What legal defenses did the Ohio National Guard members use in Kent State prosecutions?

1. Self‑defense and the sniper claim

At the core of the Guardsmen’s narrative was that they fired in self‑defense because they believed they were under hostile fire; multiple guardsmen reported hearing shots and some claimed a sniper had fired on them from the crowd or nearby buildings — a claim the Guard’s command publicly repeated at the time ^[1]. Later official investigations undercut that version: an FBI inquiry concluded the Guard was not under fire and suggested the self‑defense story had been “fabricated subsequent to the event,” while the Scranton (President’s Commission on Campus Unrest) report called the shootings “unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable” — but the initial self‑defense claim remained central to the Guardsmen’s legal posture ^{[2] [1]}.

2. Denying criminal intent — the federal civil‑rights framework

Prosecutors charged individual guardsmen with federal civil‑rights violations requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants willfully intended to deprive students of their constitutional rights; Judge Frank J. Battisti concluded the government had failed to meet that high mens‑rea standard and acquitted eight guardsmen, a decision that explicitly reflected the weakness of the government’s proof of specific criminal intent rather than a factual finding that no one fired the shots ^[3]. Reporting from the period and later accounts stress that the legal question in the criminal trial turned on intent under federal law — a legal bridge the government could not cross to the judge’s satisfaction ^[3].

3. Procedural and evidentiary tactics and the mid‑trial turning point

Defense strategy leaned heavily on attacking the prosecution’s evidentiary case and exploiting procedural vulnerabilities: the government’s inability to present conclusive ballistic, eyewitness, and intent evidence meant that by the time of trial a judge deemed the case too weak to continue, effectively sparing the guardsmen from presenting affirmative defenses at length ^{[5] [3]}. Contemporary and retrospective coverage emphasizes that the weakness of the prosecution’s case — and not necessarily the factual truth of what happened — shaped the legal outcome, with Battisti’s dismissal described as ending the trial “in the middle” because of prosecutorial shortcomings ^{[5] [3]}.

4. Civil suits, settlements and how defenses were reframed

Parallel civil litigation produced different legal dynamics: the ACLU filed damage suits seeking millions, and although juries at times ruled for the Guard, the long litigation ultimately ended in a 1979 out‑of‑court settlement in which 28 defendants signed a statement and the State of Ohio paid $675,000 to victims and families — an outcome the Guardsmen and their supporters treated as vindication even as plaintiffs and civil‑liberties groups framed the settlement as a partial, state‑borne acknowledgment of wrongdoing ^{[6] [4] [2] [7]}. The settlement skirted criminal culpability while producing a measured apology from some Guardsmen but no criminal convictions ^{[4] [2]}.

5. Conflicting official findings and political context

The legal defenses cannot be separated from the broader contest of narratives: federal investigative threads and the Scranton Commission found the shootings unjustified and questioned self‑defense claims, while local public sentiment and political pressures in Ohio often sided with the Guard; civil‑rights advocates — notably the ACLU — continued to press for accountability even after federal authorities declined reopening the case decades later, framing the legal outcomes as products of prosecutorial weakness and political obstacles rather than definitive exoneration ^{[1] [2] [8] [9]}. Scholarly reexaminations of individual guardsmen’s roles underscore that disputed evidence and competing institutional agendas have left the factual and moral questions contested long after the courtroom rulings ^[10].

Conclusion

Legally, the Guardsmen relied on self‑defense narratives, claims of having been fired upon, and aggressive challenges to the government’s proof of willful civil‑rights violations; those defenses, combined with evidentiary and procedural rulings, led to acquittals or dismissals in criminal court and an eventual civil settlement paid by the state — outcomes that satisfied some constituencies while civil‑liberties groups and federal reports continued to call the shootings unjustified and the accountability incomplete ^{[3] [4] [2] [8]}.