The Use Of Deadly Force

[Deepwater6]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/alleged-teen-burglars-charged-death-accomplice-shot-owner/story?id=17845852

 

During a college course I took about 10 yrs ago our small 15 person class was presented the following scenario.

 

A farmer's house continues to get robbed. Fed up with this, the farmer sets up a shotgun behind the door the theives use to enter. It is set up in such a way as to go off and shoot whomever tries to come through the door. A few days later the theives return and one of them is killed by the set-up as he tries to break into the farmers home.

 

The questioned asked to the class was "should the farmer be charged with murder or some other crime over the incident"?

 

Out of the 15 in the class I was the only one of the opinion that he should not be charged with anything. My point was that if the theif was not committing a crime he would never have had that happen to him and brought this on himself. I was abased by my classmates for having that point of view.

 

The above story I have a problem with. The fisherman indiscriminately shooting into the woods makes no sense. If he had hit an innocent adult or child would he then be charged or would they still blame the teenagers? I'm not saying the teenagers should get off scott free, but I can't put them liable for murder. I think the fisherman should get involuntary manslaughter.

 

I would think a warning shot would be fired in the air or into the ground not blindly into the woods when you don't know who is out there.

[lawcat]

You can't just say it should be "this" because you feel like it.

 

Invluntary manslaughter is "unintentional" but still illegal murder.

 

The dude in your story intended to kill whoever came in to the house, with no regard as to whether it was reasonable to use deadly force, or whether someone was simply seeking shelter from a hurricane, or was indeed a petty thief. It was a murder, intentional.

 

Now, a prosecutor could ask for "voluntary" manslaughter, since the act was intentional, and the jury would have to decide that being robbed repeatedly is a mitigating factor, or even justification, and downgrade it from murder to manslaughter.

 

Remember, in the US, juries are in charge of deciding guilt in criminal cases unless waived, and they can do almost as they please.

[Deepwater6]

Good point, it could be anybody coming through the door, but I look at this way. If someone tries to rob a warehouse enclosed by a barbed wire topped fence. In the process of scaling the fence the theif gets caught up in the barbed wire and is strangled to death.

 

The fence and the barbed wire were put there just like the gun. I don't see a jury putting the blame on the warehouse owner, but judging by the response I got in the class I could be wrong about that as well.

[belovelife]

 

 

 

i am a firm believer in rock salt shot, then this situation would be different, and the person would be in jail

[SaxonViolence]

We operate under the Legal Fictions that Life has Value;

 

That Human Life is More Valuable than Other Life;

 

And,

 

That Human Life is More Valuable than any amount of Material Possessions.

 

I call these "Legal Fictions" because the Inorganic Universe at Large doesn't give a Rat's Derrière about life or property.

 

This leads to contradiction.

 

If a Billion Dollar improvement to an obscure crossroad in an obscure county will demonstrably save one human life every 20 years—It ain't gonna get built.....

 

And no Jury or Judge would find the State or the Road Building Company liable.

 

"Value" begs the question: Valuable to whom? For what? Why? How Much?

 

Personally, I wouldn't voluntarily give a Nickel to spare the life of someone who steals from me.

 

But I can't—in most States—use Lethal Force to Prevent the theft of something worth many tens of thousands of Nickels.

 

There is even Paradox here. I may not be willing to part with my Mother's Wedding Ring or my Father's Shotgun even if I'm starving to Death.

 

These remembrances are so Precious that Life would not be rewarding, having to face the shame every day, that I was weak enough to let them go, simply to fill my Belly.

 

But I cannot Legally shoot a Burglar in the back as he runs down the street with my mother's ring and my father's Shotgun, giggling gleefully the whole way.

 

Legally then, I must value that Burglar's life several times higher than I value my own.

 

Well I may not agree with that Law (I don't). I may have resolved to disobey that Law if the situation ever arises.....

 

But that is the Law and I must weigh that into my decisions.

 

Personally, I have a real problem with "Degrees of Force".

 

If I can Legally defend myself against someone who persists in trying to stick a Knife in my Ribs, by cleaving his skull with a Hatchet.....

