The networks are running a riveting 911 call audio tape of an elderly woman describing in detail the efforts, for over ten minutes, of an intruder to gain entry to her home.
“They need to hurry. He’s going to break this thing open. When he does, I’ll have to kill him and I don’t want to kill him,” Jackson said during the 911 call.
Gun in hand, she asks the dispatcher for guidance, essentially seeking legal advice. Can she kill him? The dispatcher seeks counsel from a colleague and in essence, gives her the go-ahead to use lethal force and potentially take his life if he gains entry.
And he gone done it.
Using patio furniture to smash through a window, convicted felon Billy Dean Riley didn’t realize he just brought a lawn chair to a gun fight.
“Once he smashed the glass out he stepped into the residence and she used the shotgun to fire one shot which hit the intruder center of the chest and (he) fell back out of the house”
He be dead.
Is she in trouble?
No.
Many states including Oklahoma have adopted the “Castle Doctrine” which essentially stipulates a homeowner can defend his or her home from an intruder with deadly force and can deliberately shoot to kill without legal consequence (save the resultant need for carpet cleaning).
A Castle Doctrine (also known as a Castle Law or a Defense of Habitation Law) is an legal doctrine that arose from English Common Law that designates one’s place of residence (or, in some states, any place legally occupied, such as one’s car or place of work) as a place in which one enjoys protection from illegal trespassing and violent attack. It then goes on to give a person the legal right to use deadly force to defend that place (his/her “Castle”), and/or any other innocent persons legally inside it, from violent attack or an intrusion which may lead to violent attack. In a legal context, therefore, use of deadly force which actually results in death may be defended as “Justifiable homicide” under the Castle Doctrine.
Oklahoma happens to be a “Castle State,” while others have a “duty to retreat” clause wherein the homeowner has a duty to get out of the way of the would-be offender, others grant the homeowner a “stand your ground” clause. I was curious as to the Status of Minnesota.
The intentional taking of the life of another is not authorized by section 609.06, except when necessary in resisting or preventing an offense which the actor reasonably believes exposes the actor or another to great bodily harm or death, or preventing the commission of a felony in the actor’s place of abode.
Minnesota as it were, is a stand your ground state as long as you are in your home. It gets murky outside the home and in public areas, despite attempts to strengthen the law in the interest of would-be victims of violent crimes.
Hmm. I wonder if one’s comment section is considered a place legally “occupied” by the owner and as such…uh, never mind.
MITCH ADDS: Er, not so fast here. Minnesota’s law is incredibly murky in this area One of the elements of an affirmative self-defense claim in Minnesota is that the home-owner has to make every reasonable effort to disengage and de-escalate, where “reasonable” means ‘would convince a jury”. How reasonable is “reasonable?” It depends on how zealously anti-gun your local prosecutor is. In Granite Falls, a simple “go away, I have a gun” might get you off. In Saint Paul, fleeing your attacker until you’re in the very last closet in the very furthest room from the burglar’s entry point might be enough to keep the prosecutor off your back, but that’s no guarantee; the prosecutor might maintain that if you’d actually given the burglar your gun and kids, he’d have gone away and you’d have averted a fatal shooting. The jury might or might not be another thing – but that means a trial, which means hiring a defense attorney and burning up a whole lot of money.
Rep. Tony Cornish proposed a “stand your ground” bill in the ’07 legislature, back when the grownups still controlled one chamber in the legislature. It got completely slandered by the ill-informed, in-the-bag media, which called it a “shoot first” bill; has anyone considered the ramifications of shooting second, by the way? Anyway – a stand your ground law would be a good thing; it’d define how far you have to back down on your own property, instead of leaving it up to prosecutors’ discretion.
It’s yet another reason we need to win the legislature back this year.
Funny how whenever some old Okie lady shoots a guy in completely justified self-defense, the news rockets around the wingnut gun-fetishist world. Not so much when some kid gets accidentally shot or some nut hears voices telling him to kill his family.
Or some clown fires blanks in a comment section.
It is really unfair that would-be burglars and robbers can’t know in advance if the home-owner is armed; no doubt the Minnesota legislature will address this injustice next session while saving minor issues such as the budget to the last minute.
I am, however, following the MN legislature’s lead in protecting my home: I have a large sign by my doors and windows stating “The Night Writer Manse prohibits murder, rape, burglary and weapons of mass destruction on these premises.” So far, so good.
