An assault is the illegal act of causing physical harm or unwanted physical contact to another person, or, in some legal definitions, the threat or attempt to do so. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in criminal prosecution, civil liability, or both. Additionally, assault is a criminal act in which a person intentionally causes fear of physical harm or offensive contact to another person. Assault can be committed with or without a weapon and can range from physical violence to threats of violence. Assault is frequently referred to as an attempt to commit battery, which is the deliberate use of physical force against another person. The deliberate inflicting of fear, apprehension, or terror is another definition of assault that can be found in several legal systems. Depending on the severity of the offense, assault may result in a fine, imprisonment, or even death.
The urban survival syndrome, in United States jurisprudence, can be used either as a defense of justification or of excuse. The first case using, unsuccessfully, the defense of "urban survival syndrome" is the 1994 Fort Worth, Texas murder trial of Daimion Osby.
The concept of justifiable homicide in criminal law is a defense to culpable homicide. Generally, there is a burden to produce exculpatory evidence in the legal defense of justification.
The use of force, in the context of law enforcement, may be defined as the "amount of effort required by police to compel compliance by an unwilling subject".
A Terry stop in the United States allows the police to briefly detain a person based on reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity. Reasonable suspicion is a lower standard than probable cause which is needed for arrest. When police stop and search a pedestrian, this is commonly known as a stop and frisk. When police stop an automobile, this is known as a traffic stop. If the police stop a motor vehicle on minor infringements in order to investigate other suspected criminal activity, this is known as a pretextual stop. Additional rules apply to stops that occur on a bus.
A castle doctrine, also known as a castle law or a defense of habitation law, is a legal doctrine that designates a person's abode or any legally occupied place as a place in which that person has protections and immunities permitting one, in certain circumstances, to use force to defend oneself against an intruder, free from legal prosecution for the consequences of the force used. The term is most commonly used in the United States, though many other countries invoke comparable principles in their laws.
Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard of proof that in United States law is less than probable cause, the legal standard for arrests and warrants, but more than an "inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or 'hunch'"; it must be based on "specific and articulable facts", "taken together with rational inferences from those facts", and the suspicion must be associated with the specific individual. If police additionally have reasonable suspicion that a person so detained is armed and dangerous, they may "frisk" the person for weapons, but not for contraband like drugs. However, if the police develop probable cause during a weapons frisk, they may then conduct a full search. Reasonable suspicion is evaluated using the "reasonable person" or "reasonable officer" standard, in which said person in the same circumstances could reasonably suspect a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity; it depends upon the totality of circumstances, and can result from a combination of particular facts, even if each is individually innocuous.
Self-defence is a defence permitting reasonable force to be used to defend one's self or another. This defence arises from both common law and the Criminal Law Act 1967. Self-defence is a justification defence rather than an excuse.
In the United States, self-defense is an affirmative defense that is used to justify the use of force by one person against another person under specific circumstances.
In common law, the fleeing felon rule permits the use of force, including deadly force, against an individual who is suspected of a felony and is in clear flight.
Resisting arrest, or simply resisting, is an illegal act of a suspected criminal either fleeing, threatening, assaulting, or providing a fake ID to a police officer during arrest. In most cases, the person responsible for resisting arrest is criminally charged or taken to court.
Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985), is a civil case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that, under the Fourth Amendment, when a law enforcement officer is pursuing a fleeing suspect, the officer may not use deadly force to prevent escape unless "the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others."
A use of force continuum is a standard that provides law enforcement officers and civilians with guidelines as to how much force may be used against a resisting subject in a given situation. In some ways, it is similar to the U.S. military's escalation of force (EOF). The purpose of these models is to clarify, both for law enforcement officers and civilians, the complex subject of use of force. They are often central parts of law enforcement agencies' use of force policies. Various criminal justice agencies have developed different models of the continuum, and there is no universal or standard model. Generally, each different agency will have their own use of force policy. Some agencies may separate some of the hand-to-hand based use of force. For example, take-downs and pressure point techniques may be one step before actual strikes and kicks. Also, for some agencies the use of aerosol pepper spray and electronic control devices (TASER) may fall into the same category as take-downs, or the actual strikes.
In the state of Maryland, the right of self-defense is mostly governed by case law, but there is also a statute.
The Penal Law of the State of New York combines justification and necessity into a single article, Article 35. "Defense of Justification" comprises sections 35.05 through 35.30 of the Penal Law. The general provision relating to necessity, section 35.05, provides:
§ 35.05 Justification; generally.
Unless otherwise limited by the ensuing provisions of this article defining justifiable use of physical force, conduct which would otherwise constitute an offense is justifiable and not criminal when:
Use-of-force law in Missouri refers to the law & legal doctrine which determine whether a member of law enforcement in the state of Missouri is justified in the amount of force used to gain control of an unruly situation or person, including situations involving death. In the United States, doctrine about use of force is primarily defined by the individual states, although there have been some Supreme Court decisions of limited scope.
Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. ___ (2015), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a police officer who shot a suspect during a police pursuit was entitled to qualified immunity. In a per curiam opinion, the Court held that prior precedent did not establish "beyond debate" that the officer's actions were objectively unreasonable.
In the United States, use of deadly force by police has been a high-profile and contentious issue. In 2022, 1,096 people were killed by police shootings according to The Washington Post, while according to the "Mapping Police Violence" (MPV) project, 1,176 people were killed by police in total. MPV documented 1,213 killings by police for 2023.
Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765 (2014), is a United States Supreme Court case involving the use of force by police officers during high-speed car chases. After first holding that it had jurisdiction to hear the case, the Court held that the conduct of the police officers involved in the case did not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
Ex Parte Minister of Safety and Security and Others: In Re S v Walters and Another is a 2002 decision of the Constitutional Court of South Africa concerning the use of force to arrest criminal suspects. The court invalidated section 49(2) of the Criminal Procedure Act, 1977, which provided that the killing of certain fugitive suspects constituted justifiable homicide. Writing on behalf of a unanimous court, Justice Johann Kriegler held that the Bill of Rights required that force should be used in arrests only where such force is reasonable and necessary.
