They can do whatever the hell they want. If however they want they want their actions to be treated as self defense by the state of Illinois they need to restrict their actions to “preventing or terminating an attack on their dwelling”. Once the burglar has left their dwelling, ran across thier lawn, and is opening their gate to leave no reasonable person can claim that hitting them with a frying pan is preventing or terminating anything.
The burglar didn’t leave, the homeowner chased them away by attacking them with a frying pan. There is zero evidence that the burglar would continue to be chased away without the homeowner continuing to attack him with the frying pan.
Your insistence that the homeowner stop doing the very thing that convinces the burglar to leave is outrageous. It is perfectly appropriate to continue doing that thing until the burglar is GONE. Not “leaving” not “opening the gate”, gone.
What? The burglar can step on the sidewalk and say “ha ha, you have to leave me alone now!” No, the burglar gets chased until he is actually away.
I am, in fact, a reasonable person, and I do indeed claim this.
Let’s just say hypothetically, 999/1000 times the burglar just gets out of there, no harm done. But that 1,000th time, when the homeowner chasing him backs off, the burglar pulls out a weapon and attacks the homeowner.
Is it better for the guy who broke into the other guy’s home to take the bad outcome 999/1000 of the time, or the innocent guy take the bad outcome 1/1000 of the time?
If you think it’s the latter, what ratio would be okay for you? Would it be okay if the innocent person being attacked took the bad outcome 1% of the time? 5%?
To me, it’s bizarre to say that the person who is an innocent victim should suffer for the benefit of the person who chose to victimize them in any fraction of the cases.
What we see is clearly in the heat of the moment. He’s hot on his tail, still in the middle of the fight. While some people would indeed engage in retaliation, it’s not clear this is a case of that. The guy found someone in his home, he found something that’s giving him the advantage and making the threat retreat, and as soon as he stops that, the situation potentially changes. I’m not going to be nitpicky and say hey, you need to stop exactly at your doorway and not 10 feet later at your front gate.
Essentially, to think that this guy did something wrong, you have to think that the only thing you can apply is the exact minimum amount of force that you think is needed, based on knowing little about a perpetrator other than that they were willing to make someone fear for their life and invade their home with unknown intentions. And that the other person, who is not a fucking navy seal or even a police officer in theory trained in the use of escalation of force but can perfectly judge exactly how much force is needed in any given scenario and apply the exact minimum necessary, otherwise the guy trying to defend his own life is also guilty of a crime.
If there’s a margin of doubt, of mistaken intentions, of not fully understanding the situation correctly, of not knowing how much force to apply or when, all of that margin should be in the victim’s favor, not the perpetrator’s.
… Has anyone checked to see if Griffin1977 has a bruise on their arm?
Which is not remotely related to the OP in the slightest.
Could you show me the bit of Illinois law that sets that as a standard for a claim self defense?
Ok then reasonable person explain how preventing someone from leaving your property, by hitting their hand with a frying pan as they open the gate to leave, is necessary to prevent or terminate an attack on your dwelling? Necessary meaning you had to do it or your dwelling would definitely be attacked.
Did you watch the video? Looked to me that the burglar was able to leave the property just fine. I did notice that about 2 seconds after the hit on the hand, the burglar left and didn’t attempt to come back. I’d call that a burglary successfully terminated.
This has nothing to do with what you think is necessary. What that homeowner believed was necessary is what counts, how he saw the situation at the time, and if he was afraid for his life if that fear was reasonable.
So what reason do you have to believe that man did not think it was necessary to hit the man who broke into his home?
That’s not what necessary means in this kind of scenario. He only needs to have a reasonable belief that hitting the burglar on the hand might increase the chance the burglar will flee and not come back. That seems like a pretty easy bar to be.
Go back up to post #117 and actually read it this time. There is nothing in there about what “a reasonable person believes”. The “reasonable person” does not enter into this at all. Because, the guy, in the throes of defending his home, cannot be adjudged to be “reasonable” at that time, nor should he be expected to be.
Except that is how the law defines “reasonably believes”, would a “reasonable man” (in English law the term “the man on the Clapham omnibus” was used by tradition) believe that?
And a reasonable man would definitely 100% not believe that hitting someone as they open the gate to leave would prevent an assault on their dwelling.
Well, if you hit them hard enough…
That is not what the law says. People keep saying things that have nothing to with the law of Illinois and somehow claim that it shows this is legally self defense
If what you claim above is the law in Illinois then show the law that says so, or the case where a judge interprets the law that way
No, it is what the law says. We are the reasonable person, reasoning what he might reasonably believe in that moment. He is not burdened with being reasonable, merely with having a belief that we might consider reasonable for the situation. Which may not actually be reasonable, but we can reason it out in our observations.
If you really think the law actually means “well when we say reasonable you know we actually mean unreasonable” then your gonna have to back that up. Where is the case where a judge has interpreted this law that way?
It means that a jury only has to believe that the homeowner had a reasonable belief, in the heat of the moment, that it was necessary to hit the burglar to encourage him to leave and stay away.
I already believe this, so I have little doubt a defense attorney could easily convince a jury to do so.
A reasonable person, put in an unreasonable situation, may do things that would otherwise seem unreasonable. But we, in the cold light of day, can appreciate that a reasonable person does not always have the time to step back and analyze their behavior, and we judge their behavior accordingly.
Chasing a person around your property and hitting them with a frying pan as they try to leave, is that “reasonable” behavior? Not normally, but if it’s a grown man breaking into your home to steal your stuff or worse, yes it is. The reasonable person may feel fear, rage and have their adrenaline pumping like mad while they try to chase a dangerous person from their home. The reasonable person may not be able to turn that off like a switch when it appears the criminal is trying to leave. There are limits to what the reasonable person may do, if the criminal falls down and is knocked unconscious, they don’t get to beat them to death after going to the shed for a sledge hammer.
One swing as the burglar opens the gate is well within reasonable boundaries.
Again as the law says absolutely nothing about being able to beat someone with a frying pan to encourage them to leave your property, your gonna have to show an Illinois law that says that or a case where the judge interpreted it that way
Otherwise the conclusion of this thread is what I stated above: under Illinois law there is no self defense justification for what happened in that video.
This isn’t how the law works. Under rule of law, a prosecutor can make this assertion, but it’s up to a jury to decide if it’s accurate based on the facts presented. Based on all the facts laid out in this thread, if I were on the jury I’d find him not guilty. So would many of the other posters (most of them, if I’m reading right).