Because in this set of facts, there’s not even a scintilla of evidence put forth by the defense to support the claim of self-defense. The judge is – and the jury are – entitled, as a matter of law, to disregard the fantastical claim that a paraplegic can breath fire like a dragon. So the first step of the process – where the defense raises self-defense – fails to happen.
Interesting procedural question. But it will muddy up the thread to answer it. What would happen if the judge allowed the dragon/fire self-defense claim to go forward?
If that happened, and the prosecution still failed to address it, then presumably the same judge would have to rule that the prosecution failed to make a legally sufficient case, since he obviously believes that, as a matter of law, fire dragon breath is possible. So he’d presumably direct an acquittal.
The prosecution could appeal, and on appeal argue that the judge’s ruling was an abuse of discretion, a claim for which I think they’d find ready support in any appellate forum. If the jury had already returned a guilty verdict, the appellate court would reinstate it.
What the prosecution should do at that moment the judge decides the dragon breath issue against them is ask leave for an interlocutory appeal.
I say that to emphasize that one person’s “obviously,” may not be the next person’s…an observation especially useful in this thread, I think, where people arguing both sides have used the word in describing opposite conclusions.
But a judge can find that certain testimony – or, indeed, any evidence – is unreliable as a matter of law.
I think the phrase “as a matter of law” is confusing to some readers here. What it means: normally, the jury is the finder of fact. They hear evidence and decide what happened. But the judge can say that the law requires a particular conclusion. Sometimes this is a matter of policy, expressed by the legislature; the jury may think that it’s relevant that a rape victim had a rich and varied sex life prior to her attack, but the law mandates that this fact is of no relevance, so “as a matter of law,” that’s not relevant.
And sometimes, as with the claim that a man can breath deadly fire, the claim runs so utterly counter to our understanding of the physical world that we’d say that no reasonable person could ever decide it was true. That takes it out of the hands of the jury and allows the judge to say that this particular witness statement is of no relevance whatsoever, because it’s so obviously false that no one, no reasonable finder of fact, could ever credit it as being accurate.
This kind of finding is a “nuclear option.” It’s not used for statements that are “obviously” false because, c’mon, we can just SEE the guy is lying. That’s the province of the jury. It’s reserved for statements for which we can confidently say that NO reasonable listener could find it true.
Thankyou. It appears I was wrong, and that in that hypothetical, the accused would not have grounds for an appeal.
So, my understanding now is that any claim by a defendant that they killed in self defence that could possibly be believed by a reasonable listener requires the prosecution to not just disprove that specific statement, but all reasonably believable scenarios where it was self defence. (In Florida, obviously).
It’s true that the general concept of reasonable doubt is that the evidence must eliminate all reasonable scenarios except those that support guilt.
So, yes, the prosecution must disprove all reasonable self-defense scenarios – but the “reasonable” calculation includes the totality of evidence adduced at trial. That is, the prosecution doesn’t have to disprove that the victim threatened to detonate a grenade if no grenade was ever in evidence.
So, in Stoid’s hypotheticals, if there’s no knife in the bedroom, and no genetic mutation in the quadriplegic’s throat that means he can breathe fire, then the prosecution can point this out to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it wasn’t self defence (assuming that the evidence doesn’t suggest any other reasonable self defence scenarios)?
Pretend I am a juror and give me the instruction that conveys to me this new element that must be disproved, (vs the crime that must be proved) from the text.
If it is not proven beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant was not justified in using deadly force, then they must find him not guilty.
If self defence is not introduced, then they are not instructed to consider whether the killing was justified.
Therefore, when it is introduced, there is an additional thing that the prosecution have to prove beyond reasonable doubt, in addition to the rest of the elements of the crime. If your confusion is because they don’t explicitly refer to it as an “element”, well, it’s been explained t you enough times by experts, as well as amateurs.
I’m not sure why you’ve listed the elements for first degree murder, as they have nothing to do with this case. That level of confusion does rather sum up how little you understand, though.
Stoid, if you think I’m wrong, please explain how the prosecution can prove beyond reasonable doubt that the killing was not justified without proving beyond reasonable doubt that it was not a killing in legitimate self defence. And, if your argument is along the lines that a justified killing cannot be a criminal act, or an unlawful killing with a depraved mind, then explain why the Florida legislature, along with most other jurisdictions, added specific laws governing self defence.
Before I answer your request, I should ask you something: how do you imagine jury instructions work?
I ask because your question suggests that you picture that the judge hands those sheets to the jurors, or something.
So… in an actual trial, what do you picture happens to convey instructions to the jury, and where do those instructions come from – as specifically as possible?
A. The defendants statement to police is evidence.
B. The defendant’s burden of proof is merely to produce any evidence at all, even if its just his statement to police, that he feared for his life and acted from that fear. And his “prize” for meeting that burden an instruction to the jury to consider the possibility that he did act from self-defense. In this case, change Joe’s assertion to “Victor could throw knives with his mouth and he had one in his mouth so i had to kill him.”
