Much of the general public—which, never forget, consti-tutes your jury pool—has been conditioned to believe that anytime an unarmed man is shot with a gun, it must be cow-ardly murder or at the least, excessive force. On the contrary, the history of the law in this country is that disparity of force favoring the opponent is the equivalent of a deadly weapon. That is, if the ostensibly unarmed person’s violent attack continues, it is likely within the totality of the circumstances to cause death or grave bodily harm (crippling injury). Disparity of force can take the form of a much larger and/or stronger attacker, multiple attackers, often male attacking a female, an otherwise insurmountable position of advantage (such as he has you down in a “ground and pound” martial arts…
