Understanding Washington’s Stand Your Ground Law

• No Duty to Retreat: Individuals are not required to flee or avoid confrontation before using force to protect themselves.
• Lawful Location: The law applies only if you are in a location where you are legally allowed to be. Self-defense cannot be claimed if trespassing or unlawfully present on the property.
• Reasonable Fear: There must be a reasonable belief of imminent danger of harm to justify the use of force.
• Proportional Response: The force used must be proportional to the threat. Excessive force beyond what is necessary for protection is not permitted.
• Not the Initial Aggressor: The law does not protect individuals who provoked the confrontation or escalated the situation.
• Defense of Others: Washington law extends the right to use reasonable force to protect another person from imminent bodily harm or risk of death, provided the person being protected is not trespassing.
• Defense of Property: Reasonable force may be used to defend real or personal property against malicious trespass or interference.

Even with no duty to retreat, the force used must be reasonable. When there is no reasonable ground to believe that a person is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm, and it appears that only an ordinary battery is what’s intended, and all that is what the person fears, he has a right to stand his ground and repel such threatened assault, yet he has no right to repel a threatened assault with naked hands, by the use of a deadly weapon in a deadly manner, unless he believes, and has reasonable grounds to believe, that he is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm.