Women and defensive knife use

[Interloper]

Hello,

Does any one know of instances in any location where a woman has used a knife to successfully defend herself causing injury or the demise of an attacker? What where the legal ramifications of that came out of that incident? My curiosity is if women are given or would be given more legal leeway in defense of their person be it with a knife or even say an ASP?

Thanks again.

 

[DancesWithKnives]

I train with several LEOs and I used to date a female Deputy District Attorney. The general answer is yes. You are entitled to use deadly force to defend yourself (at least in my state) when you have a reasonable belief that you are in imminent danger of suffering death or grievous bodily injury at the hands of an attacker. For a woman, the number of situations in which she would reasonably fear grievous bodily injury is perceived to be greater.

I can't point you to specific examples, unfortunately. However, both LEOs and prosecutors have told me that they tend to give women (especially those attacked by men) more benefit of the doubt when use of deadly force is slightly into the gray area. Prosecutors with whom I have spoken generally believe that juries will be more likely to acquit women in marginal justification cases, so they are more reluctant to press the charges through trial.

The daughter of one of my instructors once ran off some punks with a knife, but she didn't have to do any cutting to make her point (maybe they'd seen her on the cover of Inside Kung Fu magazine).