My personal opinion is that I would have a hard time blaming you if you stumbled across a home invasion and your first instinct was to shoot. You’re probably in close proximity, it’s reasonable to assume that a burglar will attack you, and you have very little time to react.
Legally, I think a court would have a hard time convicting you if you shot a burglar inside your home in questionable circumstances. Just the fact that a person has invaded your home gives you a pretty good justification. There’d have to be evidence that you shot the person in the back of the head at close range or something before you’d get nailed on a murder charge.
That said, if it’s clear that the burglar is running away, I believe it would be immoral to shoot him. I’m just not sure if most situations are all that clear about it. IF a burglar is bolting away from you, is he running out the door or is he running for some cover while he pulls his own weapon? Unless it’s mighty clear, I can understand the impulse to shoot.
Deadly force is justified when any reasonable person would fear for life or limb. To answer the question about what is reasonable that’s why we have investigators, grand juries, and ultimately a trial. As we’ve already seen the laws themselves vary from state to state.
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Hopefully this law makes some distinctions between someone who was armed picking a fight and someone who was armed being assaulted. If someone is beating the stuffing out of me I don’t imagine I’ll be in the best position to decide exactly when my life is in danger. Someone can do permanent damage to my body with fist and feet alone. In Texas blows to the head, neck, throat, and spine are considered deadly force.
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Actually that isn’t the case in Texas. If you chase him three miles and you plug him you’re preventing the theft not recovering your property. The key word here is chase. You can’t just track down your neighbor and blow him away.
Personally I wouldn’t shoot someone who was making off with my television whether or not my state allowed it. I admit that if someone was trying to steal my car I’d be willing to shoot them provided it was legal.
Lots of home owners have been convicted of murder or manslaughter and are in prison for shooting an unarmed home invader, after telling/admitting to the police that the invader did not threaten them nor point a weapon at them.
Depends on the state, the prosecutors, and the jury.
It is up to YOU to determine if the home invader is armed, if he has clear intentions of doing great bodily harm, or if he is accidentally in the wrong house, and what you tell the police when they come to examine the body.
I believe I would be morally justified if I killed someone in self-defense.
I believe I would be morally justified if I killed someone in defense of another person.
I don’t believe I would be morally justified if I killed someone in defense of my property – unless that property was of a nature which made it vital to the survival of me or my family. Shade to gray.
Legal question;
You come into your house and you see the final act of your child’s murder, the child is absolutely dead. No question. The killer turns and tries to leave and the ONLY way you have to stop them is to shoot them in the back.
In Mass?
In the rest of the country?
Moral question;
You come into your house and you see the final act of your child’s murder, the child is absolutely dead. No question. The killer turns and tries to leave and the ONLY way you have to stop them is to shoot them in the back.
You WILL…?
From what I think you “imply”, you are absolutely guility of murder.
You are taking the law into your own hands, and acting as judge, jury, and executioner.
Practically speaking,
your only (very very small) hope to get off, would be to try to convince a jury, that you were trying to stop a fleeing felon, IF you witnessed the actual murder.
This can get very tricky, and a very weak case for you. You obviously didnt know if others were there before you came home and saw this “last” guy still there, or if the actual killing blows were struck by someone else, and you would have to convince a jury that you were only trying to stop a fleeing felon, and not acting on revenge - a very difficult thing to prove since you are the father .
I would tend to think that most jurors in any state, including me, would tend to think that your “primary motive” in shooting him, was revenge - which is plain and simple murder.
If “jury nullification” was allowed, I would vote not guilty, even though I thought you were guilty as sin.
I didn’t take law into account, since I was answering the “Moral Question” part of GusNSpot’s question. I probably shouldn’t have worded it that way, using “trial”. Sorry if I misled you into thinking I was giving my opinion of the legal side of it.
Legally, it would almost certainly be wrong. They should be tried and defended. You weren’t acting in self defense, or in the defense of others. I know there are some cases where the police can shoot someone fleeing if they think that person is a danger to others. I don’t know if this would apply to an individual.
Morally? Who knows. Who will ever know? Is there ever a justification for one human to kill another? Do people ever DESERVE to die? If they do, who kills them?
If I’m forced to have a two-second moral debate with myself while holding a gun on a murderer soaked in my childs blood, I think I know whats gonna happen next.
Discounting war, which assumes a governmental (legal) definition of what constitutes war, most seem to jump immediately to home invasion scenarios in both moral and legal senses. Yet, realistically, only a very few will ever be faced with the reality of a confrontation with someone who has invaded their home. The law, as has been pointed out, requires the average person to first ascertain the motive of the criminal with certainty before determining a course of response.
While possibly well intended, these laws are certainly made by people who never had a few seconds to react, but rather by people who have the leisure to review. The laws were also not made by people who understand the world around them. The question also assumes that the average person has the capability of employing lethal force in self-defense (which capability most do not possess), and the discussion assumes that those few who possess the capability to do so also have the ability (or responsibility) to measure their reactions to a threat in the immediate heat of the moment.
Just about everyone, including a small child, is capable of delivering lethal force in a premeditated fashion. There are any number of reasons to do so. Battered women kill their husbands while they sleep. Cuckolded spouses kill their rivals. Sexually abused children kill their abuser. Blackmailers and extortionists are killed and never found. The list of reasons to kill with a purpose is endless, and most of the reasons are morally justifiable. Damn the law which delivers only procedures and seldom justice. Sometimes the only way out is to just kill the bastard, and some safe, smug moralist sitting in a Law class can speak absolutes until Daddy’s money runs out, and not change the world for all the theorizing they can muster.
In defense of life and limb, most are more likely to be confronted outside the home, by a common street criminal, and most are ill-prepared and completely unable to defend themselves. Realistically, the debate here shouldn’t be about when the use of lethal force is justified, unless the thought presupposes premeditated killing. The debate should be about why we have so woefully and willingly made ourselves into easy targets for those few who would kill us for our wallet. While we are busy wondering over academic scenarios of moral relativism the predators are growing ever bolder, sure in the knowledge that we would rather talk about it and split legal hairs than actually learn to defend ourselves.
When is lethal force justified? More often than it is applied.
Gairloch
Your entire post was very good, and you seem to have a good understanding of the difficulty of determining all possible intentions of an intruder(s) in your home, and whether or not that intruder(s) is armed, or a possible threat to you. Even trained veteran police officers, cannot tell if someone they encounter in the dark, in a dangerous and criminal situation, is armed or not until they do a complete frisk down.
In real life, most homeowners are not premitted by an intruder to do a complete frisk of that nighttime intruder, before she must decide whether or not to take pre-emptive action to eliminate the potential risk to herself or to her family. There are very few and rare legitimate and clearly non-violent non-malice reasons why any stranger is breaking into or stalking around in your home at night.
Another question which might be asked, is whether it is moral for a private citizen to put a knife in the hands of an intruder in your home who you just shot before the police arrive? Commonly known as a “drop weapon”, many police privately admit to have done so in the past, or to carry such a “drop weapon”, but is it moral for a private citizen to do the same thing?
I’d kill him. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong. I don’t even know if I’d change my response if there was another way to stop him. I can’t imagine what that moment would really be like, but I’m pretty sure it would provoke a primal and uncontrollable response from me.
