Intruder injured by boobytrap in home invasion, homeowner arrested.

Two things: many jurisdictions have laws on the books regarding liability for dog attacks. Many of those laws are strict liability, such that (independent of the spring gun laws) you’d be liable for any attacks made by your dogs.

Second, assuming laws about dogs didn’t exist, you’d have some of the same problems with attack dogs as you would with spring guns. Can the attack dogs distinguish between the burglar hopping the fence to steal from you, and little Timmy next door, hopping the fence to get his ball back? Probably not – if they’ve been trained to stop anyone who comes over the fence, you’d be liable for damages if they stopped the burglar the same as if they stopped sweet little Timmy.

SteveG1 and adam yax: you each are asking whether it is legal to shoot an intruder. That varies by jurisdiction. Some jurisdictions impose a reasonable duty to retreat; others don’t. It’s an issue unrelated to the OP.

Here we go… same old argument and what if this and what if that.

Either we have the right to self defense or we don’t.

If we don’t, games over.

If we do, then each person must make a decision.

To defend them selves and when and how.

To not defend themselves.

Just make the decision before hand. In the middle of a murder attempt is not the time to start thinking about it.

:: I my opinion, if a person who is responsible in fact or by societal norms, for the safety of others and will not defend them, they have a moral obligation to make that clear from the get go so that those they are responsible for can make alternate arrangements if so desired. ::

YMMV

All the rest of the fussing here is just silly.

It seemed that way to me too, but people still have them. Suppose my dog was not a trained attack dog, and I had sufficient ‘beware of dog’ signs on my fence. Am I liable for damage to a tresspasser who is bitten by my dog?

I’d give the homeowner such a wrist-slap…

Since we are on a detour anyway, requiring a “duty to retreat” violates the federal Constitution and many many state constitutions, violates civil rights and the rights of the robbery victim, and puts the onus on the robbery victim to prove he/she could not retreat. If you are caught by surprise in your home, it is probable that you can not retreat, simply because you’ve been caught by surprise and there is no where to retreat to. To try and file charges because you “didn’t run away from your own home fast enough” is a travesty of justice. I have cited various state and federal rulings on this. “Duty to retreat” is an attempt to turn the victim into a criminal. NOTE!!! I am not talking about blasting away at someone who is not a threat or backshooting someone who is already leaving. I am not talking about going Batman or going Punisher on some evil-doer, I am talking about the simple right to protection against imminent serious threat.

People v Riddle (Michigan law)
Where the defendant claims he was threatened by another man in his garage, did he have a duty to retreat before defending himself? Michigan law has long held that a person in his or her own home does not have to retreat from an attacker.

The Sunshine State’s so-called “stand-your-ground” law is not a novel concept, although it is hardly universal in the “land of the free and home of the brave.” In Washington where the state constitution explicitly guarantees, “The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired” the state Supreme Court has twice affirmed in recent years that there is “no duty to retreat.”

The principle in both cases, known as State v. Studd (1999) and State v. Reynaldo Redmond (2003), is unambiguous. “The law is well settled,” said the court in the Redmond ruling, “that there is no duty to retreat when a person is assaulted in a place where he or she has a right to be.”
Self-defense is not “taking the law into your own hands.” Rather, it is acting within the law in the face of imminent and unavoidable danger of grave bodily harm or death.

Beard v. United States (1894)
Beard’s manslaughter conviction charge was overturned by the Supreme Court because the judge in the lower court had instructed the jury that Beard had a duty to retreat before using deadly force. Said the Court: Beard was entitled to <<stand his ground and meet any attack made upon him with a deadly weapon, in such way and with such force>> needed to protect himself from harm.

D. Beard v. United States: There is No Duty to Retreat Before Using Deadly Force
In Beard v. United States, [FN129] the Supreme Court took up an issue which would reach its culmination in a 1921 case [FN130] - victims of a criminal attack have no duty to retreat before using lawful deadly force.

A six-year study of Supreme Court cases has found scores of “forgotten decisions” affecting the “highly contested” constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Titled “Supreme Court Gun Cases,” the study examines 92 cases - 44 of them unedited -
“Three dozen of the cases quote or mention the Second Amendment directly,” says a statement by Bloomfield Press, publisher of the study.

The authors also show how the Supreme Court has recognized and supported armed self defense “with personally owned firearms” and that “an ancient ‘duty to retreat’” from a threat “is not obligatory.”

Home Alone 2: The trial

In some cases you are more liable if you have signs, since that indicates you knew that the dog was dangerous.

I don’t want to pick a nit here but the dog is not necessarily dangerous. He’s just a dog. Someone jumps the fence, ignoring my ‘no tresspassing, private property signs,’ startles him, and gets bitten. Am I liable?

Are giant mutant wolverines allowed? As far as I know, no laws specifically mention them :smiley:

I’ll take 2.

Hell, I’d settle for just giant wolverines.

Hey, I’d clean forgot about that booby-trap thread I’d started way back when. Man, you would not believe the trouble I went through trying to return that giant razor-edged pendulum. Even though it was unused and back in the original packaging, and I had the reciept and everything.

