Two Sets of Belief in the Law of Self-Defence: How Reasonable?

In one case, M saw a youth rob a woman in a street. M chased and caught the youth knocking him to the ground. The appellant who had only seen the later stages of the incident, got involved in trying to free the youth. M tried to explain the situation. A struggle followed, and the appellant assaulted M. He was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm. He pleaded self-defence and in his argument claimed that he honestly believed that the youth was being unlawfully assaulted by M. In another, an accused person caused the death of a member of an anti vice team by gunshot. He was spotted to have been committing an illegal activity when he was then checked and cornered. The members of the anti vive team charged towards the accused to arrest him. The accused open fire and caused the death of one of the members of the team. The defence of self defence was later successfully pleaded. The pertinent issue in both cases above is on the belief of the accused in his defence of self-defence. It is to be noted that there are two aspects of the accused’s belief that require thorough investigation: first, the accused’s belief concerning the situation entitling him to employ force in self-defence; and second, the accused’s belief as to the amount of force necessarily required to combat the threat. In both situation the court will have to decide on which approach of ‘reasonableness’ that suit best the course of justice; either, a purely subjective test of reasonableness, a purely objective test or a pragmatic mixture of subjective and objective test. This paper is to investigate on matters surrounding the interpretation of reasonable belief and its impact on the decided cases. It is a comparative study of Malaysian and English cases. An examination is Dr, Kulliyyah of Laws, Inte