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Concept
Justifiable homicide
Summary
The concept of justifiable homicide in criminal law is a defense to culpable homicide (criminal or negligent homicide). Generally, there is a burden to produce exculpatory evidence in the legal defense of justification.
In most countries, a homicide is justified when there is sufficient evidence to disprove the alleged criminal act or wrongdoing (under the beyond a reasonable doubt standard for criminal charges, and preponderance of evidence standard for claims of wrongdoing, i.e. civil liability). The key to this legal defense is that it was reasonable for the subject to believe that there was an imminent and otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm to the innocent by the deceased, when they committed the homicide.
According to Black's Law Dictionary justifiable homicide applies to the blameless killing of a person, such as in self-defense.
The term "legal intervention" is a classification incorporated into the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, and does not denote the lawfulness or legality of the circumstances surrounding a death caused by law enforcement.
For example, in 2020, legal intervention deaths i.e., deaths caused by law enforcement and other persons with legal authority to use deadly force acting in the line of duty, excluding legal executions, amounted to 1.3% of all 71,000 violence-related deaths in the United States.
Potentially excusing conditions common to multiple jurisdictions include the following.
Capital punishment in places that it is legal.
Where a state is engaged in a war with a legitimate casus belli, a combatant may lawfully kill an enemy combatant so long as that combatant is not hors de combat. This principle is embedded in public international law and has been respected by most states around the world.
In most countries, it is lawful for a citizen to repel violence with violence to protect someone's life or destruction of property.
The scope of self-defense varies; some jurisdictions have a duty to retreat rule that disallows this defense if it was safe to flee from potential violence.
Official source
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