> he had every right to defend against a charging attacker - I don’t care who it is <
Agreed. The problem is that a jury might consider a hard punch to be an excessive response.
Suppose that the guy had chosen to defend himself by pulling a gun, and shooting his attacker. Every jury in the country would have convicted him.
So what about that hard punch? Was it an excessive response? It doesn’t matter what you or I think. It only matters what a jury will think. And with that kid sitting in the courtroom all bandaged up, I think that the jury will vote to convict.
I think so too. That’s the jury unfortunately for him.
I get out of jury duty every time. Maybe I should start not getting out of it.
It totally sucks imo.
I understand what you’re saying, he may well be convicted for excessive force.
That said, does he have a responsibility to only keep the kid at arms length? What if the child is armed? At what point do you say “this kid is big enough for me to be legitimately threatened”? This was also a reflex response and he may have thought it wasn’t that hard a punch - it was just that this was a young kid being much smaller so it had a larger effect. So how hard should he punch? How do you measure the right use of force in this instance? I don’t think it is obvious due to the mob and the attitude of the girl, she obviously thought she could mess him up.
Where was security? ...and the parents :(
Either way, it is a sad reflection on our culture if our kids are behaving this way at such a young age. It’s not their fault - it’s the fault of the culture they’re inheriting.