ideastream's Rick Jackson spoke with Jonathan Witmer-Rich, an associate professor at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, about the legalities of the Michael Brelo case.
"The verdict as the judge explained it today more or less would apply similarly to an ordinary citizen, which is to say the judge applied a pretty standard self-defense instruction, whether this defendant reasonably believed that he or others were facing an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm," Witmer-Rich explained. "A police officer, just like anybody else in that circumstance, is entitled to use deadly force, and so I think it's actually a pretty similar standard to the one that would apply to ordinary citizens. “