

COMMONWEALTH vs. ROBERTA E. SHAFFER, 367 Mass. 508

The details are unbelievable. In the outcry that followed her conviction, MA passed a Castle Law, and Ms. Shaffer received a pardon.

It would be hard to find cases of "attempted compliance causing serious injury or death"; for example, deceased victims of criminal violence can't tell you they were trying to retreat because of their perceived legal duty to do so, and therefore were killed.
 
So, there doesn't seem to be even anecdotal evidence of duty to retreat causing an actual problem?
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Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence.

Again, see reply #11 above.

How many cases in which someone finds the victim of a homicide are instances in which the duty to retreat allowed the killer to prevail and the victim to be killed?

The only ones who know are the ones who were killed and the ones who did the killing. And they aren't talking.

My own guess would be that the number is greater than zero. How much greater than zero? I don't know. Can anyone know, except maybe God?
 
Colonel said:
Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence.
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I never said otherwise. But there does seem to be an absence.

I was hoping that we had some folks with knowledge of such incidents.
 
Loosedhorse said:
I think that's the most famous case of the pernicious effect of a DTR in the home.

COMMONWEALTH vs. ROBERTA E. SHAFFER, 367 Mass. 508

The details are unbelievable. In the outcry that followed her conviction, MA passed a Castle Law, and Ms. Shaffer received a pardon.

It would be hard to find cases of "attempted compliance causing serious injury or death"; for example, deceased victims of criminal violence can't tell you they were trying to retreat because of their perceived legal duty to do so, and therefore were killed.
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Thanks Loosedhorse.
 
STATE OF OREGON v. LEONARD CONTRERAS SANDOVAL

Sandoval had plead self-defense. The trial judge had instructed the jury that they could not bring that verdict unless they found that the defendant had been unable to retreat. Sandoval was convicted.

The appeals court upheld the conviction. The state supreme court overturned the conviction because Oregon statutes contained no retreat requirement.

There was an earlier case (Oregon v. Charles) which also touched on "duty to retreat". The state supreme court found against Charles.

The justices who decided the Sandoval wrote that the previous decision was odd and did not look at the wording of state statutes. In other words, Oregon statutes had never contained a duty to retreat.
 
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