Supreme Court leaves it to the trial courts to interpret the scope and operation of Idaho's "Self-Defense and defense of others immunity statute."

Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in State v. Loomis. Rather than recite the uncontested facts as established by the alleged victim, I urge you to read the statement of facts as recited by the Supreme Court. If anything, they are great bathroom reading material.

Again, our appellate courts have punted at an excellent opportunity to provide interpretation and teeth to our "self-defense and defense of others immunity statute", Idaho Code 19-202A. See State v. McNeil, 141, Idaho 383 (Ct. App. 2005). Rather, the Court noted "the parties have presented only speculation to indicate that the substantive issue in this case may recur." What this means is that we need to keep preserving issues of self-defense to present to the Court to force this issue. In the meantime, we will continue to have disparate approaches by our trial courts to this critical pre-trial issue.

Instead, the Supreme Court exhaustively reaffirmed that State v. Ruiz, 106 Idaho 336 (1984) is the law of the land and refused to recognize that Justice Bakes may have been right when he penned his dissenting opinion 25 years ago...Heck, even Chief Justice Roberts gets things wrong once in awhile.