Use-of-Force Event Evidence Production

The Finder of Facts, Needs All the Facts, Should Be Your Objective After Preventing Your Death

The evidence from the scene of your use-of-force, self-defense event is absolutely crucial in establishing the lawfulness of your deadly force actions. However, after having experienced an extremely high energy conflict which resulted in you being forced to end the life of your attacker, both your mind and your body will have to have a period of time in which to return to a normal state before a high level of recall-memory accuracy can occur.

This of course is much easier said than done for most people. However, if all your actions, physical and verbal, were a result of repetitive training exercises over the past months and even years, the odds are that when in the moment of extreme deadly force jeopardy, your mental muscle memory directed your physical and verbal actions, as previously practiced consistently and regularly.

Your Use-of-Force Lawful Self-Defense Action Structure should be as follows. Evidence of your verbal and physical Avoidance attempts and actions to distance yourself from the conflict, which automatically established your Innocence in instigating the conflict, and in turn provides you with better understanding of when the conflict is Imminent—starting to begin. And these three elements almost always produce enough collective information to determine a deadly force conflict from a non-deadly conflict, or in other words, your Proportionality of Responding Force. Then finally all four elements’ combined results prove your Subjective Reasoning to be lawful, as any law-abiding person would have done if they were there, i.e. your deadly force action is judged to be Objectively Reasonable.

The Five Elements of Lawful Self-Defense are from Andrew Branca—I use an altered order of Andrew’s 5 elements and expand the element of Avoidance by adding personal choices-actions leading up to the pre-imminence period, as part of evidence to prove innocence; i.e. merge verbal & physical actions that clearly demonstrate ‘avoidance’ as a foundation for the element of innocence.

In my classes, which are generally one on one or at most, one on two or three, I work with you to demonstrate how each of the five elements, essential to proving a lawful use of deadly force, becomes the foundation of your actions---comprised of verbal and physical actions which clearly prove you reasonably attempted to avoid, remained innocent, which led to judge both imminence and proportionality accurately, which again are essential in demonstrating your lawful reasonableness in the moment of extreme jeopardy.

Responding Officers Should Hear You and See You Assisting and Complying with Their Efforts

Even if you perfectly acted lawfully throughout the moment of extreme crisis and establish-collect-record everything at the scene essential to preserve evidence for your defense, your initial statement to responding officers should be short and sweet,

I had to defend myself from grave harm officer. I can’t think clearly and need medical attention for me and the person I shot. My gun is right there (point to it from a distance—should not be on your person once you see officers arriving) and right there is his weapon, over there are the witnesses, I think there might be cameras over there (point to them). Please allow me to collect myself for a few hours, I want to help and will do so later……ok? Thank you!

Your ability to recall accurately what occurred leading up to, and during, the deadly force event, is much easier---but still mentally taxing----if you have the Branca 5-Element Structure above firmly ingrained into your mental muscle memory and subsequent self-defense actions.

Recalling what happened immediately after the event and creating a detailed report at that time—asap, before LE arrival, and again during LE processing, and again with prosecutors and your defense attorney together, should show a consistent mental structure, with all details consistently in harmony with collected evidence from the scene.

Your Recall should always explain the ‘why and how’ of your actions as detailed as possible as to why you decided to use force. Best way to do this is by either writing notes or recording an audio file or both.

Again, your 5-point reasoning for your actions, which includes both your physical and audible occurrences during the event and immediately after the event, should provide the foundation and structure for your legal defense. Namely, your acts of avoidance and innocence followed by using proportional preventative force in the nick of time when the deadly threat was imminent, which stopped the deadly threat.

Now, after your initial record, you will need to produce a secondary recall record which will be compared to the initial first record. The second record must compliment first recall record by adding greater crucial detailed information. The main purpose is to clarify what was initially recalled under stress. The physical and psychological elements of the first report should serve as a foundational structure for additional clarification when your mind is clear and recall memory is able to produce greater detailed corroborating evidence.

Legal statutes as written plus case-law history, witness testimony, and evidence from the scene, will all be used jointly, and applied to your combined record-statement documentation. The greater the detail and harmony between the two reports the greater the strength of your defense will be for your attorney.

Creating an Initial Record Before LE Arrives

Producing a written or verbal two-to-three-part record-statement can be very difficult. But in the age of camera phones and weapon video cameras, and IF, I said IF, you have made yourself proficient in perfecting your actions of deadly force within the Branca Five-Point Element Structure, as previously defined, a video file of the pre-conflict, mid-conflict, post-conflict, first recall record, all become much easier to produce.

Using a weapon camera to capture video and audio of the use of force event is powerful evidence……but only when it further clarifies detailed two-tier reporting—initial and secondary combined documentation as provided via written, verbal, and best of all, in video phone recordings.

