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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Law - "Ky. high court weighing how to apply new self-defense law"

"Lethal force", "no retreat", "castle law", there are a lot of different names for the law Indiana and Kentucky both passed in 2006. Here is a quote from a June 21st story about an Indiana incident:

Experts said that, according to Indiana law, . . . must have reasonably believed that she faced serious harm or death to justify firing her gun, for which she has a permit. The law also says . . . didn't have to "retreat" before defending herself, they said.

Kentucky's self-defense law is similar, and both states have a "castle law" that says people can use defensive or deadly force against anyone unlawfully and forcibly trying to get into their house or car, said Jeanne Anderson, assistant commonwealth's attorney in Jefferson County.

Here is a list of some other ILB entries.

Brett Barrouquere of the Louisville Courier Journal writes today:

Phillip Leroy Wines says he killed two people at his Jefferson County home within three months in self-defense. But a judge rejected those claims, and now Wines is serving 45 years in prison for murder and manslaughter.

But the Kentucky Supreme Court is considering whether Wines and another Jefferson County man who claimed self-defense in a separate case, Frank Rodgers, should get new trials.

At issue is whether the judges in their cases failed to properly apply a self-defense law the General Assembly passed in 2006.

In oral arguments held at the University of Louisville law school yesterday, there was also debate over how jurors should be told to evaluate such cases.

Public defender Elizabeth McMahon asked the justices to reverse Wines' convictions and order a new trial. McMahon said that the trial judge should have instructed the jury that Wines had no duty to retreat when he stabbed James Lee Hamilton on June 12, 2005, or when he hit Micah Brashear in the head with nunchaku karate sticks during a dispute on April 4, 2005.

McMahon also said Wines should have had a hearing to determine if self-defense applied in his case because the law was passed while he awaited trial.

"He should get the benefit of that law," McMahon said. * * *

In the second case, public defender Bruce Hackett argued that the "no retreat" law should have been applied retroactively in the case of Rodgers, who is serving 20 years for manslaughter in the 2004 shooting death of Dewhon McAfee in Louisville.

Jefferson Circuit Judge William Douglas Kemper, who presided over both cases, ruled that the new law did not apply retroactively. He did not tell the jury that Rodgers had no legal duty to run from McAfee.

"It is absolutely necessary to tell the jury that," Hackett said. "The instructions we give to the jury don't give a clue to them."

But Assistant Attorney General Perry Thomas Ryan said Rodgers shot McAfee two years before the law took effect.

The National Rifle Association had championed the measure, saying it simply codified a rule of law already observed by judges in Kentucky and elsewhere: That people have a right to use deadly force to defend themselves and their families when their lives are in danger.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 11, 2008 08:25 AM
Posted to General Law Related