It appears that in most jurisdictions, defendants in clear or typical self-defense (SD) cases are not arrested by the police, not charged by the district attorney, not true billed by a grand jury, nor sent to trial.
So SD news reports and case law are based on unclear, unusual cases, where the defender is arrested or otherwise adjudicated by the criminal and/or civil justice system (
unlike the 18 yr old young woman and mother in Oklahoma).
What we hear about are the SD cases that went wrong. While it is probably a good idea to be aware of what can go wrong, that seems to ignore all the cases that went right, which is what good strategy ought to be based on.
In a self-defense situation where a "reasonable person" would be in fear of imminent death or greivous bodily harm from a person perceived to have the ability and opportunity to put life or limb in jeopardy
right now, use of a deadly weapon is usually justifiable. Theoretically, if lethal force is justified (shoot-to-kill), then non-lethal use of a deadly should also be justified: verbal threat, brandishing, warning shot, shoot-to-wound.
The well-known 1994 National Self Defense Survey NSDS focussed on defensive gun use questions; ten prior national surveys and the subsequent NSPOF survey included DGU questions, but within larger surveys on multiple subjects, and found 764,000 to 4,700,000 DGU per year. The majority of DGU did not involve firing the gun and most firings were not woundings or killings.
Statisically, most DGU end up brandishment, warning shots, misses or non-lethal wounding, and they do not end up in either criminal or civil court. However, in criminal or civil court deliberate less-than-lethal use of a deadly weapon by verbal threat, brandishing, warning shot, shoot-to-wound has been used to contest whether the person claiming self-defense was truly in fear of loss of life or limb.
Some bad defensive shooting cases like the Peairs-Hattori or Fish cases are worth pondering. The Hattori-Peairs shooting is mentioned in the first 1 or 2 pages in both the John Lott & David Mustard 1997 "Crime, Deterrence and Right-To-Carry Concealed Handguns" article and the Lott 1998
More Guns, Less Crime book as an example of how self-defense can go wrong.
College exchange student Hattori and companions had been seeking a Halloween night party and approached the wrong address; Peairs' wife panicked when they came to the door and Peairs armed himself and opened the garage door. The rest is tragedy.
Peairs was found not guilty in criminal court. Apparently the
criminal court felt that a "reasonable" person in that situation would have been in fear of death or harm from a trespasser who advanced after being told to "Freeze". At the
civil trial, a big point was made that Peairs' gun was "unusual" (a magnum with a laser sight) and not the sort of handgun usually kept in Louisiana homes for protection.
In the Fish case, at criminal trial the caliber and type of ammunition (10 mm hollowpoint) was painted as aggressive rather than defensive:
from Wikipedia article on "Stopping Power":
Since 2006, after the conviction of retired school teacher Harold Fish in Arizona for second degree murder during a self-defense shooting, some CCW holders in the United States have elected to switch from carrying hollow-point bullets, and especially 10mm Auto caliber weapons with perceived higher one-shot stopping power, to carrying smaller caliber weapons (Citation needed|date=March 2009).
Fish's conviction for killing a homeless man with a history of dangerous violent behavior and mental instability who attacked Fish while hiking on a remote trail, was obtained through a jury trial by stressing that Fish overreacted, through choosing to use the increased stopping power of 10 mm hollow point bullets.
State law in Arizona has subsequently been changed, such that the state now has the burden to prove that a self defense shooting was not in self defense, whereas the burden previously, before the Fish incident, was that the shooter on trial had to prove that the shooting was in fact, done in self defense.
The conviction has since been thrown out by the Arizona Court of Appeals. CCW training classes often advise the use of bullets that are identical to those used by local police, in type (FMJ or hollow point) and caliber, to prevent an overreaction prosecution.
refs
Michael Maresh, "Governor vetoes hope for Harold Fish", Payson Roundup, 6 Mar 2007 (dead link)
Larry Hendricks, "Trailside Shooter Guilty", Payson Roundup, 16 Jun 2006 (dead link)
from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stopping_power
