So how exactly is the homeowner to tell an unarmed teenager from an armed adult? How does one tell a burglar from a murder or rapist when woken up by one in the middle of the night? Every second the homeowner spends trying to “deescalate” is another second the invader or their associates can use to attack.
And yet, I gather, you didn’t shoot that person. You let them back down.
It’s a good question and the subject of a lot of controversy about where the boundaries should be. But there’s a pretty clear civilized consensus that “just shoot the bastard, and find out later” isn’t the right answer.
To be fair, the American attitude is partially justified by the prevalent gun culture, which is an example of how the gun culture problem feeds on itself, where everyone and his dog might be carrying a gun, and you (and police) respond accordingly. In other countries, a homicidal homeowner who shot an intruder without clear justification would not only be charged with (at least) manslaughter, but possibly also with illegal possession of a restricted weapon if it was a handgun.
ETA: This thread is not about “stand your ground” laws. It’s about “felony murder” laws. I’d appreciate it if posters kept to the topic.
Yeah, it’s barbaric that this man didn’t de-escalate when men broke into his home. And was later released after his arrest for murder!
*I had to read the story before understanding the headline.
Thankfully Canada has civilized advice for homeowners.
“As it stands, we know the best defence for most people is to comply.”**
*For confused non-Brits, they’re not referring to a person named Hither Green. Awfully clumsy headline though.
**to be fair, most police in the U.S. would advise the same, except for parts of Oklahoma, Texas and maybe Florida.
Here’s the problem,
It’s not the defendant’s obligation to prove what they didn’t know (not that that is even possible), proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, is the prosecution’s obligation.
IANAL but if someone breaks into your house at 4am, the onus shouldn’t be on the homeowner to determine if whether or not they are dangerous.
That said, I think even with “stand your ground” laws, you can’t simply murder an intruder with impunity just because they enter your home.
Speaking only as a poster, when your OP has this line:
I think you ( Dad Joke Warning!) kind of shot yourself in the foot when it comes to saying such laws are off topic. [ you may now boo me for that joke ].
Back to your main subject though, in reading the wikipedia article linked upthread, it did bring up a viable alternative, which I would endorse, but no idea if it will ever be enacted into law:
This very focused amendment to Florida’s murder statute simply caps the amount of time in prison someone convicted can receive at 15 years, as long as the person was not the actual killer or was not a major participant who helped kill someone. As simple as it sounds, this 17-page bill faces massive headwinds from prosecutorial and law enforcement groups who have resisted any efforts to modify the felony murder rule.
Different people might draw the the cap higher/lower, but this seems to be a reasonable starting point to address probable abuses of the felony murder charge.
Note this is not actually the case. The UK and the US (and AFAIK other European countries) have for the most part the same laws regarding self defense in the home. You have the right to use reasonable force to protect yourself or others from harm. The only difference is you are much less likely to have a legally own gun in the UK (and for the most part* self defense is not a valid reason to own a gun)
This is not what “stand your ground” laws means. The right to stand your ground in your own home comes from the castle doctrine. The doctrine is named for the expression “an Englishman’s home is his castle” its part of English common law. All it says is you have no duty to retreat from a dangerous situation in your own home before you use reasonable force.
The stand your ground laws (in the states that have them) remove that duty from you even outside the home. This is indeed totally bonkers and a license to kill. But has no bearing on this case.
All of this is a sidetrack to the OP however. The insane thing is not that the homeowner was not prosecuted for murder it’s that other kids were!
‘*’ - the exception being northern Ireland where it is allowed for police and others linked to the UK government who might be targets for paramilitary attack.
He was offered a plea deal on a lesser charge for 10 years, out in 5. But I agree with the governor in commuting his sentence. A Life sentence was too long and unfair. 10 years would be more like it- and usually out in 5 with good behavior. Oliver also left out the fact that his Life sentence had already been commuted by the Governor.
This happens more than many think. Simply showing a gun and the will to use it often works unless they are also armed with a firearm and are eager to use it. It is a risk.
Uh yeah, probably because fixing it after the fact, something that’s in no way assured, doesn’t make the thing that needs to be fixed go away.
