The first and most well known is that of self-defense . This defense is used when individuals believe that their personal safety was threatened, therefore, they needed to protect themselves. It should be noted that limits exist. The first is that you must have tried to escape, secondly, you have to use reasonable self-defense, and cannot shoot someone who was punching you. Another very common one is entrapment , which has been used in recent years by a number of well known individuals, such as John Delorean, and Mayor Marion Barry.
Entrapment occurs when an individual was induced into the criminal act by a law enforcement officer.
Stated differently, the officers create the opportunity for the act to occur. In the case of Delorean, he was successful in claiming FBI agents had set him up to buy drugs, and that he would not have done so not given the opportunity. A third defense is known as provocation , which suggests that the individual was pushed to the point of committing the act. The last situational defense that we are going to cover is consent . A very interesting case surrounds the use of consent as a defense.