Exactly. Think of how you would feel if your firefighter spouse was killed by a booby trap set by a homeowner who’d already use it tp kill an intruder and gotten a slap on the wrist. I don’t think I would take comfort knowing that the system would now spring into action to prosecute this person when they could have easily stopped the firefighter’s death.
An analogy would be that you can drive drunk all you want, but the first time you run over a school kid then we’ll take action. The first dozen times the cops took no action because you hadn’t hit anyone yet. The objective is to prevent deaths, not punish people after the fact.
Here is where I have a very definite opinion (meaning I will not even consider a change of heart).
If someone is injured during commission of a crime, he should receive no compensation and should not be allowed to sue the intended victim of his crime. A burglar who twists his leg or injures his arm, because he fell through the window instead of making it safely through should not be rewarded. The thief who climbs a fence and falisl on his ass should not be rewarded. The home invasion robber who gets mauled by Fluffy should not be allowed to file suit. A thief or robber or would-be murderer should lose all rights to file suit or press charges against his victims.
I agree with you 100% steve in the examples you have stated I don’t think a burglar should be able to sue if he slipped on a toy on the stairs and broke his neck, but we’re not talking about that we are talking about intentionally set and designed to injure boobytraps in which case the owner should be held liable because it could hurt as people have stated firemen, EMS, Police, etc.
The point of the current laws is to prevent innocent (and not so innocent) people from being killed by booby traps. If there is no punishment for a situation where a “bad” person gets hurt or killed, there’s no incentive to remove the devices until someone “good” gets killed. So you now have to explain to the spouse of a dead firefighter that the booby trap had already killed two people but there was nothing done to remove it.
Again, using the drunk driving analogy, should you let someone go until they actually hit someone? Until then, they haven’t caused any “real” damage, in the same way that a booby trap hasn’t done any “real” damage until it kills the firefighter.
The object here is to prevent unnecessary deaths. To do so, you must punish the placement of traps whenever and whereever you find them. Civil damages and criminal charges are both tools to do this. Whether a thief should benefit from those charges is another question, but the homeowner must be punished either way.
No one, I think, is saying that the homeowner should go without punishment. If the current system relies on civil damages as the primary penalty, then that itself is the problem. An ideal case would be to make the homeowner immune to lawsuits from injured criminals, but to increase the criminal penalties for setting up booby traps to a commensurate level.
This way, not only do they have to pay if anyone, criminal or someone on legitimate business, is injured, they have to pay if police discover the booby trap even if no one is injured. Under your system this would still be a “wrist slap” as there is no one to press civil charges. I think this would act as an even greater deterrent. Also, in the event they did injure a policeman, fireman, etc. they would also have civil penalties.
Here you have people doing their jobs being fully compensated, people committing burglary not getting a damn thing but medical bills on top of jail time, and homeowners setting booby traps paying hefty fines whether they injure someone, fail to injure ssomeone, or are simply noticed by the authorities.