C. In the absence of any suggestion of truth to the idea that the defendant acted from self-defense, the jury is entitled to reject it. After seeing the evidence that Joe had written in his journal about his plans to murder Victor, even joe producing video evidence of Victors mouth knifing skills would matter to them, since joe intended to kill victorto start with.
There would be no “disproving” of self defense, merely proving first degree murder, which has the same effect. No distinction.
Sure – and that’s a significant change. Unlike breathing fire, the claim that someone could throw knives with their mouth isn’t incredible as a matter of law, although it’s pretty unlikely. So if the accused made that claim, the prosecution would have to address it in some way. There would need to be something on the record that would entitle the jury to reject that claim. It wouldn’t be difficult - the absence of a knife found at the scene, for example, with such absence appearing affirmatively in the record, should do the trick just fine.
You’re describing the more classic application of self-defense, an affirmative defense where the accused bears the burden of persuading the jury by preponderance of the evidence that self-defense was used.
I understand the confusion – it’s the variety of self-defense we all grew up hearing, immortalized in countless works of fiction and lots of real-life trials.
But the plain and simple truth is that, despite that being the law in many states, it’s not the law in Florida.
In fact, maybe that’s a good thought experiment to help illustrate the point. Stoid: do you believe Florida’s self-defense law differs materially from the law in other states? If you think it does, can you describe how? Or would you say that self-defense is self-defense, no matter where you go?
No, in the absence of any reasonable possibility that it could have happened that way, the jury is entitled to reject it. If the defendant claims it happened that way, and that claim meets the standard of reasonable possibility, merely disbelieving the defendant doesn’t prove his guilt. There is, in that situation, reason to doubt whether or not it was self defence, so he, according to your cite, must be found not guilty.
The jury is explicitly instructed not to act the way you claim they should, that is to say, they may not assume that proof that it would be murder if it was not self defence is proof that it was not self defence. Here is the quote from your cite -
which makes explicit that they may only consider the other elements of the charge if they are convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the killing was not justified.
Why should we divert? My request is entirely reasonable and fair. You have asserted repeatedly that the Brown case language (" the money quote ") is proof that an actual separate and distinct burden on the prosecution exists, that of “disproving” self defense.
Even now, after I have introduced the true source of “the money quote” Bolin, which itself specifically rejects any such idea, particularly as a special instruction to the jury, and *specifically rejects anything beyond the standard instruction regarding proof of guilt as being required, * you still go so far as to assert that it is part of the jury instructions when self defense is raised to tell them to make sure they consider the new element that the state must disprove.
Florida’s statutes, case law and jury instructions are all unusually easy to access, if it is a fact, you should have no problem pointing to it, especially since we aren’t talking about complex lawyers-only matters that mere mortals cannot hope to fathom, but the issues which the mere more mortals known as jurors must be made to clearly understand.
If you plan to use this attempted diversion to argue that the standard jury instructions for considering self defense are just suggestions from which extensive and elaborate alternate instructions are routinely built, and thats where the real instructions, including the directive regarding the disproving of self defense will be found, go for it, and show some evidence for it, since the case law with the money quote says no, sorry, dont think so.
Without addressing the merits of anything posited as to jury instructions in this case, standard jury instructions are a model for the appropriate instructions depending on the evidence. Both sides often try to make them more specific and complicated. The defense wants them complicated as, if the instructions are incorrect or confusing, there is a better reason for appeal. It can play that way for the other side too.
This is true in both civil and criminal trials. Entire cases with written opinions involve the precise wording of jury instructions.
Yes, Stoid – that’s exactly the case. Proposed jury instructions, modeled from the standard jury instructions, are in fact routinely submitted by each side. There is some wrangling and negotiation about what they should say in each case, the judge ultimately approves a version, and then they go to the jury. It’s true that the majority of cases use the standard jury instructions; it’s NOT true that this is never a matter of debate.
I find it amazing that you don’t know that, and yet remain confident that you have correctly discerned the actual language of jury instructions in all circumstances.
I shouldn’t, perhaps, because no less than the Florida District Court of Appeals (1st) made that same claim in a case called State v. Bryan. They said, “…any substantial deviation from use of these instructions [Standard Jury Instructions] will almost always end in error on the part of the trial court.”
So you’re in good company.
But the better company is mine (shared herein with the Florida Supreme Court as they overruled the lower court) :
I feel frustrated because it’s apparent that there’s a good understand of legal issues when they are ones that appear on television – people seem to grasp suppression of evidence and Fifth Amendment assertion reasonably well. But where television fails to find dramatic footholds – and believe me that a couple days of sending proposed jury instructions back and forth between the judge and prosecutors is many things NOT dramatic – then the feeling seems to be that the law is what’s easily readable on the Internet, and no lawyer’s gonna tell me different!
Both BottledBlondeJeanie and I have criminal law experience. We’re both saying that this is true. Against that, you seem to feel that what you can discern from links ought to trump it. But how likely is that? If that were so, it would seem someone could become a criminal defense lawyer in six weeks of concentrated study. But … that’s not the way it is.
