sandeep singh janjua's Podcast

Partial Defense to murder.

sandeep singh janjua — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:46:36 +0000

Section 34.1 of criminal code establishes that everyone who is unlawfully assaulted without having provoked the assault is justified in repelling force by force, if the force he uses is not intended to cause death or grievous bodily harm and is no more than is necessary to enable him to defend himself. Under s34.2, everyone who is unlawfully assaulted and who causes death or grievous bodily harm in repelling the assault is justified if a. he causes it under reasonable apprehension of death or grievous bodily harm from the violence with which the assault was originally made or with which the assailant pursues his purposes; and b. he believes, on reasonable grounds, that he cannot otherwise preserve himself from death or grievous bodily harm. It is a commonly well accepted that if an individual injure someone during the course of defending oneself then he/she is safe from prosecution. In reality, this is not the case. There is a fine line between self-defense and assault. The lack of knowledge of this line could change the right to self-defense to an offence. This fine line is called excessive force. During the course of defending oneself an individual cannot use force greater than what it takes to stop the attack.

Introduction to Criminal Law

sandeep singh janjua — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:28:45 +0000

A crime is any behavior that is punishable by imprisonment or fine (or both). State legislatures have an almost unlimited ability to decide which behaviors are considered crimes, and often their decisions do more than simply define socially unacceptable behaviors--they also reflect the values and judgments of the legislators. For example, most state legislatures define welfare fraud as a crime, and welfare recipients who cheat can end up in jail. On the other hand, no state legislature defines deliberate overcharging by an attorney or other professional as a crime.

Another thing which my teacher Mr. Abhijit Sen suggested is quite necessary to be mentioned is that, the voice i've used in this podcast is Yasser Mohammed's from youtube; which i've recorded and uploaded on podomatic.

Could reasonnable force save you from prosecution?

sandeep singh janjua — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:07:04 +0000

Yes, an offender is safe if the amount of force used one used is justifiable. The amount of force that could be determined as reasonable to in any case may vary depending on the type of attack, the victim and the attacker. In past most of the judges in adopted the reasoning and rationale of the defense developed in common law jurisdictions in Australia, accepting excessive force as a partial defense to murder, resulting conviction of manslaughter in each and every case. To this Supreme Court of Canada had to intervene, and now the general criminal law allows for the use of necessary and proportionate, non-deadly force in self-defense anytime the victim reasonably believes that unlawful force is about to be used on him/her. Using objective standards the reasonableness of the defendants’ action is judged.