Video and audio evidence provides a first, second, and or a third clarification of what transpired. It should validate every detail within the contemporaneous account. However, video taken from the muzzle of the firearm does not provide, often times, everything you observed, perceived, under extreme stress, as extreme force was escalating at you.

But……if you train enough to create essential mental muscle-memory, your use of your weapon camera can provide a vantage point your eyes can’t access and therefore can’t recall when producing your two-tier record. Where the muzzle is pointed is absolute definitive proof or your deadly force actions lawfulness or unlawfulness.

The auto-on feature of most weapon cameras is essential in capturing pre-deadly force evidence. Pre-shot-firing-time-period evidence captures key elements which establish one or all five of the elements of lawful self-defense use of deadly force depending on your level of proficiency under extreme duress.

Being actively attempting to avoid at all costs……. until prevented from doing so, proves being innocent of initiating the altercation—again, that’s two essential elements established.

As already stated, but needs to be emphasized again,

Since you’ve attempted avoidance thereby proving innocence, both imminence and proportionality naturally occur almost in every case.

When you can no longer avoid the deadly threat, it proves the threat is real and imminent—beginning and at this point in the altercation it is almost always apparent what level of serious bodily-harm force is coming at you, thus deadly or non-deadly defensive force is knowable and if you’ve practiced enough, you’ll implement the correct proportional force.

To review one more time: The first two elements provide the accurate determination of the next two elements. Avoidance>Innocence>>>Imminence>Proportionality, which ultimately proves Reasonableness……. from the first element to the fourth element combine and then serve as the overall legal essence of the fifth element.

The Legal Self-Defense Element of Avoidance – No Legal Duty to Avoid, Deescalate, Flee, Disengage Before Using Deadly Force. AKA, Stand Your Ground.

It has been argued that Avoidance is an element not required in Florida and many states, because of Stand Your Ground laws. Which means you do not have to retreat, nor deescalate, or seek to escape, take a course of flight in order to not fight, before using deadly force when being attacked with force which could cause great bodily harm or death.

Instead you can lawfully ‘Stand Your Ground’. This is true in the letter of the law. However and but……..most states’ prosecutors have a wildcard element and tactic made possible through the argument of the fifth element of lawful self-defense, “Reasonableness”.

Reasonableness simply defined is, your actions as established per the evidence produced in court, is found by jurors to be reasonable, because they would also have chosen to do what you did, and any reasonable common person in society would also have chosen to do as you did.

This Reasonableness Element in Florida becomes a legal question in court concerning the other four elements.

If the prosecutor believes there’s any way to twist the evidence they will argue that you certainly did NOT have to avoid the deadly threat before using deadly force, but given the evidence produced in the video and other testimony any reasonable person, if in your shoes, would have avoided shooting the person because the evidence seems to shows there was a way and opportunity to not shoot and instead let the person flee the scene.

Jurors usually have not experienced what you experienced the day you were forced to prevent your death or great bodily harm. And to most jurors the evidence might seem ambiguous, not clearly definitive…….to them. If this occurs, the jurors subjective mindset becomes the prosecutor’s weapon to disprove your lawful case of deadly force self-defense.

At this point in the legal proceedings your legal fate rests in the juror’s minds…….but NOT if you have any degree of evidence which proves you avoided, remained innocent, judged when imminence occurred correctly, and choose wisely the degree of force necessary to prevent your serious bodily harm or perhaps even death.

With the first four elements firmly proven to be true by the evidence produced at trial, the prosecutor’s ‘wildcard reasonableness argument’ is unprovable, null and void therefore due to the overwhelming evidence avoidance, innocence, imminence, nor proportionality elements were not lacking. Instead, your actions were deliberate, disciplined, structured, and lawful reasonable.

Nothing proves Reasonableness better than video evidence showing the 5-Elements Structure in action.

But make no mistake, the initial report given to investigators via you and afterward by your lawyer serves as the foundation upon which all subsequent documentation and evidence must be built. The more detailed the initial record-statement, the more a foundation will exist for your lawyer to build upon. The video, audio, record is the icing on the proverbial legal self-defense cake.

The REASONING element must encompass every aspect of what caused you to determine to use deadly force in the manner in which you acted, when within the sudden moment of crisis and jeopardy. Muzzle video and audio files in your cell phone, which capture your lawful use of deadly force and provide an initial record, almost always impresses a judge at a pre-trial immunity hearing…….or better yet, causes the prosecutor to just not bring charges at all.

Remember, A Lawful Claim of Deadly Force Self-Defense is Always Brought to the Legal System by a Lawful Person.

Construct your deadly force self-defensive training within the five elements of a lawful self-defense.

Call today for your free evaluation, I would love to assist you in developing the strongest ‘lawful use of force mindset and discipline’ as possible. I look forward to meeting you in this regard.