New licence to kill guidelines in UK

[R.H. Lee]

could we say that tying a burglar up and setting him on fire is a little bit unreasonable? You know, just a tiny bit over the top, like Aunt Margaret gets on four sherries before Uncle John takes her home?

You want 'unreasonable'? Maybe this guy had more than four sherries:

UK's 'Dr Death' Probably Killed 250 Patients


Individuals, in any society, have an affirmative right to self defense against violent attack. Period. I have no idea why you people in the UK have a problem with that.

 

[Iain]

Let's not get into examples of our societies evils. There would be no winner. We got Jack the Ripper, you got that Manson chappy.

Individuals, in any society, have an affirmative right to self defense against violent attack. Period. I have no idea why you people in the UK have a problem with that.

I'm not seeing where I am, or Ag is, having trouble with this.

It's not the same thing as tying a man up, putting him in a ditch and setting fire to him. That is unreasonable. All the law asks is for you to behave in a way that you 'instinctively' believe is reasonable, that does allow for you to kill if you feel this was necessary. But not by shooting in the back a fleeing burglar or setting a now defenseless man on fire.

 

[agricola]

tell you what Riley, why dont you make a load of unsubstantiated comments rather than making a rational argument, its more fun.

 

[R.H. Lee]

But not by shooting in the back a fleeing burglar or setting a now defenseless man on fire.

How do these isolated incidents trump the right of self defense?

That rational enough for ya, agricola? BTW, agri, you haven't answered the question yet, are you or are you not supportive of self defense against violent crime, by the householder, in the home, on the spot, without regard to what happens to the intruder?

Oh, yeah. Let me answer that. It's for the courts to decide. After the fact. After the 'householder' has been robbed, beaten or killed. Then the courts will decide it was ok for him to defend himself.

Thanks.

 

[TDPerk]

The question is not whether having a right to self defense is in Blackstone, or to some poor degree in the document at the head of the thread. The ink is on the page. The question is whether it has the practical effect of securing that right from the prejudices of authority. In England, the subjects of Her Majesty have a right to self defense in much the same way the African Americans in the days of Jim Crow had the right to vote--the ink was on the page, but meant nothing of effectual worth.

Yours, TDP

 

[Iain]

TD - nonsense.

RileyMc - that example does not trump the right of all to self-defense. I'm not entirely sure where I implied this.

It is an example of unreasonable actions, one of the eleven prosecutions in the last fifteen years for unreasonable actions in what could be labelled a self-defence situation. It wasn't of course, once it had caught and immobilised the man the need for self-defence was over. The setting on fire bit was attempted murder.

As long as don't go clubbing 'Clive the Catburglar' and tying him up and then perhaps beating him around the head with a hedgetrimmer I'll be fine. I just need to avoid the hedgetrimmer bit.

 

[R.H. Lee]

It's the same way here, St Johns. We may only use 'lethal force' against 'lethal force'; when we are in fear of death or serious bodily injury. We would be prosecuted for chasing a fleeing intruder down the street and gunning him down. Guess I don't know WTH point you British are trying to make. Must be a language barrier.

 

[agricola]

Riley,

You can defend yourself, including deadly force. You can detain someone, even tying him up until the Police arrive. That is beyond question, both from the article and from the history of criminal law in this country. Its been demonstrated by myself over, and over, and over again. Its now been demonstrated here. Its also been demonstrated painstakingly by Tim Lambert. It is a right I not only support, I have also been explaining it here for the past two years, to incredulous - but now clearly duped - posters.

What is not self defence, and frankly that you cannot understand this suggests that you are either of low IQ or have some form of mental illness, is tying someone up and then setting them on fire.

Setting someone on fire who is tied up is not self defence, it is not "affirmative self defence". It is murder, plain and simple. The fact that that person was found guilty does not mean that everyone else's self defence is negated, it just mean that the person who did it is guilty.

TDPerk,

Want to evidence that? Or have we retreated into trollism?

 

[jsalcedo]

Jscaledo - could we say that tying a burglar up and setting him on fire is a little bit unreasonable? You know, just a tiny bit over the top, like Aunt Margaret gets on four sherries before Uncle John takes her home?

