Reasonable Force Self Defence

The guy who got stabbed got what he deserved. If you threaten to kill and then start fighting then IMO it should be assumed that the person is intending to kill and so all means should be allowed to be used to stop him, preferably without killing him but if its a choice of him or you, then he deserves what happened to him.

As for getting arrested, well the police are just doing their job, and would be silly for them not to arrest the guy. If he should go to jail though, well I dont see what he did as being anything other than self defence and the defence of his son when his life is in danger.
 
Pestilence said:
However morally or sheer humanly justified what this man has done is, he has broken the law.
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So much for innocent until proven guilty. People considerably underestimate the force needed to take someone down who is on drugs in a fight, alcohol and adrenaline dumb pain down considerably, in all likelyhood it would have required multiple stab wounds to take him out. In many incidents police have shot criminals in the abdomen only for them to continue attacking them as if nothing had happened, I'm sure we've all heard of incidents where dogs require multiple bullets to take them out, the same applies to humans in these situations. You continue stabbing the person until the threat is eliminated, you can't wait for the wound to take effect in a life or death situation. To nearly kill him was necessary to prevent his son from being killed, it falls under both the self defence and necessity defences.
 
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If 5 people were kicking in someone innocent and someone I knew close, like family of friends, I'd do what I could to help them which would be being offensive with my body.
Although that be said, if there was a baseball bat or similar that happened to be on the way, I'd be tempted to pick it up.

But a knife wouldn't be on the list of choice weapons, you could kill someone through blunt for to the head so...you have to be careful not to hit them too hard you cause permanent damage and too little they turn around and **** you back.

Tricky and unfair world tbh, those youths should get the equal done to them.
(Also if I was omnipotent and saw they kept doing things like this, I would only bat an eyelid to watch them vanish into thin air)

Lastly, if someone threatened to kill me and proceded to act in a manner that he was going to, I don't see what's wrong at all that I defend myself the best I can and if it involved them being seriously mamed to the point of death, well who's anyone to say in the heat of the moment you think about how hard or not to hit someone whilst grasping at the nearest object to take down your foe.

All it could take is one flailing arm hitting somewhere certain or rolling on the floor to snap someones something and they could die.
 
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Burnsy2023 said:
I doubt that. If it went to court I don't think someone could really justify stabbing an unarmed youth. That's not to say that I agree with that mind.
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In a 1-on-1 encounter for sure, but if there were 4-5 attackers then any self-defense expert will agree that an armed attack is the only possible way to even the odds. I've seen 4th degree black belts in Taekwondo and karate taken on 3-5 opponents - it is impressive but not good enough to save you life in a street fight.

If the descriptions true then I would err on the side of the father and believe what he did to be understandable and fair. Perhaps one stab would be better, but in the situation it is not easy to observe the effects of single stab wound with a letter opener. When defending against multiple opponents you have to be ruthless and efficient You have to take them out as quickly and completely as possible.
 
hope he gets off, little ******* like this should be round up and shot anyway, they do nothing for society.

the way i see it is his son's gone out to ask them to quit it, his head ends up being kicked around like a football, dad comes out, grabs the nearest thing (5v1, unless you're a boxer, ex-military or trained in some regard to bear fist fighting (or mike vallely :D) anyone would grab a weapon with those odds) to hand, the youths could have run off but they were so fuelled by alcohol and stupidity that they decide it's a good idea to get a two for one and one of them ends up coming off worse for wear? **** 'em, they deserved it and i'd think nothing more of doing the same

if he gets charged i doubt any jury in the land would convict him, i certainly wouldn't.
 
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The Craig said:
So he stabbed a teenager 5 times as "Reasonable defence" ?
A knife isn't used for defence, and the man should be charged (even though the 5 guys probably deserved it, it doesn't make it right).
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How was he supposed to know that the 5 youths didn't have knives themselves.

In the heat of the moment with a loved one being kicked possibly to death, I would do the same, although I would only grab a knife as a last resort. A good rock, poking stick, or iron bar would be first from the defence rack :)

Burnsy2023 said:
I agree with this. Going out with a sharp implement isn't defensive. It's offensive and he must have known someone could have got killed. I'm sorry but I don't think that's reasonable, especially when his life wasn't in immediate danger.
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It is a great defensive weapon, but for it to be this they would need to run at him and impale themselves ;)
 
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I'm pretty sure there's a precedent that the levels of self defence that are deemed "reasonable" are considerably lower when it's property at risk as opposed to a person.
 
scorza said:
Would you be confident if you were him going to trial and jury consisted of Burnsy, Jokester, JBuk, Richie and Tefal?
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I wouldn't convict him :confused: at no point have I said this guy should be charged.

You still seem to be missing the point entirely, I only have the luxury of knowing the facts as established by a thorough police investigation which in turn allows me to be happy to say that if I was on the jury I wouldn't find him guilty (at least by taking the the newspaper article at face value).
 
Jokester said:
One of them was stabbed 5 times :o
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....while trying to kill his son....

