Robbers forgot to read sign ""Abandon hope all ye who enter here"
- Thread starter Hitman_Leon
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yes you can.
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If he went to court over here I think aquital would be the verdict, that is if the jury were picked from people with an IQ higher than bathroom mould, four armed young men threatening shop staff against one 72 year old pensioner, I would hope for justified homocide, you cant say it would be a foregone conclusion but I would hope for common sense to have its day.
yep, well meant to be locked up.
Different laws though. But you can still defend yourself with deadly force if needed.
for example.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7937587.stm
Shotgun wasn't even locked up and he was found not guilty.
Now I'm one for self defence and lethal force if necessary but I'm suprised by that ruling. "Accidentally" fired the shotgun ey?
He was not in imminent danger either by the sounds of it.
Purely going by the law as it is written it sounds like Manslaughter at least. An unarmed man is climbing through your window and you can shoot him with a shotgun legally?
He was not in imminent danger either by the sounds of it.
Purely going by the law as it is written it sounds like Manslaughter at least. An unarmed man is climbing through your window and you can shoot him with a shotgun legally?
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I think the court were presented with a picture of the mans character and also the perception that he was likely to be armed (all from past actions and threats), that would draw a darker picture than just an unarmed man you did not know climbing though a window.
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There were four attackers, so using force "again and again" could be reasonable force under UK law. The basic criterion is to cease using force when there ceases to be a threat. If there are multiple attackers, there are multiple threats and therefore cause for using force repeatedly.
In some cases, you can have a shotgun with you in the UK, but I already said that he would have been in trouble for illegally owning a gun (if it was illegally owned).
Far from "never seeing the light again", I think he would have been acquitted by a jury. People have killed in the UK under far less obvious circumstances than being attacked by four armed robbers and had it ruled reasonable force in defence.
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You've entirely missed the point that this was a man known to be dangerous having carried a sub machine gun, whether he threatened the defendant with it is irrelevant, you are not going to just stand there while someone likely carrying a uzi breaks into your house, you are going to be quite rightly under the belief your life is in immediate danger and shoot the attacker. There is naturally a presumption that someone breaking into your house is there to do harm, it's a flaw in the british legal system that this case ended up in court, the american system where there is a legal presumption the homeowners life is in danger is a much better system, it stops innocent people scared out of their wits from going to court because they shot dead an intruder who they thought posed a threat to their family.
What his intentions were are irrelevant, it's what actions the man took, in this case he shot a know nutcase who was trying to break into his home, if he'd gone round to the mans house then his intentions might have had some bearing on the case, but in this case he did nothing illegal.
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It's relevant to the fact that you stated he did when in fact he did not, which rather undermines your claim to be a reliable source, more reliable than the BBC.
You offer no evidence that the defendent even knew about the alleged Uzi incident.
You demonstrate your ignorance of the UK legal system again. The UK legal system very explicitly contains the very presumption you refer to.
In this case, a person armed themselves and killed someone instead of referring the matter to the police. It is not a flaw that it went to court - the police decided that it was something that should be decided by a jury. I agree with them.
Unfortunately for your line of argument, the UK system has exactly that legal presumption.
In this case, his action was also to get a gun to kill someone and kill them instead of informing the police of the threat.
Intentions are not irrelevant, anyway.
You're arguing against a fictional legal system that you've made up and wrongly claimed as the British legal system.
Soldato
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lets say you owned the shop, and that you are invincible, and you have no staff in the shop at the time, would you not shoot them anyway?
I said the times is more reliable than the bbc because it contains the uzi statement which is relevant to the case, that hasn't changed.
Mr Clements in fact said "I’ll get my gun out before you can raise them barrels.", so it's somewhat likely the defendant thought he had a gun. He was also previously threatened verbally by the man, so it was pretty obvious the man had come to the house for one thing only.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5889125.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2
The fact that this man was prosecuted seems to contradict that.
But he still killed him in self defence regardless of any intention he may have had, so that makes it irrelevant.
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Instead we end up with a system where a householder who shoots dead a Japanese tourist who knocked on his door to ask directions is not even arrested. The tourist was of course armed with a camcorder. Texas IIRC, a few years ago.
The British CJS takes the realistic view that if one person kills another there may be a legitimate reason, but it MUST be investigated - the police won't just take their word for it. Otherwise it would be soooo easy to sort out that messy neighbour dispute: invite them over, shoot them dead, then claim you came downstairs to find them in your living room. Etc.
The law here even understands that you may be wrong about circumstances: that you might think a person is armed when they are not. That in the panic you might do something stupid. It merely asks that any reasonable person might think the same in the circumstances. If this incident happened here it's unlikely the owner would be prosecuted. He might be arrested (but probably wouldn't), but that's essentially to formalise the interview. He would almost certainly be released on bail is he was arrested. In the very unlikely event it got to court, he would be acquitted.
But...
All this would change is it turns out that he continued to fire once the robbers fled. That is not defence of self or property, that is revenge, and thus murder.
M
Obviously everything must be investigated, the problem is that the presumption tends to go against the home owner in this country such as in the case I mentioned, and they end up in court. Whereas in America homeowners are given the benefit of the doubt. There just needs to be a slight change in the balance to stop innocent people ending up in court.
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Man of Honour
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Harlem isn't that bad anymore, sure it's still a poorer area of New York but a lot of money was injected into that neighbourhood over the years. I've walked along there at night and during the day and felt safer and more confident some most parts of London. New York itself has become one of the safer cities of the Western world.
Glad to see he wasn't charged, good to see some discretion was used and the law being applied sensibly.
It's a shame people had to die, but if you're willing to use a gun to intimidate people and potentially use it then you should expect retribution of the deadliest kind.
I just hope that the shop keeper isn't tracked down or hunted by some of the gang's members or friends.
Man of Honour
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Does anyone remember that story based here in the UK that an armed man (I think it was a handgun) got in a scuffle with someone and the guy he was attacking managed to get the gun off him and shoot at the crook? I can't remember if he injured the crook or the details of what happened, but I remember there being outrage as the victim was arrested and charged for using beyond reasonable force or something long those lines.
Unbelieveable.
Unbelieveable.
Soldato
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Well done that old man!
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Something like getting a kick in the head when you should have been patted on the back, I suppose you have to imagine that some if not the majority in law enforcement must hate having to make those kind of arrests knowing the 'perpetrator' was right and just in the situation they were in.
Man of Honour
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I can't say I know of the case and without details it is difficult to comment properly but once he had disarmed the attacker was there any further threat to him i.e. had the attacker stopped trying to attack after losing his gun?
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damn right, we need the right to defend ourselves re-applied in this country.
If you throw a robber out your house in the UK, YOU get charged for assault.
But in the good ol' usa you have the god-given right to defend yourself applied in the constitution... god bless the founding fathers.
If you throw a robber out your house in the UK, YOU get charged for assault.
But in the good ol' usa you have the god-given right to defend yourself applied in the constitution... god bless the founding fathers.