One thing I neglected to ask about in that thread was about the use of specifically *non-lethal * traps. I think that electrified fences fall under that category; they’re legal to own because the shock they deliver isn’t considered deadly, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they managed to off someone with atrial fibrillation, or jacked up on cocaine or something. This raises the interesting possibility of rigging one’s house liberally with such non-lethal devices. Then when Mr. Illegal Entry comes calling, he quickly finds himself blundering around like O.J. Simpson in The Naked Gun, getting squirted with pepper spray, grabbing hold of electrified doorknobs, stepping on rat traps, and finally fleeing the house covered in tar and feathers and skunk juice. It’s fun to think about, anyway.

Booby traps are just plain dumb. I recall an incident from several years back that got national coverage. A shop owner wired a gate, or fence device, so that anyone who got past a certain point could be electrocuted. A burglar encountered the device and was injured, or killed, I don’t recall which. The owners defense was that his store had been burgled numerous times, but he was criminally charged. I don’t remember if I ever heard the outcome.
Many of the scenarios posited here might not warrant criminal charges, but a civil suit could very well go against you.

I respect this opinion, but I was addressing my feeling of safety and having that taken from me. If I let the intruder live (IMHO) then even while he is in jail he is robbing me of my security. I know that he can be released at any time and if he has any hard feelings over the incident, what’s to stop him from coming back and exacting some kind of revenge? I have to worry about that every night I go to bed once he is released. Thus, my safety and feelings of security have been compromised greatly, simply because of something he initiated. My quality of life has been greatly reduced because of what someone might do at any given time.

No thanks, that’s not something a law-abiding citizen should have to endure. It’s a bad situation that the resident did not create. The burglar created the situation. He made a decision and he took his life into his own hands. You have to know that if you break into a home, there is a chance that you will be killed. The fact that he broke in indicates that he felt it was worth the risk. AFAIC he pulled the trigger nearly as much as I did. I can live with that, and so can my family.

There have been a lot of excellent points made, and compelling perspectives shared, but it’s all moot. All of the issues raised in the above thread are trumped by the idea of legal precedent.

If this homeowner gets away with setting a legal, lethal booby trap for an intruder, how many cases will suddenly pop up of husbands or wives “accidentally” killed by traps that have been made perfectly legal by the precedent set if this guy gets off? To make booby traps a legal way to kill people would have HUGE consequences.

The purpose of the law isn’t to stop you from hurting burglars, it’s to stop you from hurting, say, the cops or paramedics who come when you’re injured and can’t open the door. Or the friend who just dropped by. Or, as lissener points out, the wife you were pissed off at who just happened to “accidentally” set the trap off.

Yes, it’s your home, but you’re responsible as a member of society to not deliberately create unnecessary hazards that could harm others who don’t deserve it. The “why not mine your yard?” is a perfectly good question; if you can set up gun traps in your house, why not mine a fenced yard and then put up a sign saying “Enter yard at your own risk”? When some 11-year-old playing hide and seek jumps the fence and is blown to smithereens, is that an acceptable outcome?

I’m sorry, I don’t buy this argument. How many people have spouses that really honestly want to kill them? I would wager that’s a fairly low number. Additionally, if you were to booby trap your house, wouldn’t other people living in the house need to know? If you did something like that and other people in the house weren’t aware of it, that’s automatically suspicious. The police aren’t going to buy that story, not for a second.

I agree there are reasons why booby-trapping one’s home is not a good idea. I don’t think it’s a necessarily criminal idea. I’ve recently been living alone and my house has been approached no less than 4 times in the middle of the night. I don’t particularly feel safe here right now. If someone broke into my home, I would feel perfectly justified dropping them where they stand by any means possible. Even moreso in a month, when my kids return home. I’m not saying I intend to booby-trap my house, the thought of my kids getting hurt would naturally deter me from something like that but I feel that in my position, anyone entering my residence while I’m here intends either myself and/or my children bodily harm and that’s completely unacceptable.
As some of the other posters have said, if you choose to enter someone’s home illegally, you take your life into your own hands. I accept no responsibility for what happens to you.

Exactly how many times does it need to be pointed out that defending yourself against intrusion when you are at home is completely different from booby-trapping your house?

I thought we ALL alrady agreed that booby traps are a bad thing.

Would you favor the same penalty for in these two cases:

  1. Homeowner hears of burglaries in the neighborhood, sets up shotgun booby trap at entrance, leaves town on two weeks vacation.

  2. Elderly homeowner dependent on limited pension funds who has been repeatedly burglarized, sets up shotgun loaded with rock salt at entrance (booby trap set at night and deactivated early each a.m.), accidentally kills felonious intruder.

The point you are missing is that one-size-fits-all-justice is not justice at all. And while I may not approve of household booby traps in general, I would be reluctant to impose harsh penalties on someone (as in the real-life example I initially cited) who has been repeatedly victimized and accidentally kills a burglar.

You want to send the guy to prison for a lengthy stretch to punish him for something his trap might have done, that’s your decision.