RDM said:
So far the story we are being given is:

5 guys vandalising van. Son goes out to stop them, they start beating him up. Step father comes out (with weapon) and attempts to rescue son from the beating. Stabs one of the guys 5 times.

If the above is true then I don't see any real issue with what the guy did (1 v 5 has already proven a bad idea so using a weapon would seem reasonable) and stabbing someone 5 times can be put down to adrenaline and we have no idea if which of those stabs was enough to incapacitate the person.

Someone ended up in hospital with stab wounds so I think the police were right to arrest him. It allows them to question him in a controlled environment with legal representation present, protecting both him and them.

I do not think charges should be brought against him or he should go to court, but then I don't know the full facts.
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Agreed.

Morba said:
you do not take a weapon to defend yourself. you take a weapon to get involved in an incident.
if your mind was on defence, you would stay inside, as behind a locked door you are more safe.

he was wrong to take the knife, more wrong to go back and get it.

self defence with a knife - you are using a knife in a legal way, you are attacked, you strike the person with the hand that is holding the knife.

attacking someone with a knife - going out to meet a threat with knife in hand, ready to use it.

there was no self defence in this mans mind imo.
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His son was getting kicked in the head by 5 people! what on earth would you do? Stand there and try to to talk them out of it?

wesley said:
if i am in the jury in this trial, i would never find him guilty.
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Lets hope you and I get jury service for this one? ;)
 
Jokester said:
I wouldn't convict him :confused: at no point have I said this guy should be charged.

You still seem to be missing the point entirely, I only have the luxury of knowing the facts as established by a thorough police investigation which in turn allows me to be happy to say that if I was on the jury I wouldn't find him guilty (at least by taking the the newspaper article at face value).
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Since you're happy for him to be arrested you must suspect him of attempted murder. Given the facts presented to us in the article that suspicion is completely unfounded.
 
scorza said:
Since you're happy for him to be arrested you must suspect him of attempted murder. Given the facts presented to us in the article that suspicion is completely unfounded.
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It's all part of the due process of establishing what actually happened and not just accepting what 1 person says happened. It's not that complicated, becuase the "facts" in the article only become apparent afterwards (and remember the article is based purely on his version of events and so could be skewed in his favour). At the moment we are still accepting his version of events of the truth, in reality it could be that they actually went out to beat them up for vandalising their van, where an attempted murder charge is appropriate. This needs to be established by the police and won't take them 5minutes at the scene of a crime.
 
Jokester said:
It's all part of the due process of establishing what actually happened and not just accepting what 1 person says happened. It's not that complicated, becuase the "facts" in the article only become apparent afterwards (and remember the article is based purely on his version of events and so could be skewed in his favour). At the moment we are still accepting his version of events of the truth, in reality it could be that they actually went out to beat them up for vandalising their van, where an attempted murder charge is appropriate. This needs to be established by the police and won't take them 5minutes at the scene of a crime.
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Yeah whatever. Let's just hope you never find yourself arrested for attempted murder when trying to defend your family, I bet you'll be slightly less happy about the correct procedure treating you like a criminal then.
 
scorza said:
Yeah whatever. Let's just hope you never find yourself arrested for attempted murder when trying to defend your family, I bet you'll be slightly less happy about the correct procedure treating you like a criminal then.
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Yes, it's not a pleasant experience I would guess, but we can't leave the door open to people taking the law into their own hands if we know that the police will just blindly accept the homeowners version of events.
 
Jokester said:
Yes, it's not a pleasant experience I would guess, but we can't leave the door open to people taking the law into their own hands if we know that the police will just blindly accept the homeowners version of events.
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He didn't take the law into his own hands. The actions he took were totally legal and entirely morally justifiable.
 
Jokester said:
It's all part of the due process of establishing what actually happened and not just accepting what 1 person says happened.
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Surely the due process is to question the person, under caution perhaps. Arresting someone means you have some evidence that the person may have committed the crime you are questioning him about.
 
Well I thought of it along these lines:

Man is alerted to his step son being beaten to death by his wife....sorry but attacking the head on the ground can easily result in this.

Man decides in an effort to "scare" off the youths picks up his letter opener in the hall and goes outside to do so.

Unfortunately said man is confronted and attacked by the youths despite the fact he is holding a weapon.

During the attack he lashes out in self-defence and (un)fortunately one of the youths finds himself stabbed 5 times.

I read it as pure self defence and yes someone was stabbed but that was after the man was attacked himself from trying to prevent his step son being beaten to death. His attempt which would have been to scare them off I'm sure was clearly failed and he was attacked himself.

Honestly I'd hate to see him go down for this and in all honesty it would have made no sense for him to go out unarmed in any sense as without the knife I'm convinced he would have found himself in a very similar situation to which his step son was in i.e being beaten to a bloody pulp.
 
rypt said:
Surely the due process is to question the person, under caution perhaps. Arresting someone means you have some evidence that the person may have committed the crime you are questioning him about.
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If one of them hadn't been stabbed five times then I agree being arrested for attempted murder is over the top. But stabbing someone 5 times is very serious, you only have to look at this thread to see that a lot of people don't believe that is reasonable from the point of view of self defence.
 
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