The Statutory Law of Self-Defense in North Carolina

Several years ago (some might say that’s an understatement) I wrote The Law of Self-Defense in North Carolina, in which I looked at over 200 years’ worth of North Carolina court opinions on self-defense and related defenses, such as defense of others and defense of habitation. The book’s approach reflected that North Carolina was a common law state when it came to self-defense. The right to act in self-defense depended primarily on the authority of court decisions. The General Assembly’s adoption in 2011 of three defensive force statutes—G.S. 14-51.2, G.S. 14-51.3, and G.S. 14-51.4—changed that. An understanding of the law of self-defense in North Carolina now must begin with the statutory law of self-defense. I must admit that I did not fully appreciate the significance of the statutes when they first appeared. I saw them as revising, supplementing, and clarifying the common law. Now that we have almost twenty reported appellate decisions that have grappled with the statutes (as well as some unpublished decisions), I can see I had it wrong. The statutes create independent defenses, with their own requirements. The enormous body of common law remains significant, both as a means for interpreting and applying the statutes and as a source of additional rights. It is important to recognize, however, that the statutes do not necessarily align with the common law. The statutory defenses affect both the right to use defensive force outside the courtroom in the real world and the procedures used in the formal world of the courtroom [...]