Welcome back as 6th degree black belt and barrister, I am very often asked questions
about self-defence and I hear a lot of myths that I'm going to dispel today first of all
if you're just joining our legal community and you got questions in your own, please
do subscribe hit that like button and the notification bar so that you don't miss out
on new videos so self defence myths: lots of little things that lots of you may have
heard about thought about that may not be quite as they seem.
starting out with the most common that I've heard is someone can carry some kind of weapon
for self defence the short answer to this is no you cannot carry something with you
for the sole purposes of self defence if you want to watch my video on knives and defensive
weapons I talk about why this is the case but very briefly if you carry something with
you for the sole purpose of hurting another person it doesn't matter in fact whether it
is designed as a weapon or not you see there are categories of offensive weapons and this
fits into the third fairly broad category of an offensive weapon if you take something
with you for the sole purpose of using it in self defence to hurt another person it
becomes an offensive weapon under that interpretation this will be very different and contrasted
however if you were being attacked and you reached out to something and then use this
thing as some form of a weapon in your self defence providing that the force you used
and maybe the thing you used in self defence was still reasonable and proportionate force
for example if you've got somebody pushing and shoving you and you reach for brick and
smashed this person with the brick that's obviously not reasonable or proportionate
force in response to your attack there is another special category of the level of force
used for self defence it's called the householder case which I'm going to talk about in another
video so make sure you subscribe for that so carrying weapons for the sole purpose of
self defence is potentially going to get you into serious trouble the next myth that I've
heard which I mean her for the first time many years ago but I've heard more than once
since and this is the if you believe that someone is going to kill you or seriously
harm you then it's okay to hit that person as hard as you possibly can now if you listen
to my explanation of reasonable force in my first self defence video this is absolutely
not true you cannot simply say that you used all the force possible just because you thought
that the level of force on you was going to be extreme there what it is difficult to judge
how much force is reasonable in those circumstances again if you what my previous self defence
video it does come down to what you believed those circumstances were at the time it isn't
for someone else to look back and look at those circumstances as they actually were
it is to look at it as you believed them to be so was that for reasonable in the circumstances
that you genuinely believe them to be but certainly the idea that you just use as much
force as possible is certainly not going to work in many situations the next myth is that
if you were mistaken you cannot rely self defence again what every case is fact specific
this is broadly not the case I in 1984 defendant mistook his victim from being the mother of
a young person in fact it turned out that the young person was being apprehended by
his victim because the young person had attacked and Robbed another woman so on appeal this
defendant's conviction was quashed on the basis of mistaken belief as to the facts whilst
executing self defence of another person that leads onto another myth which is the mistake
the law provide some other kind of defence that this is a blanket NO when it comes to
criminal law ignorance is no defence the law the next myth is quite a common one and that
is that the defendant must prove that he or she was acting in self defence and if you
watch my other videos you will know that this is not through the defendant or his representatives
need only raise the issue of self defence and the facts surrounding once self defence
has been raised the burden shifts immediately back to the prosecution who must this disprove
that this person was acting in self defence to the same criminal standard as the prove
of the rest of the prosecution case in other words the prosecution must prove beyond all
reasonable doubt or so that the jury is sure that the defendant was not acting in self
defence all that the defendant did not use reasonable force so for example if a defendant
claims was acting in self defence but the level of force used so severe that it couldn't
possibly have been reasonable then the prosecution need only prove the level of force used was
not reasonable and so thus doesn't amount for defence self defence the next myth is
to how the defence of self-defence operates many people think that self defence can somehow
lower the charge against defendant for example a defendant might be charged with section
18 or section 20 which is grievous bodily harm or some serious bodily harm but if the
defendant says I was acting in self defence that somehow this can lower the charge to
something like a section 47 assault occasioning actual bodily harm but this myth is not true
the defence of self defence is a complete defence it's something of an all or nothing
defence if the defendant has raised self defence but the prosecution failed to disprove that
he was acting in self-defence or using reasonable force then this would result in an acquittal
it doesn't result in a lower charge doesn't result in a lower sentence it operates as
a complete defence in other words if the defendant is found by jury to have been acting in self
defence therefore using reasonable force it is a complete defence and he should be acquitted
for example let's say a defendant is charged with murder and his raised self defence as
his defence let's also say that the jury has accepted that he was acting in self defence
in those circumstances they are a little bit unsure as to the level of force he used let's
now conclude that during decide the level of force he used was not reasonable in those
circumstances and he was using excessive force this means the defence of self defence must
fail and it will not result in reducing a murder to a manslaughter conviction although
there may be grounds such as loss of control or the lack of intent to kill all cause serious
bodily harm only then would murder possibly be reduced to manslaughter but in and of itself
the defence of self-defence must fail in those circumstances another common myth is that
self-defence only applies once you been hit first but this is also not true because you
do not have to wait to be hit if you already genuinely believe that you are about to be
attacked this is known as a pre-emptive strike there is simply no rule in law that says you
have to wait to be hit first in order to defend yourself but of course if it turns out that
this will not a situation of self defence and you were in fact the aggressor and that's
why you struck first then you won't be able to rely on self defence thereafter final myth
that I've read in lots of your comments is that self defence cannot be used against a
police officer for example for a charge of obstructing a police officer under section
89 of the police but this is exactly what the courts looked at in 2018 court held that
the defendant may rely upon self-defence or defence of another when answering a charge
of assault all obstructing a police officer in his duty in this case the claimant believed
that his mother was being assaulted by police officers and intervened to protect the court
held that there were no reasons not to allow this as a general defence in criminal law
just as to any other offence but remember you cannot rely on self-defence or defence
of another just because you mistakenly believed the arrest to be unlawful so those are just
a few of the myths that I have come across do drop your questions and comments down below
make sure you subscribe and I'll come back to those in future videos in the meantime
thank you for watching