In the US, self-defense is an affirmative defense. Basically, you're admitting to a pre-meditated homicide that you are saying you had to commit.
I don't like it, but that's why Binger kept pushing Kyle Rittenhouse to say he shot Rosenbaum to defend the Car Lot. That's an admission of pre-meditated homicide over property. Which is considered murder in every state but Texas under ultra-specific circumstances. If you or someone else wasn't in danger of grevious bodily harm or death, and you used lethal force over property, you're looking at very hard time.
Frankly, most Americans believe in lethal force over both property and trespassing as a moral justification, but American law hasn't for about a century.
The danger with a self-defense claim in the US is that you are doing 90% of the prosecutors work for them:
Yes, you did it
Yes, you used lethal force
Yes, you intended to use lethal force
But you had to.
So, everything relies on that last part. The prosecutor gets to ask why, and if your excuse is anything besides: "I had to save my life or the lives of others in that exact moment", it's murder.
Unfortunately, that means that proportionality is a major part of that. Could he have done anything else besides stab Simon in the throat to save his own life? If the answer is yes, then there's big problems for his defense. From what I'm seeing, I'm not even sure that he needed to. This is why I'm harping on what (literally) Simon says. The whole situation changes if a jury will believe Alba when he says "Simon said he was going to kill me". That functions as evidence that a reasonable man could argue is in fear of their life. The argument he'll need is:
"This man and his angry girlfriend attacked me over a bag of chips. Their actions were disproportionate, violent, and unpredictable. Simon was attempting a strong-armed robbery which is a felony. However, he said he would kill me which is an assault on it's own, and he held me captive which is another violent felony. When I tried to escape, he grabbed me and I assumed I was going to die because he told me so, so I grabbed a knife to defend myself. My actions were proportionate to the threat I faced."
He'll need most of that argument, but without "he said he would kill me", a jury could look at this as Simon being a tough guy in front of his girlfriend, and not expecting to get stabbed to death over it. It's obviously a case of social violence, but social violence doesn't necessarily give you justification for lethal force.
In the US, self-defense is an affirmative defense. Basically, you're admitting to a pre-meditated homicide that you are saying you had to commit.
I don't like it, but that's why Binger kept pushing Kyle Rittenhouse to say he shot Rosenbaum to defend the Car Lot. That's an admission of pre-meditated homicide over property. Which is considered murder in every state but Texas under ultra-specific circumstances. If you or someone else wasn't in danger of grevious bodily harm or death, and you used lethal force over property, you're looking at very hard time.
Frankly, most Americans believe in lethal force over both property and trespassing as a moral justification, but American law hasn't for about a century.
The danger with a self-defense claim in the US is that you are doing 90% of the prosecutors work for them:
So, everything relies on that last part. The prosecutor gets to ask why, and if your excuse is anything besides: "I had to save my life or the lives of others in that exact moment", it's murder.
Unfortunately, that means that proportionality is a major part of that. Could he have done anything else besides stab Simon in the throat to save his own life? If the answer is yes, then there's big problems for his defense. From what I'm seeing, I'm not even sure that he needed to. This is why I'm harping on what (literally) Simon says. The whole situation changes if a jury will believe Alba when he says "Simon said he was going to kill me". That functions as evidence that a reasonable man could argue is in fear of their life. The argument he'll need is:
"This man and his angry girlfriend attacked me over a bag of chips. Their actions were disproportionate, violent, and unpredictable. Simon was attempting a strong-armed robbery which is a felony. However, he said he would kill me which is an assault on it's own, and he held me captive which is another violent felony. When I tried to escape, he grabbed me and I assumed I was going to die because he told me so, so I grabbed a knife to defend myself. My actions were proportionate to the threat I faced."
He'll need most of that argument, but without "he said he would kill me", a jury could look at this as Simon being a tough guy in front of his girlfriend, and not expecting to get stabbed to death over it. It's obviously a case of social violence, but social violence doesn't necessarily give you justification for lethal force.
I'd like to see that part of Arizona's criminal code if you got it.
A kidnapping is likely to be considered a lethal act considering the survival rate of being moved to secondary locations is vanishingly low.
And I already told you why I reversed my position elsewhere.