Recently a fight in an alley off North Palm Drive ended with one man dead and a 19-year-old Beverly Hills resident charged with murder. Initially there were media reports that the situation was self-defense. Beverly Hills Police Department detectives eventually determined they had enough evidence to refer the investigation to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, which filed a murder case.
This case raises questions that are similar to what people would often ask me as hypotheticals, usually from folks who were certain they knew their rights but had some misconceptions. So let me use this moment to walk through what California law says about defending yourself. I am not a lawyer, and nothing here is legal advice. If you are ever actually in a violent confrontation: get safe, call 911, then an attorney, in that order.
California does not have a specific “stand your ground” statute, but jury instructions include that individuals have no legal duty to retreat if they reasonably believe they are in imminent danger of death or serious injury. The law lets you stand your ground and defend yourself.
However, there are additional issues that need to be considered. “Imminent” means right now! Not five minutes from now, not “he’s threatened me before,” not “I had a bad feeling.” The danger must be immediate enough that you must deal with it instantly. Fear of future harm, however well-founded, does not mean imminent.
Your belief must be reasonable, and it’s judged based on your situation and what you knew or believed at the time. For example, if someone pointed a realistic gun at you and you shot the person believing it was a gun, even if later it was determined the gun was a toy, your belief at that moment is critical. A jury will be asked what a reasonable person, knowing what you knew and standing where you stood, would have believed.
If you initiated the altercation, you probably lost your self-defense claim before it began. This is the part people miss most. If you’re the one who initiated or escalated the confrontation, California law generally strips your right to claim self-defense unless you genuinely tried to walk away and the other person wouldn’t let you, unless they suddenly answered your fists with a weapon. If you provoke a fight so you’ll have an “excuse” to use force, the law doesn’t just frown on that; it takes the defense off the table entirely.
There is also the concept of proportionality. You can use force proportional to the violence being used against you or someone else. You cannot use deadly force against someone who does not present a deadly threat. There are many important considerations here, too much for this short column. Property is not worth a life, and California law is clear on this point.
You can use reasonable force to stop someone from taking or damaging your property. You cannot use deadly force to do it. California courts settled this decades ago. Using deadly force to stop a crime is only justified when that crime itself threatens death or serious injury to a person. When someone is breaking into your car or rummaging through your trash cans, it is best to call 911, keep a safe distance and relay information to responding officers.
Winning the criminal case doesn’t end it. Even a finding of self-defense or an acquittal doesn’t protect you from a civil wrongful death lawsuit.
California gives no civil immunity for self-defense the way some other states do, and a civil case only must be proven by a preponderance of the evidence, more likely than not, a far lower bar than “beyond a reasonable doubt.” And if there’s a weapon involved that you weren’t legally carrying in the first place, that’s its own separate problem, self-defense or not.
What you shouldn’t do, in the moment, is simple: Don’t chase. Don’t escalate a shove into a weapon. Don’t assume you’re protected because you’re on your own street, in your own driveway, or defending your things instead of yourself or others. If you can safely disengage, disengage yourself; the safest self-defense case is the one you never had to make. In the event you do use force: call 911 immediately afterwards, stay at the scene, cooperate with police officers on the basic facts, and get a lawyer before you say much more than that.
I spent 30 years in law enforcement believing most people are decent and most encounters end without violence. That’s still very true in Beverly Hills, where homicides like the one on Palm Drive are genuinely rare. In cases of self-defense, the law is well established. It is worth understanding the law before you’re standing in court in front of a judge.
Mark Stainbrook is the retired Chief of Police of the Beverly Hills Police Department and current Executive Vice President of Lions4Security. He is not an attorney, and this column is not legal advice. Anyone with a legal question about their specific circumstances should consult a licensed California attorney.
