Why Self-Defense Cases Cost So Much More Than Other Criminal Cases

A self-defense claim doesn’t just require defending against the underlying charge — it requires proving a negative: that the defendant didn’t act unlawfully, despite having caused real harm. That typically means:

• Expert witnesses, including use-of-force experts, forensic pathologists, ballistics or biomechanics experts, who can each run $5,000 to $25,000+
• Private investigators to track down witnesses, investigate the scene, and pull surveillance footage
• Jury consultants and trial exhibit specialists, especially in cases that draw public attention
• Longer trials, because these cases often become “battles of experts” and credibility contests rather than quick, clean prosecutions

Based on our experience defending members, legal defense for a self-defense shooting resulting in death lands around a minimum of roughly $100,000 for pretrial work alone, and that figure covers attorney time only, not investigators, experts, or trial costs. Add a trial, and you could be easily looking at another $100,000 or more on top of that.

How do we know? Second Call Defense has cut checks for $100,000 to defend our members.

Two of the highest-profile self-defense cases of the last decade back them up with real dollar figures.

Case Study: Kyle Rittenhouse (Kenosha, Wisconsin, 2020)

Kyle Rittenhouse was 17 when he shot three people, killing two, during unrest in Kenosha in August 2020. He was charged with multiple felonies, including first-degree intentional homicide, and his attorneys argued self-defense throughout.

The public fundraising trail on his case gives a rare, itemized look at what this kind of defense actually costs:

• Within days of his arrest, an initial GiveSendGo campaign had raised roughly $187,000
• By early September 2020, that had grown past $300,000
• By June 2021, about ten months into the case, with trial still months away, his family’s fund and a related LLC had raised $464,111 total, and had already spent $362,050 of it on attorney fees, investigators, legal consultants, expert witnesses, and security
• Just before closing arguments in November 2021, his mother sent supporters an appeal estimating that the legal costs for that single month alone would run around $110,000

Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges in November 2021. Total spending across the roughly 15-month case, from arrest to verdict, ran well into six figures, and that’s just the amount that’s publicly documented through fundraising disclosures. It doesn’t count whatever wasn’t itemized publicly, or costs absorbed by the pro bono/discounted arrangements his high-profile legal team reportedly extended.

Case Study: Daniel Penny (New York City, 2023–2024)

Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old Marine veteran, put Jordan Neely – a homeless man suffering from untreated mental illness and acting erratically on a subway car – into a chokehold that resulted in Neely’s death. Penny was charged with second-degree manslaughter and, later, criminally negligent homicide. His defense argued he was protecting himself and other passengers.

The fundraising numbers here escalated even faster than in the Rittenhouse case:

• His attorneys launched a GiveSendGo campaign within days of his arraignment; it passed $280,000 within about three days
• It surpassed $1 million less than a week after launch
• It hit roughly $1.5 million the next day, and nearly $2 million within two weeks – boosted by high-profile donations and a tweet of support from then-Florida governor Ron DeSantis
• By the time his trial approached in late 2024, the fund had grown to roughly $2.9 million

A defense attorney not involved in the case, interviewed at the time, estimated that Penny’s actual legal costs alone could easily reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars – well below the total raised, with the excess earmarked for a mental health advocacy donation per the fund’s own terms.

Penny was acquitted of all charges in December 2024 after the more serious manslaughter count was dismissed when the jury deadlocked, and jurors found him not guilty of criminally negligent homicide on the remaining count.

Even after exoneration, Neely’s aggrieved father has filed a civil lawsuit against Penny. That case has yet to be resolved.

READ MORE: The Daniel Penny Effect