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You have the right to defend yourself when you are attacked. It’s not a right that the government gives you. In the legal systems of Western civilization, from the beginning, self-defense has been considered an inalienable right given us by God and/or Nature, and the government’s duty is simply to protect the self-defense right that you were born with.

If you are charged with a crime in the state of New York – particularly an assault, battery, or homicide – and you believe that you were acting in self-defense, arrange at once to consult an experienced assault and batter lawyer.

When can you legally defend yourself if you are attacked in New York? Like everything else in the law, the answer is at once simple and complicated – “It depends.”

When you offer self-defense as your defense against a criminal charge, you are admitting that you committed the act, but you’re claiming that in your case, your action was legally justifiable. New York law precisely defines “justification” (in New York Penal Code Article 35). You may only defend yourself in a way that is “proportionate” and “reasonable.” In other words, if someone walks up and punches you in the nose, you are probably justified if you punch that person in the nose, but you are not justified if you take out a pistol and shoot the person. But if you punch the person in the nose and the person pulls out a switchblade, shooting that person may or may not be at that point justifiable. Every case is different, and every case is considered individually. Justification works as a defense in New York courts only if two conditions are met:

• You genuinely believed that you had to use force to defend yourself.
• A neutral and average person looking at the situation would reach the same conclusion.

Although much less common than self defense, sleepwalking is another defense that can be used to justify a crime. Sleepwalking has been used as a successful criminal defense for everything from arson to murder. A report from the Sleep Epidemiology Research Center at Stanford University estimates that 29 percent of adults have sleepwalked at least once. Sleep researchers – who can measure the brain’s electrical patterns to determine if a person is awake or asleep – have seen people sleep-talk, sleepwalk, and even eat in their sleep, right in the laboratory. Experts do not classify sleepwalking as a mental illness but rather as a sleep disorder. Sometimes while sleepwalking, people have committed serious crimes.

Sleepwalking is only successful as a criminal defense if several elements are in place. An acknowledged record of sleepwalking by the defendant, established by eyewitnesses, is almost essential. It’s also vital that there’s no motive for the crime.  If both of these elements are in place, a jury may be willing to consider a sleepwalking defense.

Justification and self-defense are quite complicated in New York law. If you’re charged with any crime on Long Island or in any of the five boroughs, get legal help at once, and contact an experienced Queens criminal defense lawyer immediately.

If you’re charged with any crime in the Long Island and New York City area, do not plead guilty, do not try to act as your own attorney, and if it’s at all possible, do not let yourself be represented by a public defender. Instead, get reliable and trustworthy legal help by contacting an experienced Long Island criminal defense attorney. Pleading guilty on your own or at the urging of a public defender is not in your best interests, even though people apparently plead guilty all the time to crimes they did not commit.

According to the findings of the Innocence Project, about ten percent of those defendants who were later exonerated by DNA evidence through Innocence Project efforts pled guilty to a crime they did not commit. What would cause anyone to do that? The Honorable Jed S. Rakoff, United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York, examines that question in the November 20, 2014 New York Review of Books. The judge points to institutional pressures that lead innocent people to plead guilty, including the plea-bargaining system and the threat of mandatory minimum sentences.

In 2012, for example, the average sentence for federal narcotics defendants who entered into any kind of plea bargain was five years and four months, while the average sentence for defendants who went to trial was sixteen years. Public defenders are obviously unable to represent adequately all of their clients in courtroom trials, so they often recommend accepting the plea bargain offered by a prosecutor. Only an experienced, seasoned criminal defense attorney can be relied on to take your case to trial, if necessary, and to fight aggressively for justice on your behalf.

Even if a defendant doesn’t plead guilty, he or she may still be found guilty because of other circumstances. Those charged with crimes in the 21st century face a threat that they really should not have to face from the criminal justice system: the possibility that laboratory tests important to their cases has been corrupted or even, in some cases, intentionally falsified by crime lab technicians.

Lab tests can be corrupted by a technician’s negligence, but money might be even more corrupting. A number of crime labs are funded exclusively by fees that must be paid by defendants who are found guilty. Louisiana’s Acadiana Crime Lab receives $50 for each DUI conviction, and the fees are the lab’s only steady income. It’s also a $50 fee in Broward County, Florida, and in North Carolina, it’s $600 per conviction. It doesn’t take a lawyer to see the ethical problem and the conflict of interest when labs are paid only in cases that end with convictions.

Never plead guilty to any criminal charge against you, and do not accept a plea bargain unless a seasoned New York criminal defense lawyer advises you to do so. If you’re charged with any crime anywhere in or near the New York City area, get reliable legal representation and consult at once with an experienced Long Island criminal defense attorney.