Deadly Force Application: Don’t Let Your History Haunt You

By Scott Reitz

If you are involved in a shooting any and everything you have ever said, done, written or posted via the internet is subject to disclosure. This is far from an insignificant fact. One of the very first questions posed in a deposition is the disclosure of your Facebook, Twitter or other personal website accounts. Anything which you have ever posted either be it written, videotaped or still photographed can and will be produced in court especially if it is to the benefit of the opposition to do so. What you may consider to be ‘cute’ or funny or hysterically amusing at the time can very quickly be turned around to be used against you.

As a court qualified deadly force/tactics expert anything I have ever written no matter what the format may be can be called into question. All the cases on which I have worked for the past 26 years can be called into question. This subject has become problematic for others in the past. A website page which depicts death or that which depicts the willingness to apply deadly force can be devastating to a case. Emblems, T-shirts, posters and the like can also be used to damning effect by skilled attorneys. These factors are lost on the ‘less than professional’ individuals associated with such an industry which either instructs or is involved with the subject of deadly force.

Perception by a jury is everything. If you are perceived as an armchair warrior ‘wannabe’ eager to apply deadly force or one who disregards the sanctity of human life then you are most certainly in for a rough road ahead. If, as you are reading this you find it to be a mildly amusing subject rest assured that such will not be the case when you are seated in a 4 hour deposition under oath wherein every single word is transcribed, videoed and held up to intense scrutiny in the presence of a jury. In short, one’s unprofessional conduct prior to a shooting will very suddenly transgress into a ‘fun-meter pegged’ nightmare. This applies across the board to police, civilians and military members when applying deadly force within the U.S. wherein a case is brought before the courts.

Entire cases have and continue to this day to be hinged on singular or potentially several ‘points of fact’ that emerge from the evidence during the discovery process. Professionalism is professionalism pure and simple. Unethical and bombastic hateful diatribes bespeaks a total lack of professionalism and rightly so. The facts are the facts and there is no escaping this. It would take very little for me to unequivocally destroy the credibility of a less than professional individual, and I am not even an attorney. A halfway decent attorney would make a complete train wreck of the posers and thoughtless wannabes out there.

Imagine if you will that you were in fact to rightly and justifiably defend yourself. Imagine then that the case which protracts out over years now hinges and focuses not on what you did during the event itself, but rather what you had said or posted prior to the event. This then is the reality of the situation and something one needs to be acutely aware of. Remember that deadly force encompasses much more than the simple act of pressing the trigger. It is a full scale event and one not to be taken lightly.