Yeah it's over the top. I'll admit to that. It happens here in the US as well usually a domestic issue instead of a prowler.

Sometimes I enjoy hearing about the intended prey turning tables on the attacker. Like if some poor cat burglar broke into a flat full of drunken football hooligans.

 

[R.H. Lee]

agricola,
I have never advocated tying someone up and setting them on fire. The fact that you assert that I have not only does not make it so, but persuasively convinces me that you are the one either whose intelligence may be deficient, or you are unfortunately the victim of some perception disorder.

In practice, your country does not enjoy the right of individual self defense against violent crime notwithstanding what your whimsical laws may say.

In addition to your domestic predators, you have a huge internal problem in the form of Muslim extremists, and you and your countrymen will most assuredly pay the price for your 'tolerance'. Your country is unravelling around you, my friend.

 

[TDPerk]

Agricola, you insist that the evidence I've already brought to you means nothing to support my argument. We are going to have to agree to disagree.

Among other statements, you made the fatuous assertion that Osborn plead guilty because:

Brett Osborn was not convicted for defending himself, he was convicted because he accepted that he was guilty. -Agricola

To someone who purports such things to be the truth in the face of the available evidence, no rational argument can be made. Your mind is pedantically made up.

Codswallop. Horse hockey. Nonsense. These are the perjoratives of people who have no argument to make, only faith that their view is right.

In particular the example of "Mrs. White" in the document above, the cases of Mr. Godfrey and Mr. Osborn, the handgun license "policy," these convince me that the English people have no practical right of self defense--because their governing elite intends they have none.

It's no great shock, the Second amendment is quite explicit and catholic in nature, yet we have restrictive gun laws here. It is perfectly clear the vast majority of Americans want the borders closed to low wage job (and public dole benefit) seeking illegal immigrants, yet this isn't a priority with either of the major parties.

England has a slightly hobbled (example of Mrs. White) de jure right to self defense, and de facto it is strongly discouraged by tenditious and overzealous prosecution and an effectual ban on the possesion and use of effective tools of self defense, a state of affairs easily changed if the government wanted to, it doesn't.

The de facto state of affairs is what concerns me.

Yours, TDP

 

[Sparks]

Sparks, I don't know how you could have articulated the statist view more clearly. The notion that the state (society) has collective 'rights', but the individual has none is an anathema to Americans.

I wasn't expressing a statist view unless you believe that "rights" and "duties" are the same thing.

You further attempt to impugn the death penalty by linking it somehow to religion.

I'm not linking it to religion, except to say that you'd have to be religious to believe it was sufficent punishment for murder. Me, I'm a humanist - I don't believe in an afterlife or divine justice. So if someone kills my family, I want them to spend as long a period of time thereafter suffering - not to be given a quick and relatively easy death. That means life at hard labour, not a needle in the arm and a quiet drifting off to sleep.

There is no practical right of self defense in England.

Wrong. But keep saying it. It won't become true, but maybe you can convince someone in a vunerable position like another Osborn to give up his freedom because he didn't understand that he had a legally gauranteed right to self-defence. I don't know why anyone would want that, but since it seems to be your goal...

Osborn plead guilty to a lesser crime because he was at risk of being found guilty of a crime with a far higher penalty.

Sure, in that the facts of the case had not been stated in court and therefore there was a possibility he could have been guilty of murder. However, given the facts of the case that were reported (though we have to question the accuracy and honesty of the media doing the reporting), that would appear to have been as likely as being killed by a meteorite landing on your head.
Not all risks are dire ones.

So be it. The crook didn't have to break in.

And if I kidnap someone, bring them home, set them on fire and then say "oh, he was a burglar"?

Individuals, in any society, have an affirmative right to self defense against violent attack. Period. I have no idea why you people in the UK have a problem with that.

They don't. Mainly because they have that affirmative right. What they don't have, and what you don't have either, is a right to execute someone in cold blood.

The ink is on the page.

Would this be your admission that in fact there is a legal right to self defence in the UK?