 

 

I see no Reason that I Shouldn't be able to use a Hatchet to The Skull to Defend against someone bent on tickling me against my will or bent on giving me a Wedgie.

 

 

Laying hands on My Person or causing me pain—or discomfort—are Absolutes so far as I am concerned.....

 

_{[if we agree to Box, Wrestle, play Hardcore Street Basketball or whatever, then I have Tacitly agreed to allow you to lay hands upon me.....]}

 

And I see no Moral Difference between being Assaulted with a Broad Axe or a Feather Duster.

 

{And I hate a Practical Joker worse than I hate the person trying hard to do me serious bodily harm.}

 

But I also know that the Law doesn't feel that way.

 

{ I firmly believe in the "Charlie Manson test" :

 

_{[Parenthetically—As Geraldo Rivera pointed out, Manson is not a Physically Imposing man:}

 

_{Go with me. Assume he's as Lethal as He is Krazy.....]}

 

Would you feel comfortable sneaking up on Charlie Manson and knocking his hat off?

 

You don't know me. I am a Dangerous man. I am highly vindictive.

 

If you knock my hat off, I probably will contain my Rage—simply because I don't wish to go to Gaol....

 

Not because I don't think that you don't Deserve to have both your arms broken.....

 

But you insult me to my very core, that you don't respect me as much as you'd respect a blight on Humanity like Charlie Manson.

 

You're implying that I'm a Sheep and not a Wolf.....

 

And being a Wolf and not a Sheep is literally the highest priority that I have in life—and my contempt for Sheep knows no bounds.

 

 

 

Saxon Violence

[CraigD]

Moderation note: This thread’s more sociology or political science than watercooler fare, so I’ve moved it.

 

During a college course I took about 10 yrs ago our small 15 person class was presented the following scenario.

 

A farmer's house continues to get robbed. Fed up with this, the farmer sets up a shotgun behind the door the theives use to enter. It is set up in such a way as to go off and shoot whomever tries to come through the door. A few days later the theives return and one of them is killed by the set-up as he tries to break into the farmers home.

 

The questioned asked to the class was "should the farmer be charged with murder or some other crime over the incident"?

 

Out of the 15 in the class I was the only one of the opinion that he should not be charged with anything. My point was that if the theif was not committing a crime he would never have had that happen to him and brought this on himself. I was abased by my classmates for having that point of view.

I’m guessing that you either weren’t given a good explanation for why your classmates, and most US courts, disagreed with your position, or that any you got failed to sufficiently impress you that you still remember it.

 

Had I been your instructor (disclaimer: I’ve no professional or academic credentials to teach civics or law, just some good classroom experiences being taught it), I would have emphasized that a key legal and moral concept illustrated by this question is proportionality. This is the principle that the punishment for a crime should be proportional to the crime. It’s arguable the oldest documented legal principle, in the form of the “eye for an eye” principle in the ca 1772 BC Code of Hammurabi.

 

By this principle, (and setting aside for the moment the chronological order of the crime and its punishment, and the question of the authority of the individual vs. the government to punish crime) killing people to punish them for or prevent them from stealing things like the property in our hypothetical farmers house is not legally defensible, because the punishment – death – is not proportionate with the crime – stealing household items. Were the crime worse – say, were we talking about a subsistence farmer from whom thieves were stealing stored food needed for him and his family to survive the winter – the punishment would be proportional with the crime, and would be defensible.

 

Jurists and lawmaker ancient through present day have wrestled with how to have proportional justice. One way is to assign monetary values to everything or relevance:

• an item of stolen property from its replacement cost, cost of time spent replacing it, and lost opportunity cost of being without it while replacing it;
  
• a killed human that person’s lost future earnings;
  
• the loved one or relative of a killed human, lost earning due to psychological dysfunction due to grief, or lost opportunities due to loss of financial support;
  
• etc.
  

Though calculations by different folk in different contexts vary, a common standard value is between US$50,000 to $130,000 per year of life. The death of a child values many times higher, then, than that of someone in their final few days of life.

