An Indiana man’s conviction on felony battery charges has been overturned by the state’s highest court after justices ruled that he was acting in lawful self-defense when he shot a man in a car that was speeding towards him.
Antonio Turner was studying with several of his college classmates at an Indianapolis home when Dequan Briscoe, described as the “love interest” of one his friends, began barraging the woman with phone calls. When Briscoe learned that Turner was at the home with her, he threatened to ““pull up” on Turner. Overhearing that threat on the phone, Turner went outside to his car to get his gun.
Before he could get back to the house Turner saw a car screaming down the street towards him. Turner tried to run away, but without anywhere to hide he turned and fired four rounds towards the car, wounding Briscoe, who was behind the wheel of the vehicle. As Justice Derek Molter described in the court’s ruling overturning Turner’s conviction:
Turner fired based on his intuition—he didn’t recognize the car, couldn’t see through its darkly tinted windows, and wouldn’t have recognized Briscoe if he saw him. But that intuition proved prescient. It turns out Briscoe was aiming a handgun to shoot Turner just before Turner began firing.
Though Turner clearly (and correctly) believed that his life was in danger when he fired those shots, prosecutors charged him with battery by means of a deadly weapon and he was convicted of the Level 5 felony after a bench trial. The judge who found Turner guilty declared that it was “objectively unreasonable for Turner to fire at a car into which he couldn’t see.”
The judge acknowledged that Turner made the correct choice, calling it “unfortunate” that his only choice was to commit a felony or be seriously injured or killed. But the judge believed that under the objective reasonableness standard that governs Indiana’s self-defense law his hands were tied and his only choice was to convict the young man of a violent felony.
Thankfully the state’s high court has now undone that decision and provided guidance for judges across the state going forward. As the justices opined this week:
Do we deprive defendants of the benefit of hindsight when it reveals their conduct was necessary in self-defense, even though that necessity wasn’t fully apparent in the moment? The answer is that we do not, and we base that answer on a sentence in the self-defense statute that our Indiana appellate courts have never interpreted before, which says: “No person, employer, or estate of a person in this state shall be placed in legal jeopardy of any kind whatsoever for protecting the person or a third person by reasonable means necessary.”
Because the trial court concluded that Turner’s conduct was necessary in self-defense, the statute justified the shooting, and we vacate the conviction.
The Supreme Court’s ruing was careful not to pin too much blame on the judge for his decision, saying that as he understood the law “Turner could only be justified in shooting if either he saw the gun and it was being raised toward him, or [he] knew that Briscoe was the guy, or that the car was about to run him right over in order for that combination of the fear created by the threats on the phone and the circumstances he saw to justify the self-defense.”
But the Court still found that the judge misinterpreted Indiana’s self-defense statute, declaring that “under Indiana’s self-defense statute, justification for using force based on a mistaken belief about necessity depends on the reasonableness of the belief given the circumstances.”
But using defensive force based on an accurate belief is justified regardless of the belief’s reasonableness. In other words, using force for protection based on a belief that is both unreasonable and turns out to be wrong isn’t justified, but acting on a belief that is unreasonable, yet right, is justified.
In other words, if Turner had shot an innocent driver who just happened to be speeding by, the felony charges he faced would have been appropriate. This ruling isn’t a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for anyone who pulls the trigger and claims self-defense after the fact. Instead, the Court held that this particular application of the state’s self-defense statute “applies to a sliver of circumstances where the necessity of self-defense is only fully apparent in hindsight.”
You can read the Court’s opinion for yourself here. Justice Molter and his colleagues do a deep dive into the state’s self-defense statutes and the applicable use of force, and the case is actually more complicated that it appears at first glance.
The Court noted that the “robust self-defense rights that citizens of this state have always enjoyed” does come with limits, but none of them “require martyrdom in service of reasonableness”, adding that “Turner didn’t have to take a bullet as the most reasonable thing to do; the law permitted him to save his own life.”
I think the Court came to the only reasonable conclusion it could make; sending someone to prison for acting in self-defense would be an injustice, even if the armed citizen in question wasn’t 100% certain that their life was in danger when they acted to preserve their life and limb. Again, though, this decision comes with a critical caveat; if you’re wrong about the perceived threat you face, you could very well face felony charges, and the state Supreme Court won’t be inclined to throw you a lifeline as it did for Antonio Turner.
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