If someone happens to leave a door unlocked, does that mean you have the right to enter and look around?
Absolutely.
[walks around CC’s house opening doors and peering in]
Oops! Excuse ME…
[shuts door hastily]
CC, I’ll give you all the advantages I got from associating with first-year law students (second and third year law students are forbidden from associating with anyone, in my experience).
The crime of burglary usually connotes theft, but its actual meaning is essentially “going in where you have not been invited and have no right to be”. Another crime associated with this act is “breaking and entering”.
When a crime has an “and” in it, there’s a reason. Assault and battery occur when I brandish a baseball bat and clobber my live-in brother-in-law’s head with it. When I swing the bat at him, it’s assault, and when I connect, it’s battery. We usually see them together, but at heart they are separate. Battery compunds the wrong already committed by the assault.
With breaking and entering, the entering itself is worng, the breaking (of locks, etc.) simply compunds the wrong.
What about Breaking and Exiting?
We used the open car park of a supermarket to park the car while we went to the take-away. when we got back the barriers were down, so we took one of them apart, and drove out.
We put it back together again afterwards.
Sure. You also have the right to open any chests you can find, kill whatever enemy might be there (often zombies, in my experience), and ignore the NPC when they ask you to leave their house or to go on some sub-quest for a small amount of GP and XP to find some lousy item they lost/had stolen (probably by someone else opening their unlocked door and chests) which will take up far more time than it was worth.
And they say playing too many videogames are bad for you…
At common law, burglary was the breaking and entering into a dwelling, at night, with the intent to commit a felony therein.
Blackstone’s commentary on the breaking part:
So the mere passing of a barrier - that is, entering by passing the threshold of an open door - would not have constituted common-law burglary. But opening an unlocked door was sufficient to trigger that element.
So at common law, it’s not quite accurate to say that it’s being where you are not invited and have no right to be – that describes trespassing, but not burglary. You must break and enter, it must be at night, it must be a dwelling, and you must have an intent to commit a felony inside.
Today, of course, legislative pronouncements have changed the meaning state by state.
- Rick
Very funny. I’ve often wondered what my life would be like as a RPG. I wish I could kill a few pigeons on the way to work in order to gain 6 points in middle management skills. Or perhaps wear a vopral-mushroom necktie that gives me the ability to avoid the bill collector on the telephone.
No, failing to lock a door does not constitute consent to allow all and any entry into private property, any more than failing to reinforce it with hardened steel plates constitutes consent for it to be smashed open with an axe.
If there is a private lawn without a 16’ electrified fence around it, does that give you the right to have a picnic on it?
If someone leaves a purse/backpack sitting on a bench next to you, does that give you the right to rifle through it?
If there is a window without a windowshade, does that give you the right to look
through it?
If someone leaves a backdoor open on their computer, does that give you a right to read their e-mails?
If someone leaves their phone line above ground, does that give you the right to tap it?
If someone is sleeping, does that give you the right to fondle them?
If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, please remember that I have a right to bear arms.
With you on all points except this one; seeing is something we do involuntarily; if your property has a window that directly adjoins the street and you leave it uncovered, you shouldn’t be surprised or offended if people happen to glance in as they pass.
If someone presses their nose against the glass and stares through the window, that would be different (IMO).
Rick I think you fail to consider the common law concept of “breaking the close”. I think you will agree that if a person walks through on open door at night in the dwelling of another with the intent to commit a felony therein, then that person is guilty of burglary, whether the door was open or not. Or do you suggest that if a person leaves their door open they cannot be burglarized?
Crikey! Did you need a torch?
Very nice, I like it.
The other day someone called asking for my roommate. I don’t know why, but I opened the door to his room (it was ajar) without knocking and caught him spanking it.
That would be a “no.”
Well I don’t think you should enter an unlocked door either. I was just wondering what the consensus would be. Those who think it is OK to enter an unlocked door, don’t blame me if a BFD (Big F Dog) bites you in the ass.
we can make an exception for when somebody wants the door to be opened
I may fail to consider plenty of things, but this ain’t one.
“Breaking the close” is a part of the element of entry, not of breaking. I realize that’s confusing, since it has the word “breaking” in it, but in fact the moment the close - the imaginary plane that defines the physical space of ‘inside the house’ as opposed to ‘outside the house,’ is broken, the entry has occurred.
At common law, the “breaking” element did require the movement of some piece of material. There is case law that aquits burglary when the entrant was able to jump over a retaining wall without touching it, for example.
So in fact I do NOT agree that in your hypothetical, there is a common-law burglary. It’s amost certainly likely to be burglary under any state’s laws today, of course, but at common law, no. A person who leaves their door wide open, and an entrant who slips past the door without touching anything, is innocent of the common-law crime of burglary, even though he’s entering a dwelling, at night, with the intention to commit a felony therein.
- Rick