 

By a similar calculus, individuals and governments are justified in killing people who steal or attempt to steal very expensive things. Perversely applied, the death penalty is justified if, for example, I cripple a professional athlete in a bar fight, because his lost future earnings are greater than my total future earnings. Even more perversely, death can be justified for defamatory speech. For example, if I argue publically with a famous political pundit who makes millions of dollars a year, causing him to appear foolish, he might whip out a pistol and shoot me dead, then successfully justify his actions by showing his financial losses due to canceled paid speaking engagements and TV shows greatly exceeds my likely future earnings. A $2000/hr bankruptcy lawyer could justify mowing down a homeless old man in the street, rather than slowing to avoid him. And so on.

 

Of course, practically nowhere in the civilized world does is law solely determined this way. Nearly all law is strongly influenced by humanitarian ideals, which place high value on intangibles such as happiness and dignity. I cannot systematically humiliate a person while balancing my legal books by paying them, without her or his consent.

 

In the US and countries with similar legal principles, consent is an important legal concept. The US Declaration of Independence (which not only declares the US’s independence from England, but lays out lots of legal principles) famously states “...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This legal abstraction – essentially, a rejection of the power of a monarch over his colonies – was used by the US to justify committing essentially a huge property crime – the theft of most of North America – as well as lots of killing in the ensuing revolutionary war.

 

We operate under the Legal Fictions that Life has Value;

I hope the above at least challenges you to rethink your idea that the value of a human life is entirely a legal fiction, and entertain that it is also a practical financial one.

 

That Human Life is More Valuable than Other Life;

By a financial argument, most human lives are more valuable than most nonhuman ones.

 

We humans are the most capable animals on the planet – even with little “labor multiplying” technology, a human can do much more work than a larger animal, such as a horse. A 5000 kg minke whale is worth about $250,000, while a standard actuarial US human is worth about $2,500,000.

 

A really valuable animal, such as a champion racehorse, can be more monetarily valuable – though not by many times – than a typical human.

 

That Human Life is More Valuable than any amount of Material Possessions.

While a fine and proper humanitarian concept, one need only try robbing a bank to see that this is not a practical legal principle in the US.

 

If a Billion Dollar improvement to an obscure crossroad in an obscure county will demonstrably save one human life every 20 years—It ain't gonna get built.....

I agree.

 

I came across an interesting webpage on this subject while looking for support for this post, Infographic: The Monetary Value of a Human Life, which compares public safety spending to death prevention for various countries, concluding that Japan tops the graph at nearly $12,000,00, S. Korea bottoms it at $878,000, with the US falling somewhere in the middle at around $4,500,00.

 

Personally, I wouldn't voluntarily give a Nickel to spare the life of someone who steals from me.

You seem to me to be moving from into the realm of law into that of psychology and sociology, SV.

 

Most humans have a strong (relative to other animals) sense of empathy, causing us to dislike hurting and killing others so much that we refrain from it even when we are robbed and otherwise wronged, even when we are able to do so. For most of us, emotionally, even physically, hurting or killing others hurts.

 

We can be trained to overcome this innate revulsion at hurting and killing. Perhaps the most common training of this kind is military – properly trained, and in proper circumstances – on the “battlefield” – a soldier can kill another person without feeling the emotional pain he or she would in other circumstances – say, in a confrontation over stolen money.

 

Some people – psychopaths – lack normal feelings of empathy. Statement such as

If you knock my hat off, I probably will contain my Rage—simply because I don't wish to go to Gaol....

 

Not because I don't think that you don't Deserve to have both your arms broken.....

...

And being a Wolf and not a Sheep is literally the highest priority that I have in life—and my contempt for Sheep knows no bounds.

suggest that you are a psychopath, SV.

 

Although you may be “trying the idea on for size” (in my experience, most people have done this), rather than concluding that you feel so little empathy that you would break his arms for disrespecting you based on experience, if you really feel no empathy, and avoid hurting and killing others only for fear of retaliation or punishment, you most likely are a psychopath.

 

Though precise detection and counting is difficult, psychopathy is conventionally believed to occur in about 10% of men and about 1% of women. Psychopaths are more likely to be sent to prison than non-psychopaths. Some studies conclude they are also more likely to succeed in business.

 

(sources: wikipedia article Psychopathy; Enpsychopedia article Psychopathy)

 

:QuestionM: Do you believe that you’re a psychopath, SV? Why or why not?

