Burden Of Proof and Stand Your Ground

Bob Irwin highlights the latest self defense and other shootings of the week. Read them and see what went wrong, what went right and what we can learn from self defense with a gun.

Court Gavel
Burden Of Proof and Stand Your Ground
Bob Irwin
Bob Irwin

USA –-(Ammoland.com)- The Associated Press reported March 13, 2017, The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in favor of two men who were charged with aggravated battery but said they were acting in self-defense in stabbing or shooting others.

The high court’s ruling Friday rejected a tougher rule for determining when someone can avoid prosecution under the state’s 2006 “Stand Your Ground” law.

The Kansas Court of Appeals ruled in each case that when someone seeks to avoid prosecution on self-defense grounds, a trial-court judge must view the evidence in the light most favorable for the prosecution in deciding whether a case goes to trial.

The Supreme Court said the judge must weigh evidence impartially.

Comments: Duh!

Background info: The Las Vegas Review Journal published an Associated Press Story this week that reads in part:

Florida doesn’t just want to let people stand their ground, it also wants to make the state prove they didn’t commit violence in self-defense before taking them to trial.

……………

Only four of the 22 or more states with “stand your ground” type laws mention this burden of proof. Alabama, Colorado, Georgia & South Carolina all place the burden on defendants.

Bob Irwin, Las Vegas


About Bob Irwin

Bob is retired after 30 years of ownership of The Gun Store & Indoor Range in Las Vegas. He continues his 2A issues show “Fired Up with Bob Irwin”. As a firearm instructor of Concealed Firearm Applicants, Armed Security Officer, and Law Enforcement Academies over his career, Bob appears frequently as an expert witness for firearm & use of force cases in Federal, State, and local courts.

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Colonialgirl

It was the liberal judges and left winger prosecutors that were PERVERTING the LAW of Stand your Ground to make the innocent citizen GUILTY unless he could prove otherwise. In other words it placed the burden of proof on the innocent defending citizen (LOOK at what they tried to pull on Zimmerman in Sanford, FL).
NOW the prosecutor has to present irrefutable PROOF that it was NOT a self-defense, stand your ground occurrence.
The burden SHOULD and MUST BE on the state and prosecutor.