The old rule of thumb in Texas was that if you shoot him and he falls out the window or off the porch, you drag him back in. And yeah, there is supposedly a body of law most places that prevents shooting a fleeing suspect… even if you’re a cop.
But I’m still fascinated by the idea that you can simply humanely trap a human. I’ve been fishing around for more information. The upshot seems to be that the owners had been repeatedly burgled, were sick of it, and may have intentionally set up the trap to catch the next guy. Turns out the fellow was only in there somewhat shy of an hour before the police came.
Plainly, during BUSINESS hours, a business has to keep access available in case of fire. But after hours, when there’s no one on the premises, what are the limits on that?
My first thought is that if the hallway had an exit sign at one end of it, the door with the exit sign would have to be openable from the inside with no special knowledge and single-motion egress. And if none of the doors in the hallway had an exit sign, the Fire Marshall would probably tell you that you need one.
IANAL, but it seems to me that both parties have broken the law and and both of them would face penalties. The burglar goes to jail for Burglary and the home owner goes to jail for… I wanna say Reckless Endangerment? It wouldn’t surprise me if the second carried a longer sentence than the first. But that doesn’t mean the burglar “gets a pass”.
Of course, there’s the complication of what evidence they have and whether the prosecutor feels they can make a strong enough case to overcome reasonable doubt. And most of the time there’s plea bargaining. And they might even drop the charges on one or both parties if there’s not enough evidence.
Personally, I like the idea of living in a country where injuring a person is a bigger crime than stealing. Let’s turn it around the other way. Suppose an assassin breaks into your house with the intention of trying to kill you because he wants revenge on you from last week when you found his wallet with $900 cash inside which you decide to steal for yourself. Assuming you both get arrested and there’s enough evidence to convict, I think it’s only right that Attempted Murder carries a harsher sentence. But you’re still guilty of stealing $900.
Fire code say all the doors which are marked as fire exits must be always be openable from the inside with no special knowledge (no key) and single-motion egress. The only exception is for the front door. The front door can be secured with a key when the building is unoccupied, if it’s approved by the Fire Marshall and they put up the appropriate signage.
If someone is trapped in a hallway and gets captured by the police without any injury, is there a lawsuit? What is the damage this person suffered? I can see where the homeowner (business owner) might face fines or other difficulties from government officials, but how can the burglar make any claims?
…and that’s my POINT: Is it a crime to make a room in your business that is accessible to unauthorized personnel who had to break into the building to access the room… but then they couldn’t get out?
I’m thinking of a case I read about where a burglar broke into a bank through the skylight, and then accidentally fell in the pile of broken glass, injuring his hands. Upon trying to leave the bank, he found that the doors were secured from the inside, and with his cut hands, he couldn’t climb up to the skylight. He wound up calling an ambulance because the profuse bleeding scared him; the cops decided to tag along, and arrested him at the hospital.
I don’t even know if the story’s an urban legend or not… but the fact remains: the crook broke into a business, and was unable to leave. Was the bank guilty of a crime? Is this a legal method of catching burglars?
IANAL, but my impression is that accidental non-lethal harm isn’t criminal, at levels below criminal negligence. (Or something like that.) But if the bank did something that caused the death of the burglar, and that death was reasonably foreseeable, then maybe manslaughter would be where it would start.
E.g.: mantrap specifically designed for the sole purpose of detaining a burglar, and not releasing them when the building caught fire for unrelated reasons. Any building can catch fire – that’s why there are fire and building regulations (empowered by law) to guarantee that a building must be escapable in a fire.
This leaves aside where the real legal action would be: lawsuits for various forms of alleged wrongful harm to the burglar.
In the OP, the burglar wasn’t harmed, and was released after about 45 minutes… when the cops got there. So far, there’s no word about what action, if any, was taken against the property owner. And so far, there doesn’t seem to be any.
Is it legal to design your premises to detain unwanted intruders without physical harm? At least, if the premises don’t burst into flame?
Just a lethal trap is murder, legally speaking. Wouldn’t a non-lethal trap designed to hold someone captive count as kidnapping or false imprisonment?
People are regularly charged with kidnapping or something similar for things that would not be typically described as kidnapping (e.g. preventing someone leaving a situation).
Probably not. It’s likely to be a breach of the building code.
But, while that might expose you to fines or penalties when the fire authority prosecutes you for having a non-compliant building, I don’t see that it gives the intruder a cause of action against you.
This gets to the heart of the matter. Their main claim against the shopkeeper, if any, would be false imprisonment. Fire and building codes are penny ante stuff. They are depriving someone of their liberty which is pretty much always illegal with only a couple of exceptions.
Most (or all?) states allow shopkeepers to detain people for a reasonable amount of time if they are investigating theft. Not sure if that could be a defense in this case since presumably the person hadn’t stolen anything yet.
They could also claim they were making a citizen’s arrest for whatever crime did occur (breaking and entering or trespassing or whatever was applicable) but only if they witnessed the crime and contacted the police within a reasonable amount of time.
If they waited a long time to call the police after they knew he was stuck in there that could probably be false imprisonment even if one or both of the above were the case.
If it was just happenstance that a would be thief made his way into a hallway with doors in various states of locking and unlocking and got himself stuck, that would just be funny. But if that situation is set up deliberately to be a trap as in this case it could easily blow up in the shopkeepers face.
I think, at a minimum, you’d have to set it up so that nobody could be caught in there without you immediately knowing about it, and acting on it (i.e. by calling the police, and going yourself to the premises to meet them ther). You can hardly claim to have made a citizen’s arrest in circumstances where you had no idea until many hours later that you were detaining anybody, and no idea that a crime had been committed.
What if it’s more than one night?
If the burglar breaks into your business office on Thanksgiving to steal your computers, and you are closed for 4 days straight? Or if the break-in is at a warehouse that is normally used only once a week? How about those self-storage places, where it is common for a store-room to remain locked and unused for 6 months straight?
BTW, didn’t the best-seller Da Vinci Code begin with describing the security at the Louvre…in which the burglar alarm activates metal gates that shut quickly and seal the room? Is that just fiction?
Maybe the better solution is that within the burglar trap, have the required fire exit…but have the fire exit trigger a paint bucket that will get dumped on the burglar, making him easy to find afterward.
Those kids deserved to die. Unfair that the man was found guilty.