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Deadly force is justified when the "actor REASONABLY believes that their life or the life of another are in imminent danger of great bodily harm or death" The belief must be reasonable and objective, not subjective. It is reasonable to believe a puncture from a knife is a valid fatal threat but unreasonable to believe a punch in the stomach is likely to be lethal.
Also note that the threat must be imminent, that means that it is about to happen. Someone who threatens to go home and get a gun and come back in an hour is a lethal threat but is not imminent. A subject with a baseball bat 15 feet away coming at you to strike you in the head is an imminent threat. Imminent is seconds away and you do not have to wait for the attack to be in progress. We say that there are "no 2nd place winners in a gunfight" and in a tie you lose! If someone begins to point a gun in your direction with the intent of shooting you this is an imminent action. You do not have to wait until the threat fires off the first round before you can take action, this may be too late.
The threat must be a "deadly threat" or threat of "Great Bodily Harm" to be justified to use deadly force. Great Bodily Harm is defined as the permanent or protracted (long term) loss of any bodily member or organ, the use of any bodily member or organ, severe disfigurement or injury that results in a "substantial risk of death" (risk lower than High probability but greater than a moderate risk). A concussion, broken nose, lose of a tooth, or a temporary loss of vision, hearing or consciousness would not qualify as Great Bodily Harm. Also you may protect property with the use of force but you must never use deadly force unless life is in jeopardy of Great Bodily harm or death!
As use of force expert, Attorney Andrew Branca, states, the actor will need to support five elements of self defense to be justified: 1) innocence 2) Imminence 3) Proportionality 4) Avoidance 5) Reasonableness for legal justification. The theory of preclusion also applies, were all other options short of deadly force considered, if no harm would result to one's safety but acting alternatively. Then if deadly force is justified we use it to STOP the threat, you do not shoot to kill, you shoot to stop. Once the threat is neutralized you continuation of deadly force must immediately cease. Sometimes theis may not be until the deadly threat actor is in fact dead but this is not always the case.
In the next blog post we will discuss the details of assessing the situation and quickly analyzing whther or not deadly force is warranted.
