Back from a Vegas Vay-cay and going to make a quick omnibus reply. May or may not get back to this; school starts up next week and it's back to lurking for me.
The good Doctor:
Necessary and reasonable force has to mean the force you actually have available. If you can't safely physically engage with the assailant, for lack of training or strength, and a gun is the only other option you have, then the gun is reasonable force.
Fair enough. Though ideally one would warn him off first.
Ideally in the case of someone being there for harmless reasons, yes. Ideally in the case of someone being there to hurt and kill you? That's not a judgement you or I can make. And determining which situation the resident is in is something only they can do at the time.
Ringing a doorbell is not criminal.
No, it's not. The case where the Japanese student was killed for doing so was clearly decided not under "Castle doctrine", which did not justify the shooting, but under racial animus. (The proof of this is the subsequent case where a
white person was gunned down "in self-defense" under largely the same circumstances and the shooter went to jail.)
Your standard puts innocent home defenders in the position of worrying more about the safety of the criminal than the criminal is concerned about theirs.
No.
Oh, well, if you say so.
How much should you fear for your life when you ring a doorbell?
None at all, but the Castle Doctrine gives no protection to doorbell shooters.
Straggler:
However you spin it you are advocating and supporting a law which makes it legally acceptable to kill someone on your property based solely on the belief that they are going to take a microwave from your property.
It's not spin. You've agreed that the homeowner has only his judgement to rely on, so no matter how unreasonable you may think it is for a home defender to rely only on his
belief that he's using force to expel someone determined to commit a felony in his home, you've given absolutely no example of any other standard he might have available. You've admitted that he can't call up a judge. You've admitted that a jury can't rule on the issue until it's already over. You've admitted that the law can't demand that you do something that is illegal, therefore any compulsion made under law must be legal.
Who else's judgement are you supposed to use in regards to whether or not someone has come into your home to commit a felony, if not you're own? It's a simple question, how come you can't answer it?
NOT based on them being a mortal or physical threat. NOT even based on the belief that they are a physical threat of any sort. Based on the belief that they are going to steal your fucking microwave!!
That they're there to commit a felony is why they're a threat, because criminals entering your home to commit felonies puts every single resident at mortal risk. It's not fair to ask residents to be the one to bear the burden of that danger in order to privilege thieves. That's an insane standard that puts all the burden of criminality on the victims. If protecting victims means that, in an unfortunate instance someone is killed because they put resident at risk by breaking in to take a microwave, that's sad, but it's also very appropriate that the physical burden of risk was borne by the person who made the choice to engage in criminality, not his victims. The standard that completely inverts that is madness.
Onifire:
Yes, but someone in your home doesn't automatically make it a B/E. Your brother could be there, drunk, in the dark, disoriented.
Killing someone by reckless operation of a car while drunk is still a crime, because being drunk doesn't obviate someone's responsibility to follow the law. And your drunk disoriented brother could still be a threat:
No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.woai.com/mostpopular/story/Police-Man-shoots-and-kills-brother-inside/dNjyoYauIk-ungppspHZxQ.cspx
quote:
TOLONO, Illinois (NBC News Channel) -- A man has been jailed on murder charges after shooting his brother at a grocery store the two owned together. Employees say the brothers began arguing at their IGA Store in Tolono when gunfire erupted.
I don't envy the person who has to decide whether or not to draw down on his own brother but fratricide is not so out of the realm of possibility, for instance, that we don't have a specific word for it.
They are in the dark, frightened and here you come pointing a gun at them screaming that you'll shoot.
Hopefully when you see it's your brother, you won't. But what if he mistakes
your home for his, and thinks
you're the intruder? Couldn't he still be a danger to you?
I can describe a shitload of scenarios where there is no B/E happening, you can too.
But you didn't. There's no exception in the law to B&E law because it's your brother; your brother has no right to force his way into your home, drunk or not, and if you don't want him there and want to be a dick to family, you're perfectly justified in having him arrested for it.
He could also be mistaken for many reasons and you may act in haste.
Sure. For instance here's a case where almost exactly what you describe occurred:
Rocky Mountain News
quote:
COLORADO SPRINGS A man who was out socializing Sunday evening was later dropped off at the wrong house, where a resident - believing the man was forcing his way into the house - shot and killed him.
Of course, the way the story is written is a little cock-eyed - "believing the man was forcing his way into the house" isn't entirely accurate because the man
was forcing his way into the house; he'd gone around back and broken a window to try to let himself in. But the fact that the man was drunk and mistaken doesn't obviate his responsibility for committing a crime, no more than it would had he succeeded in entering and then come to the conclusion that the residents of the home were the "intruders" and killed them.
