Legal Analysis of Tilamuta District Court Decision No. 12/Pid.B/2025/PN Tmt. on a Victim Turned Offender from the Perspective of Justice

Necessary defence ( noodweer) is a justification in criminal law that removes the unlawfulness of an act when it is committed in response to an immediate and unlawful attack. A problem arises when a person who was previously the victim of assault is subsequently named an offender in a later case, as occurred in Tilamuta District Court Decision No. 12/Pid.B/2025/PN Tmt. This article aims to analyse whether the elements of necessary defence are satisfied in that decision and to examine the decision from the standpoint of legal justice. The study employs a normative legal method with statute and case approaches, analysed descriptively and analytically using primary, secondary, and tertiary legal materials. The findings show that the elements of necessary defence are satisfied at the initial phase of the incident, when the defendant faced an immediate and real physical attack from the victim inside the room, but that the acts committed after leaving the room exceeded the limits of necessity and proportionality in defence. Viewed through the theories of justice of Gustav Radbruch, Aristotle, and John Rawls, the punishment of the defendant, who had previously been a victim in Decision No. 43/Pid.B/2024/PN Tmt., should proportionately take that history into account, so that criminal liability is imposed only for acts that genuinely exceeded the limits of necessary defence