On Sun, 28 Feb 2010 06:45:59 -0600, Lookout
wrote:

On Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:57:18 -0500, Cliff
wrote:


http://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2010/0...-self-defense/
"If You Don’t Shoot Your Attacker In Kansas Then Waive Bye-Bye To Claiming
Self-Defense"
[
Kansas is a whacky place, what with its impossibly flat land and endless fields
of wheat and sorghum (which is apparently a type of sustainable livestock feed
and ethanol fuel source), not to mention the perpetual parade of impervious
aliens and supernatural portals.

Well, the crazy Kansans of the Sunflower State can now add a new claim to fame
by being the only state that requires you to shoot your attacker with your gun
as a prerequisite to claiming self-defense, or else the defense will be waived
and you’ll be charged with aggravated assault.

Hmm… That new one doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as easily as “The Barbed
Wire Capital of the World.”

In a recent case before the Kansas Court of Appeals, a majority of the court
held that under Kansas law, citizens who attempt to claim self-defense when
confronted by either the threat of harm which they reasonably believe will occur
or are under actual physical attack, can only claim the defense if they use
actual physical force against their attacker.

What constitutes actual physical force? Well in the case of State v. Flint
described in the previous paragraph, it meant that the defendant, Flint, had to
actually fire the gun he was holding at his attacker.

Sound weird? Well it sounds even stranger when you know the actual facts of the
case. Flint and his fiancée were in a bar when his fiancée got into an argument
with two male bar patrons. The argument eventually moved outside of the bar and
became more heated.

Was Flint or his fiance forcibly and unwillingly dragged outside of
the bar by the combative bar patrons? If not, then he or his fiance
were willing participants, so much for self defense.







Then somewhere along the line there was a “scuffle” and
Flint’s fiancée end up on the floor. Flint then grabbed a gun from his car and
pointed it at the men who then backed off.

He should have got in his car and left.
Yes, HE was in the wrong.

Now you’d think that this might sound like a clear-cut case for self-defense,
and a more preferable use of it as well since the situation was resolved with no
one getting hurt. And if anything, the question of whether Flint should be
allowed a self-defense claim should revolve around whether his belief that he or
his fiancée were under the threat of harm was reasonable and whether his
pointing a gun was a reasonable response.

Well, not quite – in Kansas anyway. The court convicted Flint of aggravated
assault. .......
]

And rightly so.