Stand Your Ground or Duty to Retreat

[AnotherMcIntosh]

12. In your home, at night, common law allowed you to use deadly force against a dwelling intruder.

Blackstone explained this in his commentaries: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk4ch16.asp

Basically, if an unwelcomed person entered your dwelling at night, you had a common law right to use deadly force. And such right existed regardless of any duty to retreat or otherwise use less deadly force.

Some people believe that the Castle Doctrine is not or should not be limited to night-time intrusions.

In addition to the common-law Castle Doctrine, some states adopted statutes to eliminate the night-time limitation and/or the dwelling limitation. Both types of statutes are stand-your-ground statutes. Some states also qualified the stand-your-ground statutes by requiring a person to retreat if possible and to use less than deadly force if possible. This occasionally causes confusion, and conflict, because of the adoption of standards which have done away with the common-law, bright-line standard.

At common law, it was simple. If an unwelcomed person comes into your house at night, you can do whatever you want. Nowadays, if an unwelcomed person comes into your house in a state which has a law requiring you to retreat or use less than deadly force if possible, you can do whatever a future jury might consider to be reasonable. If you are less than bright, and don't express remorse about having to defend yourself, you can improve your chances of being charged with a crime and/or being the target of a lawsuit.

The short answer: If you have to defend yourself with a firearm, always express remorse. And always talk about how fearful or apprenhensive you were just before the shooting. If you don't know how to do this, go to a courtroom in which a cop shot someone and watch how they do it. Your story, of course, will be more believable if the shootee does not offer any conflicting statement.