People v. Riddle

Facts

The defendant’s friends, Robin Carter and James Billingsley, was at the defendant’s home. Billingsley testified that after Carter made a disparaging comment about the defendant’s fiancé, defendant went into the house and came back outside with a rifle. Billingsley testified that Carter was unarmed and did not approach the defendant, but the defendant shot him with the weapon.

The defendant testified that he intervened in an argument between Carter and Billingsley and that he told Carter, whom he considered to be “the more aggressive one,” to leave. Seeing a “dark object” in Carter’s hand and believing it to be a gun, defendant immediately reached for his rifle, which he testified was in his detached garage. Defendant stated that he aimed the rifle at Carter’s legs and pulled the trigger, intending only to scare him.

Carter was shot eleven times and died.

The defendant requested that the jury be instructed that there is no duty to retreat in one’s own home before exercising self-defense. The trial court rejected this request and told the jury:

“By law, a person must avoid using deadly force if he can safely do so. If the defendant could have safely retreated but did not do so, you can consider that fact along with all the other circumstances when you decide whether he went farther in protecting himself than he should have. However, if the defendant honestly and reasonably believed that it was immediately necessary to use deadly force to protect himself from an [imminent] threat of death or serious injury, the law does not require him to retreat. He may stand his ground and use the amount of force he believes necessary to protect himself.”

He was convicted of second-degree murder.