Law can be defined as a set or body of rules that guide actions and conducts of individuals. Law is a prescription by specific authorities, to inform the everyday lives of individuals and the wide variety of activities. Law applies to every individual in a given state, and also, punishments are equally prescribed by law, meaning that a court will settle disputes between individuals based on law. According to the definition and understanding of the law, self-defence requires that a person’s response or action matches equally the level of threat they are faced with. This means that a person should use force only enough to eliminate the risk in question (Allhoff, 2019). However, if a person is faced by a threat necessitating minimum pressure, but they employ enough force to cause serious bodily harm or even death, they cannot be considered as having acted in self-defence. Leidholm stabbed her husband in his sleep when he was posing only a minor threat. Still, the defendant believed herself to be facing imminent danger. As such, the court evaluated self-defence appropriately.
A subjective standard requires that a prosecutor to beyond any reasonable doubt prove that the accused intended for their actions (Baron, 206). An objective standard requires proof that a reasonable person would not act as the accused had in similar circumstances. After years of a troubled marriage and a night of violent fighting, Leidholm felt that another fight or threat was imminent; this fear influenced her decision to kill him (Gorr, 2019). However, her case presents a subjective standard, seeing as she had every intention to kill him and chose the moment when he was mostly powerless. If she had stabbed or hit him at the moment they were fighting and killed him, Leidholm would have convinced the jury that she acted in self-defence. Faced by an immediate threat, for instance, fear that her husband would kill her while they were fighting, Leidholm would have then been considered a reasonable person was acting following imminent danger.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
References
Allhoff, F. (2019). Self-Defence without Imminence. Am. Crim. L. Rev. , 56 , 1527.
Baron, M. (2016, August). The Distinction between Objective and Subjective Standards in the Criminal Law. In Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Methods and Perspectives. Proceedings of the 37th International Wittgenstein Symposium (Vol. 23, p. 351). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
Gorr, M. J. (2019). State v. Leidholm. In Controversies In Criminal Law (pp. 81-88). Routledge.
