Nuances in self defense.

It can't be stressed enough that it's ridiculous to expect people who engage in self-defense or defense of others to know the medical history of the person posing the threat.

A lot of self-defense methods are non-lethal to most people. If you were trained in grappling methods in the military -- particularly the marines -- you'd be dealing with healthy, sober people. Out on the street, you're not always dealing with healthy, sober people. Still, it could very well be because the person is sober that he became a threat, and because the person wasn't sober that your non-lethal defense method ended up killing him.

When I was drinking myself to death, my heart rate was often through the roof. If I were an angry drunk, which I never was, and I posed a threat to another person, and somebody subdued me in a Jordan Neely or George Floyd method -- both are non-lethal force methods -- I could have ended up in cardiac arrest and died. That shouldn't be regarded as the fault of the person doing the restraining.

If you pump your body full of mind and body altering drugs, how you behave when your on those drugs is on you. How your body responds if and when somebody tackles you or restrains you is on you.

Now, that said, drugs aren't always a factor. They were a factor with George Floyd and Jordan Neely. Still, the important factor is, did the person pose a threat?

If the answer is yes, there's still a factor of proportionality. If the person was posing a deadly force threat, then using deadly force in defense is broadly justified. If the person makes it clear that his goal is just to rough you up a bit, you should use non-lethal force, even though people have been killed by a punch to the face or a shove that made them fall wrong. If the person is posing a non-lethal force threat, you shouldn't have an obligation to check if he has a lung condition, or a heart condition, or a liver problem, or if he's a hemophiliac before you respond with proportional force.

If that proportional force results in the guy dying because he had a medical problem that you didn't and couldn't know about, you should be lawfully clear. You're definitely ethically clear.

Finally, remember, in almost no case is an attacker going to know the victim's medical history, or whether or not the victim had been drinking, or whether or not the victim is on some kind of prescription drug that's comprising his or her body. Usually, attackers don't care. Usually, criminals don't care.

It's nonsensical and immoral to hold defenders to an impossible standard of knowing something that nobody would be expected to know. If you know that you're being attacked, all you should be expected to know is that you are being attacked (or somebody else), what's appropriate to stop the threat, and when to stop.