2019 US Virgin Islands Code
Title 14 - Crimes
Chapter 45 - Homicide
§ 927. Justifiable homicide defined
- Homicide is justifiable when committed by—
(1) public officers and those acting by their command in their aid and assistance,
(A) in obedience to any judgment of a competent court;
(B) when necessarily committed in overcoming actual resistance to the execution of some legal process, or in the discharge of any other legal duty; or
(C) when necessarily committed in retaking felons who have been rescued or have escaped, or when necessarily committed in arresting persons charged with felony, and who are fleeing from justice or resisting such arrest;
(2) any person—
(A) when resisting any attempt to murder any person, or to commit a felony, or to do some great bodily injury upon any person;
(B) when committed in defense of habitation, property, or person, against one who manifestly intends or endeavors, by violence or surprise to commit a felony, or against one who manifestly intends and endeavors, in a violent, riotous or tumultuous manner, to enter the habitation of another for the purpose of offering violence to any person therein;
(C) when committed in the lawful defense of such person, or of a wife or husband, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant of such person, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to commit a felony, or to do some great bodily injury, and imminent danger of such design being accomplished; but such person, or the person on whose behalf the defense was made, if he was the assailant or engaged in mortal combat, must really and in good faith have endeavored to decline any further struggle before the homicide was committed; or
(D) when necessarily committed in attempting by lawful ways and means to apprehend any person for any felony committed or in lawfully suppressing any riot, or in lawfully keeping or preserving the peace.
