Judicial Determination of Post-Event Defense Acts: An Approach Based on “Integrated Defense Acts”

Traditional criminal law theory uniformly regards post-event defense as untimely defense, imposing overly stringent criteria for determination and neglecting the integrity of defensive acts. To narrow the scope of untimely defense, this paper proposes introducing the concept of “quantitative excessive defense”, which evaluates counteractions during the event and subsequent pursuit actions as “integrated defense acts”, thereby replacing the traditional fragmented evaluation model of “justifiable defense + simple crime” with a “holistic excessive defense” framework. Its legal theoretical basis lies in the recognition that multiple continuous defensive acts possess integrity under criminal law evaluation. Consequently, when determining quantitative excessive defense, the focus should not be on isolating whether post-event defense acts caused significant harm but on assessing whether the integrated defense acts collectively resulted in substantial harm. This approach deducts the illegality corresponding to justifiable counteractions and reflects this deduction in criminal charges.