[Guest MacPhee]

If someone breaks into your house at night, while you are asleep, you don't know what the intruder intends to do. They might want to murder you.

 

You are entitled to defend yourself, so why isn't setting a shotgun to shoot a potentially murderous intruder, a fair exercise of your right to self-defence?

[SaxonViolence]

Maybe.

 

If I were walking down the street and you ran up and sucker punched me in the face....

 

And then immediately apologized, helped me up and rapidly and earnestly pleaded mistaken identity.....

 

I'd probably let it slide.

 

I've had busted lips and broken noses before and I'm not particularly delicate.

 

There is no indication there, that you took me lightly.

 

In fact, the fact that you sucker punched me with no warning seems to indicate that you took me very seriously.....

 

As would the instant and profuse apology.

 

On the other hand, if you snatched my hat and attempted to play keep-away with it, with a couple friends.....

 

You are taking me very lightly indeed.

 

Think of the Renaissance Duelers in France and Italy.

 

These Dudes would enter a Duel and risk Death rather than stand to one side and let a Stranger have the "Right-of-Way"—meaning to stand aside and let the other pass first in a narrow walkway.

 

Were they all Sociopathic?

 

No, in those days, men lived by a Code—An Inflexible Code of Honour.

 

People today have no Honour.

 

Everyone can't have Honour, but they can strive to be reasonably Honest.

 

{"Reasonably Honest" because to resolve never to tell even the Whitest Fib, even on pain of having one's eyes gouged out would be a form of Honour.

 

Actually, anyone could resolve it. Being capable of Sticking to it...}

 

Even that is aiming too high for most folks; but they can strive to be Kind even as they Compromise and Temporize.

 

Maybe some can't even be Kind. All they can be is a Leech and a burden on others.....

 

But there is one virtue left, even to Leeches.....

 

Frugality.....

 

Try not to drain your victim dry, so you can tap him again in the future.

 

But modern Man—as a Whole—Has no Honour. He has no Honesty. He has no Kindness and when he finds a good mount, he rides it to Death.

 

This is called "Civilization".

 

 

Saxon Violence

Edited December 12, 2012 by SaxonViolence

[Deepwater6]

If someone breaks into your house at night, while you are asleep, you don't know what the intruder intends to do. They might want to murder you.

 

You are entitled to defend yourself, so why isn't setting a shotgun to shoot a potentially murderous intruder, a fair exercise of your right to self-defence?

 

Seems to me it would be, further, IMHO when a person decides to willingly violate and endanger my wellbeing by breaking into my house. They no longer should retain certian rights afforded to a citizen that is just walking down the street.

 

They have CHOOSEN to violate my rights when they PURPOSELY intrude and therefore could sacrifice some of their own rights as a possible consequence. One of those consequences could be a shotgun blast from a preset gun at the door, but that's the chance they take and the decision they put in motion.

Edited December 13, 2012 by Deepwater6

[Turtle]

Seems to me it would be, further, IMHO when a person decides to willingly violate and endanger my wellbeing by breaking into my house. They no longer should retain certian rights afforded to a citizen that is just walking down the street.

 

They have CHOOSEN to violate my rights when they PURPOSELY intrude and therefore could sacrifice some of their own rights as a possible consequence. One of those consequences could be a shotgun blast from a preset gun at the door, but that's the chance they take and the decision they put in motion.

 

the problem with the booby-trap is that it doesn't discriminate on who gets shot. how 'bout when aunt edna, your brother, the postman, or your kid drops by unexpectedly? just the chance they take, or just the life you take?

[Deepwater6]

That will work I never really cared for aunt Edna anyway. She was always so damned nosy and my SOB brother :angry: still owes me money from six years ago. But seriously, If a innocent loved one walks in and bites it, IMHO the farmer would be liable. Along with the grief he will have of killing a family member.

 

He owns the property and if someone falls into his in-ground pool and dies he would also be liable. If he wants to take that risk with his castle and set the shotgun he must accept the negative consequences you pointed out as well. Ironically many criminal acts including murder are often carried out by someone the victim knows well. :lol: