It's always nice to start these criminal defense articles with an example, so let's just go ahead and do that here.
Let's say you are at a bar, minding your own business with your wife or girlfriend, and throughout the night there is a guy that just keeps mean mugging you.
All night he is staring at you, he's walked by a couple of times and "accidentally" brushed into you, and you're pretty sure he's eyeballing your wife.
As the night goes on and more and more beers are consumed, it becomes apparent that this guy is not going to leave until he starts a fight with you.
But you aren't really one to fight.
Never have been.
But this guy just won't back off.
So, toward the end of the night, after the sixth "accidental" bump, you tell him where he needs to go and what he needs to do and what you'll do to him if he doesn't follow your recommendations.
Upon hearing this, the guy punches you in the face, startling you but certainly not taking you out.
In the heat of things, and wanting to end this quickly, you pick up a chair and hit him over the head with it, knocking him out.
When the cops show up, you tell them what happened and explain you were defending yourself.
And then you get charged with assault and dragged into jail.
So, will a self-defense defense hold up in this case? Before I get too far into it, let me preface this with a little warning.
I know a lot about criminal law and criminal lawyers, but I don't know it all.
This post is primarily based on Washington State law (let's set the fight in Seattle to make it easier).
What that means is, while many of the principles of this article will probably apply to your state, some might not.
Because of that, it is probably wise to consult a criminal defense attorney in your state before you decide it is okay to go around whacking guys in the head with chairs.
To act in self-defense, generally, all one needs is a reasonable belief that he or she is about to be injured and uses no more force than is necessary to stop that injury from occurring.
To dig into this a little bit further, what this means is that, first, a reasonable person, looking from the outside in, should be able to definitively state that they would have believed they were about to be injured if they were in the same facts under the same circumstances.
Second, it means that even if that belief of injury exists, the person used only that force that is necessary to stop the injury from occurring, and nothing more.
In the example above, the guy probably has a pretty good argument for self-defense.
First, the guy punched him in the face with little to no provocation.
That alone is probably enough to place one under the belief that they are about to be injured.
Once that threshold is met, then the person is justified in using enough force to stop the injury from occurring.
In this case, then, was hitting the guy over the head with a chair too much? If I were the guy's criminal defense attorney, I would argue that the chair was the precise amount of force to be used, for two reasons: first, it stopped the guy from attacking him any further; and second (as far as we know) it didn't cause any substantial damage.
There is nothing in the law that says you have to return force with an equality of force that is being presented to you.
What I mean is, the guy wouldn't necessarily get in trouble because he didn't just try to hit him back.
When faced with injury, you have the ability to protect yourself from that injury, which means doing whatever is necessary to not only return the chance of injury given but to stop the injury from occurring in the future.
I guess in the end if you are looking to use a self-defense defense in a criminal assault case, you are probably looking for trouble anyway.
Just remember that you can only do what is necessary to subdue the harm.
So, in the example above, hitting the guy with the chair again when he was knocked out just for fun would definitely have crossed the line.