elements of self defense

 Article 11 of the Revised Penal Code:

ARTICLE 11. Justifying Circumstances. - The following do not incur any criminal liability:

1. Anyone who acts in defense of his person or rights, provided that the following circumstances concur:

First. Unlawful aggression;

Second. Reasonable necessity of the means employed to prevent or repel it;

Third. Lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person defending himself.

2. Anyone who acts in defense of the person or rights of his spouse, ascendants, descendants, or legitimate, natural or adopted brothers or sisters, or of his relatives by affinity in the same degrees, and those by consanguinity within the fourth civil degree, provided that the first and second requisites prescribed in the next preceding circumstance are present, and the further requisite, in case the provocation was given by the person attacked, that the one making defense had no part therein.

A person invoking self-defense (or defense of a relative) admits to having inflicted harm upon another person - a potential criminal act under Title Eight (Crimes Against Persons) of the Revised Penal Code. However, he or she makes the additional, defensive contention that even as he or she may have inflicted harm, he or she nevertheless incurred no criminal liability as the looming danger upon his or her own person (or that of his or her relative) justified the infliction of protective harm to an erstwhile aggressor.

The accused's admission enables the prosecution to dispense with discharging its burden of proving that the accused performed acts, which would otherwise be the basis of criminal liability. All that remains to be established is whether the accused were justified in acting as he or she did. To this end, the accused's case must rise on its own merits:

It is settled that when an accused admits [harming] the victim but invokes self-defense to escape criminal liability, the accused assumes the burden to establish his plea by credible, clear and convincing evidence; otherwise, conviction would follow from his admission that he [harmed] the victim. Self-defense cannot be justifiably appreciated when uncorroborated by independent and competent evidence or when it is extremely doubtful by itself. Indeed, in invoking self-defense, the burden of evidence is shifted and the accused claiming self-defense must rely on the strength of his own evidence and not on the weakness of the prosecution.48

To successfully invoke self-defense, an accused must establish: "(1) unlawful aggression on the part of the victim; (2) reasonable necessity of the means employed to prevent or repel such aggression; and (3) lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person resorting to self-defense."49 Defense of a relative under Article 11 (2) of the Revised Penal Code requires the same first two (2) requisites as self-defense and, in lieu of the third "in case the provocation was given by the person attacked, that the one making the defense had no part therein."50

The first requisite - unlawful aggression - is the condition sine qua non of self-defense and defense of a relative:

At the heart of the claim of self-defense is the presence of an unlawful aggression committed against appellant. Without unlawful aggression, self-defense will not have a leg to stand on and this justifying circumstance cannot and will not be appreciated, even if the other elements are present. Unlawful aggression refers to an attack amounting to actual or imminent threat to the life and limb of the person claiming self-defense.51

The second requisite - reasonable necessity of the means employed to prevent or repel the aggression - requires a reasonable proportionality between the unlawful aggression and the defensive response: "[t]he means employed by the person invoking self-defense contemplates a rational equivalence between the means of attack and the defense."52 This is a matter that depends on the circumstances:

Reasonable necessity of the means employed does not imply material commensurability between the means of attack and defense. What the law requires is rational equivalence, in the consideration of which will enter as principal factors the emergency, the imminent danger to which the person attacked is exposed, and the instinct, more than the reason, that moves or impels the defense, and the proportionateness thereof does not depend upon the harm done, but rests upon the imminent danger of such injury ... As WE stated in the case of People vs. Lara, in emergencies of this kind, human nature does not act upon processes of formal reason but in obedience to the instinct of self-preservation; and when it is apparent that a person has reasonably acted upon this instinct, it is the duty of the courts to sanction the act and hold the act irresponsible in law for the consequences.53 (Citations omitted)

The third requisite - lack of sufficient provocation - requires the person mounting a defense to be reasonably blameless. He or she must not have antagonized or incited the attacker into launching an assault. This also requires a consideration of proportionality. As explained in People v. Boholst-Caballero,54 "[p]rovocation is sufficient when it is proportionate to the aggression, that is, adequate enough to impel one to attack the person claiming self-defense."55

II