Heyo,
It is so hard to keep these posts short, but I am really trying (this means however I am writing in an extremely general way)
So, self defense. Most states use a self-defense standard that requires a reasonable belief of danger (I have no idea what Florida uses I am afraid, but it is probably the same standard). Basically this means that if a person has a subjectively held belief, which is also objectively reasonable, that they are in imminent danger of attack (or to use deadly force in self-defense, in imminent danger of death of great bodily injury), then they may utilize self-defense. This sort of makes sense in a general way, which I will illustrate using the following example. Party A is sitting in the bench, when party B approaches with a drawn gun and says “I am going to shoot you”. Party A would almost certainly have a reasonable belief of impending death or serious bodily injury and so would be able to utilize self-defense style self help. Society doesn’t want to make a person wait until the gun is actually fired by party A before allowing party B to defend himself.
So, all that seemed to have happened here (from very briefly reading the reported facts, which may be missing some or a lot of important points, as is often the case when you read about this kind of stuff in the paper) is that counsel is arguing that the defendant had a reasonable belief that an attack was imminent. Counsel then ostensibly went on to suggest that the government did the same thing with drone strikes or whatever. Whether this is ill advised or not I couldn’t guess without knowing more about the case, but it seems to really be more of a goofy illustration of a sound legal theory than a whole new/ridiculous legal theory of self-defense.
