{"id":600,"date":"2012-10-19T13:48:23","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T17:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=600"},"modified":"2023-08-12T19:47:05","modified_gmt":"2023-08-12T23:47:05","slug":"10-the-reasonable-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/?p=600","title":{"rendered":"10. The “Reasonable Person”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n\n\n


The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 11: Excuse Me!
Excuse pg 10: Who is the “reasonable person”?<\/p>\n

Let’s go back to that phrase “reasonable person.<\/strong>” It’s used a lot in the law. In this defense, you’d need the jury to believe that a reasonable person\u2060\u2014not just the accused person\u2060\u2014would have been equally provoked.<\/p>\n

Average Joe talking head<\/em><\/p>\n

AVERAGE JOE<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s an “objective test.”<\/p>\n

(When you’re concerned with what the accused was actually thinking, we say you’re being\u00a0subjective.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When you’re concerned instead with what some hypothetical\u00a0reasonable person<\/strong> would have thought in that situation, you’re being\u00a0objective.<\/strong><\/span>)<\/p>\n

Legal theorists have tried for generations to come up with a definition of “reasonable person” that juries could apply. But\u00a0in real life,<\/strong> when a juror is asked to think of what a reasonable person would have done, he simply asks if\u00a0he<\/strong> would have acted that way\u00a0himself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A variety of people sitting in a jury box<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, the theoretical “reasonable person” in practice is simply\u00a0the jury itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[SUGGESTED EDIT: Mention that this makes sense, because the jury represents the community, and they’re applying their community’s values]<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>Transcript<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33,38,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-law","category-defenses","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawcomic.net\/guide\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}