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sundin13 on 15 May 2020
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JWeinCom said:
sundin13 said:

The point I am making about whether Arbery had a valid self-defense claim is not one which is meant to state whether the shooter was going to commit an illegal act. It is a statement regarding the fact that Arbery was not going to commit an illegal act. There is certainly an argument about whether the shooter would have reasonably believed that Arbery was going to commit an illegal act, but if Arbery did in fact commit an illegal act by not having a valid self-defense claim, then that would largely answer that question.

Does that make sense?

It makes insofar as I undersand what you're saying, but legally, it doesn't really make a difference.  

I don't think there is any reasonable doubt that the killer was responding to what was in his mind unlawful force, regardless of Arbery's state of mind.  There's no way any prosecutor can defeat the self defense claim on that ground.

The only way to argue against it is to argue that he cannot invoke the self-defense claim because either he was committing a felony or he was the aggressor.  I don't see how Arbery's state of mind changes that.  For either of those claims you'd have to establish that he was the aggressor or was engaged in a felony at the very latest when he left the car.

Remember that the bar for self defense is not whether an individual truly believed that they were in danger, or that they were met with unlawful force, but instead whether a reasonable person would believe that. Would a reasonable person believe that someone didn't have the right to self defense in this situation? Personally, if I were in that situation, I would expect that the person I was chasing may act in self defense. Recall that the shooter grabbed a gun before chasing the victim. That certainly implies that they thought that the victim might try to act in self-defense. They knew they were putting someone in a situation where they might feel they have to fight back.

I understand what you are saying, but I do think there is some relevant room to make determinations here and that was largely what I was getting at with my original post.

When we look at criminal code, there are certain natural questions that are brought up. Sometimes the answers to these questions may be obvious. You may believe it is obvious that the shooter had a reasonable belief that Arbery was acting unlawfully, but it is still a fact of the case which needs to be proven, and I don't think it is that black and white. Similarly, I think the answer to the other questions I posed in that original post are fairly obvious, but they still need to be proven in court.

Its like a series of conditions that need to be met. I'd say in this case there are roughly 10 of them that I've outlined so far. If all of the conditions are met, the individual is innocent. If not, the individual is guilty. As the prosecution, I wouldn't stake my case on refuting this point ("The shooter has a claim to self-defense because a reasonable person would believe that the victim was acting unlawfully in his use of force") however, it is still a relevant condition. The others that you've highlighted are much more likely to be pivotal to the case though.