I think it’s sad that this woman knew that defending her home and her person was not an obvious OK move, that she could be punished for it. It’s pretty clear she didn’t want to take a life but felt she had no option. If she lived more than 10 minutes from a police response, she was more than justified. I think even in MN she’d be fine. Throwing patio furniture through a window is pretty violent. I think you could say she could easily fear for her life. Being an elderly woman probably bigger, stronger, violent felon would also help her case.
Anyone who breaks into someone else’s home should have a reasonable expectation of violence going in, regardless of whether or not the owner has a gun.
This kind of came up last Saturday night when I was hanging out with Tracy, Sequel, Tom and a few others. Here’s a tip to scare off potential robbers, put an NRA sticker in your front window. Make it easy to see so they know not to mess with you
Funny how whenever some old Okie lady shoots a guy in completely justified self-defense, the news rockets around the wingnut gun-fetishist world. Not so much when some kid gets accidentally shot or some nut hears voices telling him to kill his family.
We leave that to the lamestream media, clownie. They do the bidding of you leftists quite happily and don’t need our help. It’s the stuff that’s “filtered” and subject to “gatekeepers” that needs the help to get out.
At least the elderly woman properly understood that if you aim, and shoot, you intend to kill, not just hope you slow them down.
I do kind of wonder if the intruder might have gone away if he had realized she was armed and prepared to act; the one part of this that is less clear is if the woman made any statement (stop or I’ll shoot, something along that line), or if she might have considered a warning shot as he was breaking the window (as a practical matter, she was going to have to break the glass anyway).
Night Writer, I’m partial to the signs “My dog can make it to the gate (or door as applicable) in 6 seconds; can you?” and if you get past that sign, “Never mind the dog, beware of owner.” (appropriately illustrated)
If someone ill intentioned find themselves caught between either sign and the gate, god help them.
nerdbert prattled: “It’s the stuff that’s “filtered” and subject to “gatekeepers” that needs the help to get out.”
Haha! Yeah, guess it’s another case of reality being biased against you wingnuts.
DG, my brother makes rural deliveries for FedEx and dogs are a regular hazard in the job. Your signs raise a good question, but he’s found that a number of times he’s gone faster than he thought possible. One of his drivers was chased by a Rhodesian Ridgeback; he not only set a personal best in the 20-yard dash, but cleanly hurdled a 4-foot fence.
It is also not uncommon to be greeted at the door with a gun when he’s delivery to remote farmhouses after dark.
The problem with self-defense in Minnesota is that it’s a defense raised during the trial of a criminal charge, not insulation from the charge.
By the time you get to argue self-defense, you’ve already been arrested; had your mug shot splashed across the newspapers; made an initial appearance in court to have bail set; mortgaged your house to buy a bail bond so you can get out of jail to keep your job; made a second appearance to plead Not Guilty; hired a lawyer to accompany you to the omnibus hearing; engaged in pre-trial discovery; brought motions in limine; attempted to work out a plea bargain at the pre-trial hearing; sat through voir dire and listened to the prosecutor’s entire case being presented to the jury.
Then and only then can you start talking about self-defense. IF the judge lets you. It’s not a Constitutional right, it’s a permissive defense.
Ordinary people can’t afford this. That’s why people like Treptow end up pleading guilty to something, anything, just to make it stop.
The key is to get a law that says before charges even can be filed, a judge has to decide that self-defense wasn’t applicable. That’s how you rein in grandstanding County Attorneys looking to use a high-profile case to build name ID for a run for Governor.
.
Dog:
I do kind of wonder if the intruder might have gone away if he had realized she was armed and prepared to act
If that had been the case this creep may have gone to another, less prepared little old ladie’s home. I think it turned out well.
It’s not just “reality”, it’s justce, which is only biased in the mind of idiots and clowns.
Hey, apart from the debate, I love a story with a happy ending. Thanks, JR!
And per AC’s rantings; 2.5 million defensive uses of guns each year in the United States. A few hundred tragic accidents. Do.The.Math.
Yeah, guess it’s another case of reality being biased against you wingnuts.
I didn’t realize that the media was reality. You learn another aspect of clownish idiocy every day!
Just to educate you, clown, you might look up the statistics on the number of crimes prevented by law-abiding citizens and compare the those to the number of times they’re actually reported. That ratio is quite low, especially when compared to how probably the reporting of an accidental shooting is.
bubbasan asserted: “And per AC’s rantings; 2.5 million defensive uses of guns each year in the United States. A few hundred tragic accidents. Do.The.Math.”
