United States v. Thomas

In this well-tried case, I would probably conclude that, for reasons suggested in the dissent, the instructions by the military judge were adequate to meet his duty to differentiate sua sponte between self-defense in relation to the intentional firing of *318the revolver and self-defense in relation to use of the revolver as a club to strike the victim. However, in light of the defense requests for instructions and the colloquy between defense counsel and the judge as to the two separate aspects of the issue of self-defense as raised by appellant’s testimony that he only was attempting to strike…