Someone told me that I can kill under Self defence. Is it true?
You have to be very careful as you have been told to jump into an ocean without any knowledge of its deepness. Under self defence, you don’t aim at killing anyone who assaults you. For example, how can you kill a man who assaults you by throwing a Lacasera bottle at you and put up a claim that you kill him while defending yourself? Such person will be guilty of murder.
For self defence to hold, some conditions must be fulfilled:
- Someone must have assaulted you unlawfully
- You must not have provoked the assault
- There must be a reasonable apprehension of death or grievous bodily harm which you are defending. It is court that will decide the reasonable test, the strength between you and the person attacking you
- The force you used in repelling the attack must be reasonable and proportionate to the force used by the attacker when death occurs. For example, a robber is stabbing you, you are struggling with him and the knife stabs him where death occurs is different from a man slaps you and you hit him with a big stone. If you had intention of killing another and you carried it out, self defence or defence of another will not avail you as you will be guilty of murder.
Our advice is that you kindly stay out of trouble as self defence killing is very technical and the conditions above are at the discretion of the court to decide not you the accused.
