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Here is the example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALNIPwh8I54 (a little violent but not too much)

Given the answers to Are you allowed to strike a person if they say you can? and Does anyone know if this counts as assault? it sounds in most situations hitting a person is always illegal (unless they attack you first).

What about this one? If the person threatens violence, can you act preemptivley? Also, technically speaking in the video he never explicitly threatened violence, just acted in such a way that strongly implied it (getting up in people's faces and taking shirt off). Could this be used in his defense?

Community
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Jankin
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3 Answers3

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You can use physical force if necessary to defend yourself from imminent bodily harm. If you reasonably believe that physical force is required to prevent unlawful injury to you (in some cases, other people, your property, or even the property of others), it is a defense that you used only as much force as was required to eliminate the immediate threat.

What ultimately matters is what the court will believe a reasonable person would have believed and how a reasonable person would have acted on those beliefs. Sarcastically goading someone into punching? Probably not enough, unless the taunting is pretty egregious. Acting in a physically menacing and aggressive manner (taking off shirt, getting in your face)... I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but the proper response to that behavior is to commence the beat down.

Patrick87
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In general: Yes.

For example, German law defines "legitimate self-defense" (Notwehr) as:

Notwehr ist die Verteidigung, die erforderlich ist, um einen gegenwärtigen rechtswidrigen Angriff von sich oder einem anderen abzuwenden.

§32 Strafgesetzbuch

Translation:

Legitimate self-defense is the defense required to avert a present, illegal attack from oneself or someone else.

In the legal literature it is accepted that the term "present attack" includes attacks that are immiment, but have not yet begun.

So if you could reasonably believe that someone was about to start an attack, you could preempt it. However, mere threats of violence are not necessarily sufficient - the whole situation must make it seem likely that the threats are to be taken seriously.

In addition to that, you are required to use only as much force as necessary to avert the attack. For example, if you are significantly stronger than your adversary, a preemptive attack is probably less likely to be accepted as self-defense, because you could have afforded to wait with little risk.

sleske
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Size of the aggressor is irrelevant. Anyone is capable of causing bodily harm or death with the use of a weapon, or everyday objects as weapons i.e. a candlestick. Even a minor is capable of such crimes i.e. Children bringing weapons to school, and officers using deadly force to stop the criminal from harming others.

James Shirley
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