It's a tragic accident, but it's an entirely justified shooting because the man
was breaking and entering, even if he didn't believe he was. Again, we give deference to the beliefs of innocent residents, not lawbreakers. "Ignorance of the law is not a defense", you don't have to be aware that you're breaking a law to break it, and we don't put the physical burden of lawbreaking on law-abiders if we can help it.
And of course this man was doing
exactly what
this man was doing:
No webpage found at provided URL: http://wn.com/Woman_calls_911_and_ends_up_shooting_intruder
And in this case the man
was here to break, enter, rob, and potentially harm or kill the elderly resident, who couldn't possibly have been expected to resist her attacker using anything but a firearm.
I'm not saying you shouldn't approach the sutuation with caution, but there is no need for deadly force until it has been established that it is needed.
Someone committing a crime while being unlawfully in your home is one of the things that establishes that deadly force may be needed. And again it's important to show deference to the circumstances a home defender may find themselves in; it's not reasonable to expect them to have infinite knowledge, it's only reasonable to expect them to act reasonably in accordance with what they know at the time. After all none of you are faulting the mistaken home invader for not having perfect knowledge, it's not fair to set that standard for the homeowner who isn't even breaking a law.
An elderly person? A child?
A mentally handicapped person or a drunk are who I was referring to. A child is not likely to be mistaken for an attacker simply by size. But elderly people can and do present real physical danger to other people around them. For instance, when the elderly use firearms to defend themselves from criminals.
This is the first time either of us has claimed the intruder has a gun. You just pulled that out of your ass.
You don't think intruders come in with guns? Don't be an idiot. Fully half of all home invasions are committed with some kind of weapon.
And again, you missed the point. I'm not claiming the intruder has a loaded gun; I'm saying that under the standard you've articulated, it's hard to see how you could consider it a danger or a threat for someone to point a loaded gun at you, since a loaded gun can only harm you if it's fired, and it hasn't been fired yet.
I say a home intruder, visibly armed or not, is like a loaded gun - just the
presence of one is a threat because of what it
could do, even if what it
is doing is harmless.
This doesn't mean you can't draw a loaded gun on them, by all means do that, but what need do they have to pull the trigger yet?
I don't know. I do know that if someone decided they needed to do that, I would give a substantial amount of deference to their decision because, at the time, there was no one else to make it for them.
Shouldn't that be the ultimate last resort?
People who are being attacked should not be expected to consider
anything a last resort; they should be making decisions about what best, and most quickly, resolves a situation that places them in danger. They shouldn't be expected to concern themselves with the safety of someone trying to harm them. Criminals should be concerned about their own safety; so concerned, in fact, that they decide that preying on innocent people is just too dangerous.
But not every state allows you the right to shoot if you suspect that the intruder will commit a felony.
The standard of the Castle Doctrine is not
suspicion but
belief. And why shouldn't it be? Who else's belief is available to use? Who else's brain are you supposed to think with when it's just you and an intruder, come into your home to commit crimes and put you at risk?
But that wasn't why I refered to the Duty to Retreat law. I said not all states have adopted the Castle Doctrine, some have a Duty to Retreat law. That is all. I didn't mean, lets now discuss what Duty to Retreat means.
Pardon me if I attempt to discuss the points you bring up. If you'd like that not to occur I can promise that it won't, starting now.
And the best part is, he just has to tell the police, "Hey, they looked suspicious and I thought they were here to hurt me."
But that's the standard that was already present. Your
belief that someone was there to hurt you. You didn't have to accumulate overwhelming evidence that an attacker wants to harm you; you didn't have to have them convicted of attempted assault beyond a shadow of a doubt in your own home courtroom before you can use force to repel an attacker. You just have to believe that their presence and actions put you at risk of harm.
All the Castle Doctrine does is recognize that
any felony act by an intruder in your home is an indicator that you're at risk. That it's reasonable to conclude that someone breaking and entering your property to commit a felony isn't concerned for your safety. That's why it's a good law.
We were never allowed that until now with the Castle Doctrine.
We're not allowed that now under Castle Doctrine, as the conviction of Todd Vriesenga proves. The Peairs' acquittal was not under a reasonable application of Castle Doctrine, it was due to the racism of the Louisiana jury.
quote:
Coincidentally, a similar Halloween-related shooting took place within two weeks of the Hattori slaying, but with slightly different results. In Grand Haven, Michigan, a homeowner named Todd Vriesenga shot a teenager through a window set in his front door.
Vriesenga, like Peairs, misread the situation. The slain teenager, Adam Provencal, apparently was trying to tell Vriesenga that he had no role in a Halloween prank that had taken place earlier that evening at the Vriesenga residence....After a six-day trial, the jury discarded the maslaughter charge and convicted Vriesenga of a misdemeanor, the reckless use of a firearm resulting in death. The conviction carried a maximum two-year sentence, and Vriesenga received a 16- to 24-month term.
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