VA · jury_instructions
Va. Model Jury Instr. Crim. No. 33.800
Self-Defense—Defendant Without Fault
If you believe that the defendant was without fault in provoking or bringing on the [fight;
difficulty], and you further believe that:
(1) he reasonably feared, under the circumstances as they appeared to him, that he was in
imminent danger of being killed or that he was in imminent danger of great bodily harm; and
(2) he used no more force, under the circumstances as they appeared to him, than was reasonably
necessary to protect himself from the perceived harm,
then the killing was in self-defense, and you shall find the defendant not guilty.
History
Virginia Model Jury Instructions – Criminal, Release 26, October 2025. The unannotated set, posted by the Supreme Court of Virginia at vacourts.gov; the book states that it is made available with the permission of the publisher, Matthew Bender & Company, Inc.
Provenance
- Source
- vacourts.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-11
- Edition
- crim-2025-10-01
- Content hash
8f043fa3c69ede3bc23550fc6993de7af9e180f22c7c9ede59b820665aa403ce
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.