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Did he use the weapon in defence of his life?
Before a person
can avail himself of that defence he must satisfy a jury that
the defence was necessary, that he did all he could do to avoid
his assailant and that it was necessary to protect his life or
to protect himself from such serious bodily harm as would give
him a reasonable apprehension that his life was in imminent
danger. If he uses the weapon, having no other means of
resistance and no means of escape, in such cases, if he
retreated as far as he could, he would be justified."
And so before that point of defence which Mr. She has put
up can succeed you will have to be satisfied that the accused
man did everything he could to avoid conflict. You will have
to be satisfied first that there was a fight between the two
of them which must have been in complete silence with no one
hearing a sound: that the accused man did everything he could
even to the point of running away; that the accused was so
badly beaten as to be in reasonable fear of his life, and that
he did not take the knife with him intending to use it, but
quite accidentally found it somewhere in the hut and in the
heat of passion struck out with it and struck four times. I
have said that you will have to throw overboard the eye-witness'
evidence and the almost contemperaneus witness' evidence. You
will have to throw away the story about the attack at the
deceased's bed completely because you cannot square these two
stories, and most difficult of all I think you will have to
account to yourselves, before you can accept the accused man's
story, for the strangely significant fact that Dr. Symons who
was asked to examine the accused man ( because the accused
man complained that he had been beaten) was unable to find on
him any sign of injury whatsoever except a little cut in the
right corner of the mouth. He was unable to find any bruise
whatsoever,xaaptxaxitttiexet nor was Mr. She in whose
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