The question is whether it has the practical effect of securing that right from the prejudices of authority.

A question which the cases over the past twenty years and more prove conclusively to be answered "yes".

In addition to your domestic predators, you have a huge internal problem in the form of Muslim extremists, and you and your countrymen will most assuredly pay the price for your 'tolerance'.

Given the laws proposed only this week for the UK by the home secretary, that's laughable. They're looking at taking a long walk down a dark road towards an orwellian nightmare over there at the moment, and the word "tolerance" isn't one you could use to describe what's proposed!

To someone who purports such things to be the truth in the face of the available evidence, no rational argument can be made.

Horse hockey. Osborn pled guilty. That's what happened. It's not even in contention.

The de facto state of affairs is what concerns me.

Strange that that which most concerns you is also that which you seem to know the least about.

 

[jsalcedo]

If we get down to basic facts, here's how it is today.

In the US if you shoot someone who is in your home uninvited the police will look into each case and determine whether charges need to be filed against the homeowner. It all depends on the DA and prosecutors stance on self defense and the overall culture of the community. Self defense is more acceptable in Houston than in Manhattan (all burglar burnings will bring immediate arrest in the US BTW)

In the UK it seems self defense cases are scrutinized much more carefully and the use of firearms for home defense increases the chance of prosecution. There is less societal acceptance of violence against intruders and that attitude has been reflected in the courts.

Everyone in the world has the inalienable right to preserve their own life,
however, some would have these rights limited by government for the sake of
being judged civilized and to exclude the defense of property as not being worth killing for.

We get filtered anecdotal bits through the news about the Tony Martins,
Osbournes, and others who seem unfairly targeted by overzealous freedom hating government officials although there are bad prosecutions on both sides
of the Atlantic.

The original document from Ken Macdonald, QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions looks to me as a truce flag and a message to the people
reaffirming,legitimizing and recognizing self defense as a viable option
in the UK. I can see this document being used in future court cases.

 

[Sparks]

IIn the US if you shoot someone who is in your home uninvited the police will look into each case and determine whether charges need to be filed against the homeowner. It all depends on the DA and prosecutors stance on self defense and the overall culture of the community. Self defense is more acceptable in Houston than in Manhattan (all burglar burnings will bring immediate arrest in the US BTW)
In the UK it seems self defense cases are scrutinized much more carefully and the use of firearms for home defense increases the chance of prosecution. There is less societal acceptance of violence against intruders and that attitude has been reflected in the courts.

It might seem that way to you - but that's not how it actually is. While the CPS and the DA are different entities and work in different ways, it is nevertheless reasonably correct to say that the situation you described for the US is the same as the one in the UK.

We get filtered anecdotal bits through the news about the Tony Martins,
Osbournes, and others who seem unfairly targeted by overzealous freedom hating government officials although there are bad prosecutions on both sides
of the Atlantic.

It is the filtering process that's causing the misunderstanding. Martin was guilty, that's why he was convicted; he lied to the police about what he'd done, and the smallest examination of physical evidence showed that (he claimed to have fired from the stairs at the burglars, but it was physically impossible for him to have done so given where pellets had landed, unless he had a shotgun that could shoot round a corner ten feet in front of him...) The physical evidence shows that he stalked the burglars in his home and shot them at close range without warning, and shot at one of them (Fearon) a second time as he was trying to flee the house. That is not self-defence. The shotgun was also one he'd gotten (as it later transpired) through fraud, and he had a record of shooting at people for trivial reasons (if someone steals an apple from your orchard, you don't unload a twelve-gauge at their car for the offence - you might not believe that human life is worth less than an apple, but you'd be insane if you did).

However, for their own reasons, the Telegraph and two tabloids reported this as an attack on the right to self-defence and a persecution of an innocent man. It was nothing of the sort and it was this untruthful story that was cited by Osborn as the reason he chose to plead guilty. (We don't actually know if he was innocent or not, but what we have heard suggests he was).

