I don't know that a prosecutor ever said, "Well, you went outside." But it seems an obvious question to me and something that is easily avoidable by not going outside in such a situation. In general principle, to justify the use of lethal force there has to be the unavoidable danger of death or serious physical injury. If you knowingly leave the safety of your house to face someone, you have just removed the unavoidable part.
Self defense is far more clear cut if you stay inside, rather than going outside to confront or investigate a suspicious person who was otherwise not a threat to you or anyone else.
It weakens your assertion that you were in fear of your life when you leave the safety of your locked house to face, confront, or investigate someone.
To quote Tom Givens: "Never go looking for trouble without expecting to find it. In just about every single instance I know of where a permit holder or other lawfully armed citizen was charged after a shooting, he went outside his home or vehicle to confront someone "suspicious" or involved in some petty behavior like vandalism. You will get all the heartache you need in this world without going out of your way to get more."
You are in a better tactical and stronger legal position if you stay in your house and shoot them when they are in the process of breaking into your house. This removes any doubt of their intention. There are laws on the book in both NY and CA that justify the use of deadly physical force against someone in an occupied house. In NY you can use deadly physical force to terminate a burglary or an attempted burglary:
http://law.onecle.com/new-york/penal....20_35.20.html.
There are indeed a number of cases where people left the safety of their house to investigate or confront someone who was otherwise not a direct threat to their physical safety and suffered legal consequences. Had the people stayed inside of the houses, none of the shootings would have happened. Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head.
First, there was one that the Late Todd G related the incident of a Judge who shot someone who was threatening him and wound up getting charged. When I further asked him about it, he told me that the judge armed himself and went out on the porch to confront the guy. It would have been a different matter if the guy broke into his house.
Second, there was a situation that Massad Ayoob wrote about where someone armed himself and opened the door to "discuss his situation" with someone who believed the homeowner was having an affair with his wife. The larger man assaulted the homeowner and the homeowner wound up shooting him and killing him. The homeowner went on trial.
Third, the famous case of the guy in Louisiana who left his house to confront someone who knocked on one door and then the other and when the homeowner faced the person and ordered him to freeze he refused the man's order to freeze and approached him and the homeowner shot and killed him and it resulted in a nationally famous trial:
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/05...6184737697600/
If the person had remained inside all of these would have been avoided. Or if the person outside tried to break in, the person who shot them would have been in a much stronger legal situation and might not have even gone to trial. Look at the number of people shoot burglars in their own home who do not go to trial, unless they do something incredibly stupid that puts them outside of the law. Staying inside sacrifices nothing and gives you both a legal and tactical advantage.