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Originally Posted by Hook686
Yup the prosecytor no longer needs to prove you done it. Now you gotta prove it was the other guy committing a justifiable felony ... not just claiming it was a justifiable felony, but proving it. Not always easy to do and always costly.
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I don't think there is any such thing as a "justifiable felony."
A self-defense homicide becomes justifiable because the laws that start out saying it is not legal to kill another person then tack on some specific exceptions, such as "Except if that person is assaulting you" or "Except if you kill the person because you are in fear of immediate death or serious bodily harm."
So a self-defense homicide doesn't become a felony unless the jury doesn't accept your claim that it was justified as an act of self-defense. If I employ lethal force in self-defense against a felonious assault, why would I wish to prove that the assailant was justified in assaulting me ... and on what basis could an unprovoked assault possibly be proven to be a "justifiable felony"?
Under the laws of most states, in claiming self-defense as justification for a homicide you don't necessarily have to prove that the assailant was committing a felony. It helps if you can show that, but the operative language in the laws of those states I have read (which is less than half of them) are fairly consistent in intent (if not in specific language). The justification for a self-defense homicide is that you were in fear of death or serious bodily injury. Legally, the jury is supposed to subject this claim to a "reasonable man test." In other words, you claim you were in fear for your life -- would some hypothetical, reasonable man likely be in fear of losing his hypothetical life if he were in the same situation? So the key factor is not whether the other guy's actions were or were not legally felonious, but simply whether or not you legitimately feared that he was going to kill you.