Critical legal issues in criminal justice Research Paper

Critical legal issues in criminal justice - Research Paper Example Legal regime permits individuals’ right to self-defense and justifies the employment of force in times of danger so that people may defend themselves from external harm and secure their lives and properties. Dictionaries define physical self-defense as the employment of physical force to counteract an immediate attack. Physical self-defense may be armed-defense or unarmed-defense. Individuals can use a wide variety of weapons as part of armed self-defense adhering to the policies of the concerned jurisdicti Unarmed self-defense involves different styles of martial arts. In many jurisdictions, law permits people the right of self-defensive killing. However, the law states that the employment of physical force in self-defense must be proportional to the fatality of the violence. In order to avoid the misuse of the self-defensive killing, the law ensures aggressors do not claim the right of self-defense. It is on the assumption that aggressors are responsible to the attack or fat al situation, and hence they do not have the right to claim self-defense. In addition, law considers the reasonableness of belief while evaluating the self-defense claim of a defendant. Explicitly, the use of physical force must be reasonable to justify the self-defense claim. What constitutes reasonable employment of force is usually uncertain, and hence the jury has the potential to determine whether or not the defendant’s act (use of force) was reasonable.... Wallie Howard, a federal agent working for the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the confidential informant Luther Gregory planned to arrest this drug racket through a buy-bust scheduled on 30th October 1990. However, their plans flawed as Davidson and his team had attempted to rob Gregory using firearms. During the process of assault, the gang broke Gregory’s wrist. In order to counter attack them Howard took his gun and shot off. At this time, Lawrence (one of the gang members) fired at agent Howard and killed him. As cited by the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit (1994), all the defendants were found guilty of charges alleged including narcotic conspiracy, murder, robbery, and international killing of a federal agent, and consequently all of them were sentenced to life imprisonment. During the course of trial, Lawrence argued that agent Howard would have killed him unless he had not shot him down. However, the court observed that the defendantsâ€℠¢ need to defend themselves emerged out of their own aggression. The court held that the person who commits robbery using deadly weapons and gets murdered by the targeted victim on the victim’s counter-attacks to defend may not obtain the benefit of self-defense. Based on this observation, the court clearly stated that â€Å"it has long been accepted that one cannot support a claim of self-defense by a self-generated necessity to kill† (United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit,1994). This paper will critically evaluate the above court judgment and discuss why â€Å"one cannot support a claim of self-defense by a self-generated necessity to kill.† Reasonableness of Belief Reasonableness of belief is an important factor in determining the necessity of