1. Chapter 10.2
Justifications

2. In certain cases the accused is exonerated from committing a criminal act because the circumstances justified their contact.

3. Self defence
The Criminal Code permits you to defend yourself, those under your protection, your movable property, and your dwelling and real property. However, you can only use force that is ‘necessary’ and ‘reasonable’ according to the circumstances.
The Criminal Code allows you to stop a thief from taking your personal property or to take it back, as long as you do not strike the thief or cause bodily harm. You can do more to defend your dwelling. Under section 40, you are ‘justified in using as much force as is necessary to prevent any person from forcibly breaking into or forcibly entering your dwelling-house without lawful authority.’

4. Battered Woman Syndrome
The courts have tried a number of cases in which women in abusive relationships reacted by killing their spouses. R. v. Lavallee marked the first time that battered woman syndrome (the effects of prolonged spousal abuse) was used to advance the jurisdiction of self defence. The Supreme Court stated that in cases involving battered woman syndrome, the jury should be instructed on the following three elements:
Why an abused woman might remain in an abusive relationship
The nature and extent of the violence that may exist in a battering relationship
The defendant’s ability to perceive danger from her abuser

5. It should be noted that battered woman’s syndrome is not a defence in itself, rather a psychiatric explanation of an abused woman’s state of mind that can be used to help advance the justification of self defence. Merely establishing that a woman suffers from battered woman syndrome does not necessary justify an act of violence against the abuser.

6. Defence of a Dwelling
A person is allowed to defend his or her dwelling from any lawful entry and to remove a trespasser if he or she has entered. The force must be reasonable under the circumstances. If the trespasser resists the owner’s attempts to protect the dwelling, the trespasser is considered under law to be committing assault. The self defence provisions in the code would then apply, allowing the owner to use whatever force might be necessary.

7. Necessity
The defence of necessity means that the accused had no reasonable alternative to committing an illegal act. For example, Luke severs his hand with a band saw. Bo puts the hand on ice and drives Luke to the hospital running a red light on the way. After Luke is taken into emergency, a police officer hands Bo a summons for dangerous operation of a motor vehicle. Bo uses the defence of necessity because he believed his conduct was absolutely necessary to keep Luke from bleeding to death.

8. For the defence of necessity to succeed, all of the following conditions must be met:
the accused must show that the act was done to avoid a greater harm
there was no reasonable opportunity for an alternative course of action that did not involve a breach of the law.
the harm inflicted must be less than the harm avoided

9. Compulsion or Duress
A person will be excused from having committed an offence if the accused did so under compulsion or duress (forced by threats of death or bodily harm). This cannot be used as a defence in violent crimes such as murder, sexual assult, robbery and assault with a weapon. Two provisions of compulsion or duress must be present:
the threatener has to be physically present when the offence is committed
the threat has to be immediate, on the point of being carried out. (may have changed since the book was printed)

10. Provocation
Provocation is any act or insult that causes a reasonable person to lose self-control. This defence only applies to the crime of murder. Once the court is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused has committed murder, provocation may be considered as a partial defence to reduce the conviction from murder to manslaughter. In order for the defence of provocation to be successful, all four of the following must be proven:
a wrongful act or insult occurred
this act or insult was sufficient to deprive an ordinary person of the power of self-control
the person responded suddenly
the person responded before there was time for passion to cool.