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The Indiana Supreme Court overturned an Indianapolis man’s battery conviction Wednesday, finding his conduct was necessary self-defense.
“This is a case about a good guy with a gun shooting a bad guy with a gun when the only choices were to shoot or be shot,” Justice Derek Molter wrote for the court.
In 2021, Antonio Turner was one of three students studying organic chemistry at a female classmate’s home in Indianapolis. While he was there, the classmate’s jealous love interest, Dequan Briscoe, repeatedly called her and threatened to “pull up” when he learned Turner was in the home.
After Turner had heard Briscoe’s threat on speakerphone, he walked outside to his car. Moments later, he sensed the unfamiliar car screeching toward him was an ambush, according to court records.
Since he didn’t have time to reach the house and had nowhere to hide, he turned while running and fired four shots into the car, wounding Briscoe.
Turner fired based on his intuition—he didn’t recognize the car, couldn’t see through its darkly tinted windows, and wouldn’t have recognized Briscoe if he saw him. But that intuition proved prescient.
It turned out the Briscoe was aiming a handgun to shoot Turner just before Turner began firing, court records show.
The state charged Turner with Level 5 felony battery by means of a deadly weapon.
Marion Superior Court Magistrate Judge Andrew Borland convicted Turner but agreed that it was necessary for Turner to fire at Briscoe to avoid being shot. But Turner’s self-defense justification was rejected at trial because the lower court found it unreasonable for Turner to fire at a car that he couldn’t see into at the moment, an act that could only be justified in hindsight.
Borland said at the time that he believed Turner’s choices were a felony or a funeral, but that Indiana’s self-defense law gave him no choice but to convict.
The high court disagreed, stating that this case presented a question of first impression in Indiana.
“Do we deprive defendants of the benefit of hindsight when it reveals their conduct was necessary in self-defense, even though that necessity wasn’t fully apparent in the moment?” Molter wrote.
The high court said it based its decision on a sentence in the self-defense statute that the Indiana Court of Appeals has not interpreted before.
“No person, employer, or estate of a person in this state shall be placed in legal jeopardy of any kind whatsoever for protecting the person or a third person by reasonable means necessary,” Indiana Code § 35-41-3-2 reads.
Bryan Cook, Turner’s attorney, called the opinion a “legal miracle.”
“We are extremely grateful that the Indiana Supreme Court took the time to thoroughly examine the extraordinary fact pattern that this case presented and cogently apply as well as clarify Indiana’s self-defense laws to the benefit of good citizens needing to protect themselves from bad citizens,” Cook said. “Turner was really scared for his life and that of his co-ed study mates on the night of this ambush.”
Cook said the ruling “provides a gold mine of jury instructions to support self-defense cases.”
Turner already has served 20 months of his two-year probation term.
All five justices on the state’s high court concurred with the decision, but Justice Christopher Goff agreed only with the final judgment in a separate opinion.
He wrote that the statutory provision which the court relies on isn’t clear.
“And its novel interpretation, I fear, will create uncertainty in the law, leading to potentially harmful consequences,” Goff wrote. “What’s more, even if I were to agree with the Court’s interpretation, its holding rests on a flawed premise—there’s simply nothing in the record to support the conclusion that ‘Turner avoided being shot by Briscoe only by shooting Briscoe first’.”
Goff continued that under the “reasonable belief” standard, the circumstances justified Turner’s actions.
The case is Antonio Turner v. State of Indiana, 24S-CR-147.
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