You know what a right thing to do with people who break into homes? Charge them with burglary. You know, the crime we the people have decided carries the appropriate punishment for people who break into homes.
Charging someone for murder because the broke into someone’s home is a massive miscarriage of justice.
Yes, I do.
And if they are also armed with a firearm and eager to use it, then showing a gun is a way to end up dead. Or if some other random person nearby is armed, and doesn’t know who’s the Good Guy and who’s the Bad Guy.
An armed society is not a polite society. It’s a rude and dead society.
I think the people who think “oh the people in your home with unknown intentions, you have to put yourself in danger to make sure you don’t hurt someone who may or may not want to hurt you” are insane. Have you ever been in a dangerous situation with someone with unknown intentions who has created a very threatening situation towards you? You seem to think you, upon being woken up in the middle of the night by someone breaking into your house, can easily tell the difference between kids who just want to steal your shit and someone who wants to kill you and your family. It’s so bizarre to me that everyone is hypercritical towards people whose home is invaded by people who have ill intentions, but they don’t have enough information to figure out which kind of ill intentions.
Do you think there are people who had the opportunity to defend themselves, who instead gave the invaders a chance, and the invaders killed or otherwise harmed them due to that opportunity?
If you break into someone’s home, you have 100% created a dangerous situation where the person can reasonably think you’re there to kill them, rape them, kidnap them, or otherwise cause them harm. You’re just a dipshit kid who wanted to steal a TV? Well, sucks for you that you created a situation where a person felt threatened in their own home. You should be the one who suffers the consequences, not them. They should be given every benefit of the doubt.
That scenario seems to be within the intent of felony murder laws, not some bizarre twisted justice. A bunch of kids committed a crime and created a situation that they reasonably could forsee would lead to someone’s death, so they were charged with murder when someone died. It seems more suitable that there be some sort of felony manslaughter charge for this case instead perhaps. You could argue that perhaps indirect causes like that shouldn’t be punished the same as direct causes and I think that should be the case, but I think that sort of situation is within the scenarios people were forseeing when they created felony murder laws.
How many of us have merely had the experience of walking into your home to find that it has been rifled through while you were not there? Can you describe what that felt like? Not so much “oh my god, did they take <valuable thing>” but “some assholes were in here going through my stuff.”
I can attest to the depths of awful emotion that in absentia burglary gives breath to – the idea of encountering the burglars in the act must be much worse. You enter my home without permission, that is a major violation, comparable to physical assault, and if you are not running away right now, all bets are off.
You can go ahead and say “it is just stuff, it can be replaced,” but until you have experienced that kind of personal-space-violation, you have no room to talk.
In that case my first instinct is not to leave the, relative, safety of the room I’m in and confront the intruder.
I don’t think anyone here is saying people should not be punished for burglary; the issue is that because of the felony murder charge, people are being convicted and sentenced to long terms for killings committed by others.
In that case, thank you for giving me permission to talk. 
I have been robbed of home possessions, I have been robbed at gunpoint and I have had my car stolen…twice. At absolutely no time during any of these events did it even occur to me that someone needed to die. Life is a long series of wins, losses, close calls and surprises, and far too many often in this gun-crazy society the ability to tell the difference between the real need to kill and the impulse-driven desire to kill is under a foot long and made of cold metal.
That’s the problem with far too many of the answers to the question, they’re weapon filled fantasies promoted by our gun-crazy culture.
The correct answer to the hypothetical is what you would do if you did not have a weapon.
Yea absolutely. I’ve been the victim of a home invasion burglary exactly like the one in the OP. I didn’t have a gun, but absolutely given a gun I certainly had the opportunity to use it and almost certainly would have. That would have been legally justified (this happened in California). But it would not have been morally justified. Just as in the OP it was dumb kids who thought the house was empty and stole a bunch of my stuff (which was easily replaced), no one was harmed. If I had a gun I would have killed a kid over my Nintendo Wii. That is morally unconscionable, and would have haunted me for the rest of my life (unlike the burglary which was not even in the top 3 worse things to happen to me that year).