Defense Strategies for a Maryland Domestic Violence Charge 

When it comes to disputes within the home, situations can be unclear. Arguments can escalate causing individuals to feel threatened and react accordingly. An incident where someone tries to defend themselves can lead to allegations of domestic violence. In these situations, the help of an attorney can be helpful. An adept defense lawyer will have a working knowledge of defense strategies for a Maryland domestic violence charge and can try to use the strategy best suited to your case.

Self-Defense As Defined By Maryland Laws

As far as defense strategies for a Maryland domestic violence charge go, self-defense is very specific with statutes and especially with regards to how it works.  Not every state has the same laws and while many of them plead out in the news, in Maryland, the self-defense clause is slightly different. With regards to self-defense, it has to be reasonable; that individual must fear that they are going to be harmed even if they are accused of acting out.

If a lawyer is asking the right questions when talking to the client, they will ask what the defendant did to protect themselves, and it is important to know what they thought happened. An attorney will want to talk to the client to see if they reasonably believe that they were in immediate danger of being hurt if they actually believed they were endangered of being attacked, if the person who reacted and was not the initial aggressor, and if they used what would be a reasonable defense.

Reasonable Defense

If someone approaches someone intending to punch them and gets punched in return, that could be self-defense, but if an individual throws a punch and is shot in the head, that person is going to be charged with murder because that is not a reasonable response. If someone throws a punch, it is not reasonable to pull out a knife, a gun, a bat, as all those things heightened what is done there.

In those situations, a person has to be as reasonable or unreasonable as the situation calls for when they are being attacked. They must not act back unreasonably. If the client believes that they were in immediate danger of being hurt, that they were not the aggressor and that they used reasonable force, then they have a good argument for self-defense.

Defense of Others

If a person is a witness to a domestic assault and they were to stand in to defend that person, if they are doing what is reasonable under the circumstances, if they are doing what is necessary to protect that person for any reasonable way with the true purpose to end the attack or end the assault then that is a fair defense to use. It is not perfect but it is a fair defense.

Benefits of Consulting a Lawyer

In the news, there are plenty of states that allow a person to shoot first and ask later, but Maryland does not allow that. In order to really protect oneself, a person has to have an attorney to understand what the law in self-defense is and not just what they presume. They should not presume that anyone can do anything in self-defense. There are very specific statutes that must be applied to everything and very specific testimony that a client must be able to give honestly. A local attorney will know more about what defense strategies for a Maryland domestic violence charge can bolster the defendant’s case.