VA · jury_instructions
Va. Model Jury Instr. Crim. No. 52.525
Self-Defense—Presentation of or Brandishing a Firearm (Right to Threaten Force)
If you believe from the evidence that the defendant was without fault in provoking or bringing
on the incident and if you further believe that the defendant reasonably feared, under the
circumstances as they appeared to him, that he was in danger of being killed or that he was in
danger of great bodily harm, then his [pointing, holding, brandishing] a firearm 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
00492538be04e594aff47bbd553f77d95b13af72a89da0d1591a8ee4f48b01ab
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.