Post. A. Source. That’s a pulled-from-the-rectum stat if ever there was one.
The commenter who looks for any opportunity to use the word “rectum” in his comments said:
Post. A. Source. That’s a pulled-from-the-rectum stat if ever there was one.
Dude. A WorldNetDaily editorial. About an early-’90s study that used phone surveys and “number extrapolation.”
If you’re so loose about your standards of proof, Angryclown can only marvel that you don’t buy the science behind global warming. But then it’s not really about facts for you kooks, is it?
Clown,
The figure Bubba and Roosh quoted was from U of Florida criminologist Gary Kleck – who has always taken pains to point out that he’s neither a Repubican nor a “gunnie”. The 2.5 milllion figure is the statistical high end of his estimates, which ran (as of the publishing of Point Blank) from 750,000 to 2.5 million. Kleck’s research has been peer-reviewed for nearly twenty years, now, and is generally consisdered to be definitive by academics in criminology, along with the the DOJ/NIJ study to which Roosh referred. Kleck also noted that 80% of these uses involved no shots fired; the threat of a gun was enough to resolve the situation (as with my own situation, in 1988, where the sound of my gun racking a round sent two burglars skittering out the door). Kleck also noted that armed citizens shoot the wrong person about 1-2% of the time; for cops, the figure is as high as 11% (not a reflection of police competence, but of the fact that they arrive on the scene later, when situations are often confusing.
The FBI’s own figures – which use an exceedingly restrictive set of criteria – point to a minimum of 80,000 defensive handgun uses a year.
Read further, Clown.
WND cited an actual academic publication – Kleck’s various studies, all of them peer-reviewed – which the USDOJ used to guide its own survey methodology which led to similar midrange numbers.
As the great sage said – it’s not about facts for you kooks, is it?
To be fair, much of Kleck’s work does date from the nineties. Some things have changed. In 1990, perhaps 25 states had “shall issue” laws. Today we’re up to 40. Crime in most places has dropped; defensive handgun uses seem to have held fairly steady. Go figure.
Angryclown can only marvel that you don’t buy the science behind global warming
Yes, who could doubt “settled science” that needs to be “homogenized”?
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/09/east-anglia-homogenization-falsified-declines-into-increases/
The police did arrest her for using lead shot, her neighborhood was a steel shot only neighborhood.
“If that had been the case this creep may have gone to another, less prepared little old ladie’s home. I think it turned out well.
It’s not just “reality”, it’s justce, which is only biased in the mind of idiots and clowns.”
Spot on, Kermit!
DogGone is no clown. 😉
“By the time you get to argue self-defense, you’ve already been arrested…”
First of all, if you kill someone your actions are going to be put under a microscope and investigated. If you are truly killing in self defense, legal ramifications are not your primary concern.
Second, its not necessesarily true. You will be held for questioning, but you won’t be charged unless the D.A. thinks he or she can win. If you are suspected of murder, you will be charged. Even then the case will not go to trial unless there is serious evidence against you. During the trial, if you can’t convince one person out of twelve that you’re not a felon… well, then you become one whether you like it or not.
nate makes some excellent comments including: ‘Ordinary people can’t afford this. That’s why people like Treptow end up pleading guilty to something, anything, just to make it stop.
The key is to get a law that says before charges even can be filed; a judge has to decide that self-defense wasn’t applicable. That’s how you rein in grandstanding County Attorneys looking to use a high-profile case to build name ID for a run for Governor.”
Any “Castle Doctrine”, or as I would prefer a “Stand Your Ground” law needs to include for both protection from criminal prosecution, and for protection from civil litigation. The criminal assumes the risks of his chosen profession; his heirs shouldn’t have the ability to benefit from his sudden demise.
“unless the DA thinks she can win.”
Exactly. Not “thinks you’re guilty” but “thinks she can win.” A telling difference, depending on how the media plays different facts:
911 Operator Tells Shotgun Granny to Shoot Crazed Killer;
vs.
Middle-Aged Angry White Man Slaughters Innocent Black Child On His Way To Peaceful Church Services (and who just happened to be 17, had a long juvie record and broke into an occupied dwelling at night, with a weapon, making threats).
It’d be nice to have some judicial oversight in the system.
.
AB,
That’s both true and a very pollyannaish view of the legal process.
First of all, if you kill someone your actions are going to be put under a microscope and investigated. If you are truly killing in self defense, legal ramifications are not your primary concern.