 

[agricola]

jsalcedo,

In the UK it seems self defense cases are scrutinized much more carefully and the use of firearms for home defense increases the chance of prosecution. There is less societal acceptance of violence against intruders and that attitude has been reflected in the courts.

That is wrong, and it stems from the media stories you have highlighted below that quote. The confusion takes two forms:

Firstly, a misunderstanding over the way Police in England and Wales deal with criminal investigation. Over here, if a person is suspected of an offence they must be "cautioned" (told that "You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention something when questioned that you later rely on in Court, anything you do say may be given in evidence) before they can be asked any questions about what happened. In more minor matters this can be done by appointment (ie: the person is asked to attend a given Police Station at a given date with his solicitor if he wants one); but given that these incidents invariably involve serious injury or death, it means the person has to be arrested. They are then interviewed on tape and bailed for CPS to look at the file and decide if a prosecution should be brought (though in Martin and Osborn's case the decision was ultimately down to a Police Sergeant). In the meantime the person under arrest is bailed to come back to a Police station later - he has not been charged with any offence at this stage. It is only when there is sufficient evidence to support a charge and give a likelyhood of conviction that the person is charged - which is what makes me think there is more to the Osborn case than meets the eye.

Secondly, the papers have been shown now, by the release of this guidance, to have been wilfully misrepresenting the facts. On the other thread, we have seen how the Sun withheld information that dramatically affected people's perception of what had happened to a shopkeeper.

We can also see how the Scotsman initially reported the Carl Lindsay case, which caused great uproar here and everywhere else until it was established that the story was a pack of lies, which caused one of THR's finest to reply:

Oh, come on, Unlucky. IF the account in Agricola's article is true and the other is not, there's no way that would have been considered justified in most American states, either.

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=72967&highlight=carl+lindsay

Then we have Tony Martin. Since his trial, it has been the task of elements of the media to repeat over and over his defence case as fact; despite the fact that it was disproved by all manner of forensic evidence as well as an awful lot of other evidence that demonstrated Martin was guilty. Remember Tamara's wisdom:

Since we live in the free U.S. of by Gawd A., what do you think would happen if you:

1) Bragged loudly to your neighbours about how you'd shoot any punk you caught breaking in.
2) Used an illegally obtained, restricted weapon (say, an open bolt Uzi that has somehow "wound up" full auto) to shoot an intruder.
3) Fled the scene of the shooting and didn't notify the cops until 24hrs later.

Given those three items, how far under the American jail do you think they'd bury your American self?

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=6209&highlight=tony+martin

The paper's crusade focuses on Martin, and to a lesser extent Barry-Lee Hastings and Osborn (to a lesser extent, because the circumstances of why they were guilty are even more transparent - one chased a burglar out of his home and stabbed him eleven times after he fell over, the other plead guilty). The baton was then picked up by a desperate Tory Party, who repeated the lie without even bothering to find out if it was true - one of my fondest memories of the past year is Michael Howard being asked if he could name any of the "dozens" of people who had been criminalized for defending themselves, and having to answer that he didnt know. Thats because there arent any - if there were, the papers would have been all over it like a rash; they have been forced to present what stories there are in as favourable a light as possible and hope the public buys it.

[edited to change "Interviewed" to "asked any questions..."]

 

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

It should also not be unlawful to set an automated trap, such as a shotgun wired to the doorknob, or a Claymore.

Yes it should be illegal. Elsewise a policeman or fireman risks death when they make a lawfull emergency entry into your home.

I can't think of a single US jurisdiction where such a deadfall is legal.

 

[carpettbaggerr]

I want them to spend as long a period of time thereafter suffering - not to be given a quick and relatively easy death. That means life at hard labour

Can they get that in the UK? Pretty sure they can't here in the US. Books, radio, TV and three meals a day are provided though.

 

[R.H. Lee]

Can they get that in the UK? Pretty sure they can't here in the US. Books, radio, TV and three meals a day are provided though.

Not to mention free healthcare (including organ transplants, and maybe sex change operations ), dental, education (including college degrees), conjugal visits.

 

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What are they supposed to kill them with? Stinging arguments? Warm beer and lousy food?

DanO