Summations Only

From a moral viewpoint, I think I have the right to use force to protect myself from attack (if threatened) protect my home from invasion (if I catch someone in the act of breaking in) or to apprehend the criminal (he's committing a felony, I can arrest him, if I'm feeling brave that day).But only necessary force. Otherwise I'd basically be killing someone for fun.Like these guys: They shot a seven-year old boy in the head ... because they thought the law was on their side. But that's not a reason unless you're a psychopath.The Castle Doctrine seems designed to appeal to people who would like one day to shoot someone, get away with it, and feel smug about it. I am not one of those people.

But that's not really the "Castle Doctrine" as understood in the US --- it limits one to necessary force.

If you look at Hyro's link to WP, some state laws say that lethal force is automatically justified if you suspect that an intruder intends to commit a felony (which would include burglary). This in effect makes it open season for killing intruders, whther or not this is "necessary force".

I think you're thinking of the Ricky Bodine case. It was a school, and he was up on the roof to steal a floodlight.The case was settled out of court.There were special circumstances that led the school board to settle: the skylights had been painted over (with aluminum paint on an aluminum roof) and couldn't be recognized as skylights; the board were aware that students went up there for non-criminal purposes such as retrieving sports equipment; in spite of this they'd done nothing to make the skylights safe such as putting up barriers or warning signs; and a few months previously a student (on the roof for non-criminal purposes) had fallen to his death through a skylight in a neighboring school in the same school district.Now under these circumstances a lawyer could make the argument that, unlike a regular homeowner, the school board had neglected a duty to the public in general to make their roof safe --- a duty not nullified by the fact that the particular guy who ended up in a wheelchair had been up there to commit theft.Such an argument might just have swayed a jury, and so the school board decided not to roll the dice. It should be noted that if it the trial had gone all the way and Bodine had been awarded damages, that would have been a verdict, not a ruling, and it would have been down to the jury, not the judge.---In summary, this particular case doesn't really reflect the general state of the law, either in the state of California where this took place, nor anywhere else.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Is there a problem with:(a) imposing the death penalty for crimes against property;(b) substituting suspicion for proof;(c) uniting in one person the office of plaintiff, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner?You know, I think there might be. And I think the parents of Yoshihiro Hattori might agree.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

That still isn't a crime against the person, is it? But the laws only allow lethal force if you suspect that they're there to commit a felony. What can I say but --- oh yes it is. That's exactly what it is. No, in that case the only crime committed was walking up someone's driveway and ringing his doorbell. But because Peairs suspected for no reason whatsoever that the kid might be going to commit a felony, he shot him and the law was on his side. Is that a good law?

No, walking up a guy's driveway and ringing his doorbell was the crime. And being suspected of criminal intent without a shred of evidence.

That it legalizes Peair's actions, amongst other injustices.

One's home is not one's person. And a lethal defense tends to leave someone dead. Where, then, is the melodrama?As for laws of nature, we do not live in a state of nature. I would refer you to the Peairs case. Yoshihiro Hattori had walked up his driveway and rung the doorbell. There was in fact some leeway to suppose that he was not a prospective felon. No, that's just exercising the right to self-defense, so long as only necessary force was used. Au contraire. The person who ends up dead seems to me to be more the victim of any encounter. Who is more the victim, Hattori, the unarmed teenager gunned down for ringing the wrong doorbell, or Peairs, who suffered the admitted indignity of having his doorbell rung?

True. But many applications of the Castle Doctrine allow me to shoot him when it is not a case of me or him ending up dead. No we don't. To continue discussing the same example is hardly a non sequitur. It's more a sort of sequitur. Now that's a non sequitur, since I have never said one word against the right to self-defense. The term is self-evident. Self defense is defense of one's self --- one's person. But you are wrong. In many states the Castle Doctrine permits you to kill someone if (a) he is on your property (b) you think that he intended to commit a felony --- any felony. An "impending non-justifiable homicide" is not required. People do indeed have "unlimited authority to kill people on sight of their property", so long as they think (or say subsequently that they thought) the victim was up to no good.Peairs was found innocent, remember.

Fair enough. Though ideally one would warn him off first. Ringing a doorbell is not criminal. No. How much should you fear for your life when you ring a doorbell?

... what if the things that we know for certain have happened happen?Oh, you missed that one off your list, maybe because you didn't make it up.

I could be and I have. I have referred several times to the shooting of Yoshihiro Hattori by Rodney Peairs.To recap:Hattori, a sixteen-year old Japanese boy, and an American friend, Webb Haymaker, accidentally went to the wrong house and rang the doorbell. The door was opened by the property owner, Rodney Peairs. Peairs shot Hattori in cold blood, killing him. The law found Peairs guiltless because they had been on his property, namely his driveway, and Peairs suspected that Hattori was up to no good, or at least said that he did, which is all that the Castle Doctrine of Louisiana requires.This is a bad law.

What does the eyewitness who wasn't trying to talk himself out of a murder charge have to say about it? Yes. According to the WP Castle Doctrine page, it's comparable to that of many states. But it was found that he'd done nothing criminal, that can't be right. I'm sure Hattori would be most interested in your opinion if he was less dead.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

It's not strictly the Castle Law, but maybe this would be a good place to discuss the Trayvon Martin case.George Zimmerman, it seems, was entitled to murder Trayvon Martin because he felt threatened, and according to Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, was therefore entitled to shoot him.Just to remind you of the facts of the case, for those who have been asleep.Martin was walking down the street not committing a crime in any way. Zimmerman decided that his behavior was "suspicious". Whether or not this has anything to do with the fact that Martin was tall, young, and black, I shall leave up to the pundits and amateur mind-readers.Whatever his motivation, Zimmerman called the police, who told him not to pursue him. But Zimmerman did. Apparently at this point Zimmerman did not find Martin sufficiently threatening that he wanted to try to avoid him, rather he deliberately set out on foot to confront the "suspicious" boy.According to an affidavit sworn by Martin's girlfriend: There are no direct witnesses to what happened next except Zimmerman, who claims that he felt "threatened". What we do know is that Martin did not produce a weapon, because he didn't have a weapon. What he had, in fact, was a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea. Zimmerman, on the other hand, produced a gun, with which he murdered Martin.But Zimmerman, of course, is innocent of murder in the technical, legal sense, because having seen his unarmed victim walking harmlessly down the street, having stalked him, terrified him, accosted him, and pointed a gun at him, he then says that he found his victim "threatening"; and because he says this he was therefore entitled by law to shoot him.The connection to the Castle Laws as discussed on this thread is, I think, obvious. We have laws that say that you can murder people scot-free so long (a) they are in your vicinity (b) you subsequently say that you felt threatened or that you suspected that they were going to commit a crime. And that's it. All you need do is testify, truly or falsely, about your own mental state, and so long as you say you felt this or you thought that, you walk.Even if the case was to go to trial, no-one could convict, because there is always sufficient reasonable doubt about what Zimmerman or whoever was thinking when he pulled the trigger. Feeling threatened is a complete defense, and who but Zimmerman can say what he was thinking when he pulled the trigger? And this opens the door to any murder, no matter how calculated and cold-blooded.Finally, to see what a nonsense this law is, consider that by the same law Martin would have been perfectly justified in shooting Zimmerman. Zimmerman, after all, stalked Martin; we know from the affidavit that Martin was afraid of him; if Martin had drawn a gun and shot him he'd have been "standing his ground" --- so apparently the law is on the side of whoever draws and shoots first. Well, that's a comforting thing to know. In the Wild West, of course, it was the other way round, but now we live in more civilized times.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.