Consider the situation in a close quarters combat: If Manning was lying on top of Lowe, attempting to strangle, it is likely that Lowe could not strike at any part of Manning except his back in a wraparound blow. Thus, there were wounds in Manning’s back, but he was not necessarily stabbed from behind as the fishwrap prose would lead you to believe...
I’ve been thinking about this since I wrote that, and he might be able to use the “old man” defense.
“Never pick a fight with an old man. If he’s too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.” - John Steinbeck
There is some logic to this. An old, disabled man has minimal strength to defend himself, so cannot “give quarter” to an attacker, because if he does so, the attacker may recover enough to continue his attack, but the old man will be exhausted.
So an attacker who attacks an old man cannot reasonably expect a “fair fight” or even an adequate defense from the old man. In truth, they are probably counting on it not being a fair fight.
So when the old man does fight back, the court cannot assign “fair fight rules”, after the fact. A lethal defense, even stabbing in the back, should be considered as legitimate.