State v. Carter

In two areas I question the Court’s opinion: (1) the treatment of the instruction on self-defense, and (2) the analysis of the use of the “mug shot” of defendant.

I

As part of its instructions on self-defense, the trial court gave the following instruction:

*924“You are instructed that to justify a killing on the grounds of self-defense or of defense of one’s wife or one’s family it is necessary to establish that the person doing the killing was without fault in bringing on the difficulty, that is, that he was not the aggressor and did not promote the conflict.”

Although not objected to by defendant,…