Bill,
I'm sure you know that there is the black letter law and there is the law of precedent or case lawa/common law. They go hand in hand in most of the US; one is read through the lens of the other. The law says "It is illegal to assault or batter someone, and anyone who does this is punished by..." Common law tells us what actions start to add up to a battery or assault, or, in the topic at hand, what actions justify it or make it excusable. There may not be an actual black letter law saying "X justifies Y"; that's why some of the Stand Your Ground laws got passed -- to address that concern.
Correct. However, and I think this is the important part, people (by which I mean the common everyday man in the street) hear that a 130 pound young man was killed by a 260 pound older man who claims he was in reasonable fear of his life from the smaller and younger man, and they scoff, without understanding, that 'disparity of force' laws mean that the larger man could not have reasonably acted in self-defense. They then proceed to argue as if such things are actual law instead of arguments made pro-and-con in a court of law. Because 'disparity of force' is NOT law, there is no black or white to it; it's all down to argument in court. Therefore, their opinion that size maketh the reasonable man, is incorrect in the extreme.
We don't have a legal system that requires everything to be written out and spelled out -- and that's a semi-deliberate choice made. We have leeway built into the system to allow judges, prosecutors, and even cops to try to make sure that there is actually some justice in the system, rather than a purely legalistic approach.
Mmmm, but to quote Charles Dickens' "Mr. Bumble,"
"The law, sir, is an ***." It is not, to be sure, intended to be either fair or reasonable. It is what it is and it says what it says. The Supreme Court, when called upon to do so and it chooses to grant cert, will look to both the intent of Congress when it was passed, or to the Constitution if the question is Constitional in nature, to determine what exactly the law means.
However, minus a great deal of legal sturm und drang, if a law is passed that says jaywalking is illegal on Thursdays, then it is illegal on Thursdays and NOT on Wednesdays. That is to say, anything which is not prohibited is permitted in our legal system. And this is as it should be in my opinion.
Therefore, when a self-defense law says that a person may defend themselves with deadly force if a reasonable person would fear for their life or imminent great bodily harm, that is what it says. There's nothing in it about relative sizes of the people involved, or their ability to defend themselves, etc. All of that is for a court to decide if it gets to that point. The defense and prosecution will argue opposite sides, the judge or jury will decide if 'reasonable' was what happened. But again, the legal standard is 'reasonable' and not 'disparity of force'.
I doubt that there is a specific black letter law breakdown of the affirmative defense of self-defense, in any state. (Maybe Louisiana; as I understand it, they're a Napoleonic Code state.) Instead, there are volumes of case law where judges at many levels in the system have weighed in, and where juries have accepted the defense. That's the best you're likely to get.
No. Juries are not bound by case law (precedent). Juries receive instructions and decided the facts of the case in question unless there is a directed verdict by the judge. Certainly the attorneys involved will cite previous cases as precedent and attempt to persuade jurors that a particular previous finding or ruling by a court establishes precedent for or against the defendant. Juries are free to ignore that.
What *can* happen if a jury disregards a clear precedent is that the case gets overturned on appeal, where arguments of case law matter. I'll grant you that.
I don't think anyone in this thread, including me, thinks that disparity of force would not be considered in a criminal trial of someone who invoked the right to use of deadly force in self-defense; I am sure it would be if the circumstances appear that there was one. I am arguing - and apparently not making myself sufficiently clear - that 'disparity of force' does not exist as a self-defense statute anywhere that I am aware of.
Therefore quoting it as if it were a point of law is incorrect.
