Self-defense costa Rican criminal law

Abstract

Self-defense is one required to repel from another a current or illegitimate aggression. His fundamental thought is that the right does not have to yield to the unjust. The defense may go as far as is required for immediate effective defense, but it must not go more allied than is strictly necessary for the stated purpose. That is why the offender must use the slightest means, which, as the case may be, until the death of the aggressor, provided that this is the means of effective, less serious defence than is available to the defender.

That is why the dominant doctrine has said that self-defence is based on an attack, which can be regarded as any threat of aggression, caused by man, of legally protected property or interests. We must keep in mind that the attack is current when it is imminent, that is, it is beginning, that it has started or lasts yet. Liable for self-defence shall then be any good belonging to the assaulted person or to a third party and any legally recognized interest.

In self-defence there are not, as some believe, two interests in opposition and conflict, of which one prevails over the other, as would be the case of the state of need, but a single interest, that of the assaulted person, who is protected by law, since the legal order, only to him attributes value and grants protection directly to the one to whom that interest belongs , because he could not be defended without his reaction.