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Mr. She has cited to you a very familiar passage from our
standard small work on criminal law and practice and therefore
I am afraid I shall have to inflict a little law on you. There
is such a thing fortunately as the doctrine of self-defence, and
if a man is deliberately assaulted by someone else without any
excuse or justification, he is entitled to retaliate, but he is
entitled to retaliate only in certain circumstances and to
a certain extent. The law shortly is this:
Firstly, he must retreat as far as he can safely go and
after that he can match blow for blow, but if he is being
attacked in a way which is not essentially dangerous or such as
to put a reasonable man in fear of his life or his limb, as here,
an attack by blows of the fist, then he is not entitled to take
up a deadly weapon like a revolver or a knife or anything of
that sort and use it, and take away the life of the other man.
That is going too far. But he would be justified, if his story
is correct, in striking blows with his fist, but to use a knife
and to use it four times, is going too far to justify him setting
up the defence of self-defence. But Mr. She has raised another
defence, and he has told you that if two people are fighting,
their blood is hot, tempers are up, and one of them finds a
weapon to his hand and uses it.
He may be excused for doing
so in certain circumstances.
many years ago by Mr. Justice Bosanquet which has been approved over and over again by the highest authorities and I can do no
better than read it to you as covering and completely covering
Mr. She's point That learned judge said: "Did the prisoner
enter into a contest with an unarmed man intending to avail
himself of a deadly weapon? If he did, it will amount to murder,
but if he did not enter into the contest with the intention of
using it, then the question will be "Did he use it in the heat
If he of passion in consequence of an attack made upon him?
did then it will be manslaughter.
There is a charge given to a jury
But there is another question.