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Notes -
Right, this I understand.
Either I don't understand this or it is inconsistent with the previous sentence. A person could be attacking me with fists but threatening me with a noose or threatening to throw me in a van.
The lower bound for the severity of the threat is what the attacker has already done, but a reasonable person might believe the threat is significantly higher based on the circumstances.
I think the issue here is that by the time that happens, the opportunity for self defense has already passed. A reasonable person does not wait until they are already on their back getting their head smashed into the concrete before escalating because they know that at that point successful self defense is unlikely.
Of course, one has to have formed a belief that the attacker is imminently likely to use serious force and that belief has to be reasonable under the usual tests. But there is no requirement that I can discern that requires actually waiting until that happens.
A quick flip through the caselaw doesn't seem so clear either. A jury did acquit Bernhard Goetz (except on the carrying without a permit charge) despite none of the attackers even punching him, with the notion that when a group of strangers says "give me $5", they are implicitly threatening serious bodily harm. And there's a few more less prominent cases of deadly force in response to unarmed attacker(s) that I found that seem to imply that reasonable beliefs about imminent threats that are not yet materialized count.
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