Well, yes they are, if “your freedom”, to say nothing of future financial well-being, is your concern.
If you kill someone, your actions will be examined very closely, to be sure. Will they be examined by a prosecutor who has both a political imperative to stigmatize and punish an otherwise law-abiding use of a firearm, both to answer to his/her current masters and to buff up numbers for a future political career? By someone to whom the law grants extremely broad discretion to try to criminalize ambiguous facts and behavior?
If the woman in the story above were in Saint Paul, the Ramco Attorney would have broad leeway to say “you should have retreated as far as you could before shooting!”. That’d be after all the preliminaries that Nate listed above.
You will be held for questioning, but you won’t be charged unless the D.A. thinks he or she can win. If you are suspected of murder, you will be charged. Even then the case will not go to trial unless there is serious evidence against you.
True, according to how the law is “supposed” to work; hopelessly naive in the real world.
Martin Treptow was released after questioning with no charges after his shooting incident. His carry permit wasn’t even suspended, which would be the norm in shooting cases – the evidence against him was that weak, the evidence favoring his story was that strong. And yet the Anoka County Attorney stretched the case into an endless legal nightmare that looks likely to end in at least a very ugly blot on Treptow’s record. Why? Because of the inter-jurisdictional politics involved in the shooting; Landen Beard was a Robbinsdale cop, on the Gang Strike Force; the thin blue line closed ranks, and did its backroom dirty dealing with the AnoCo Attorney to make sure that something stuck on Treptow. Face-saving? Adminsitrative butt-covering to justify Beard in any future labor/management actions? We don’t know – but even though the signs and evidence universally favored Treptow, he’s gotten ground up amid county politics.
Pardon me if I don’t feel any faith in the system as it’s currently set up. I’d just as soon take discretion away from prosecutors, when it comes to defending myself.
Mitch asserted: “If the woman in the story above were in Saint Paul, the Ramco Attorney would have broad leeway to say “you should have retreated as far as you could before shooting!”. That’d be after all the preliminaries that Nate listed above.”
Oh sure, some old biddy shoots a guy violently breaking into her house after calling 911 and your local DA is going to score political points by putting her in jail. Maybe the evil libruls on Planet Wingnut behave that irrationally. Here on earth, any actual elected official would give her a parade.
That’s so cute. Clownie thinks St. Paul (or Minneapolis) functions under the rule of common sense.
Oh sure, some old biddy shoots a guy violently breaking into her house after calling 911 and your local DA is going to score political points by putting her in jail. Maybe the evil libruls on Planet Wingnut behave that irrationally. Here on earth, any actual elected official would give her a parade.
Thank you, Clown. Like a drunk 22 point buck, you wandered into my ambush.
In 1994, a deranged ex-Marine shot a cop – Ron Ryan, Jr., son of the recently-retired former head of the Gang Unit – in a church parking lot on Saint Paul’s East Side, after Ryan stopped to investigate why the guy was sleeping in his car. A woman standing in an apartment doorway half a block away saw the whole thing. The shooter was circling around to kill off the witness…
…as a man standing in his living room half a block away watched. He’d grabbed a handgun (which happened to have only three rounds loaded) when he heard the first shots, and watched as the killer drove toward the woman, aiming his pistol.
The man – whom I interviewed in 1995 – was a Daniel-Boone-level expert marksman. At that range, even with a handgun, he could have parted the killer’s hair – or ears. But he was nervous about being prosecuted, since – under Minnesota’s then-and-current self-defense law, he had many options other than shooting. So he opted to put two shots through the back window of the car, to “mark” it for the cops. He saved a round in case the killer came around for him.
The killer took off, as the guy had his sons call the police and ran down to administer first aid to Ofcr. Ryan. That’s what he was doing when the whole SPPD and the paramedics arrived.
It worked, of course – the cops found the the killer later in the morning using the broken rear window. However, another cop – Officer Jones – and his dog Laser were both killed in the chase.
How well-considered was the shooting? The guy in the apartment was able to tell the Crime Lab exactly where to find the bullets he’d fired into the killer’s car. That’s accurate.
How righteous was the shoot? Saint Paul cops came over afterwards to personally thank the guy. One gave him one of his service ribbons.
And yet the County Attorney – Tom “Don’t Call Me Mark” Foley – did his best to file charges against the Good Armed Samaritan. It was only when a whole s**tload of cops told the County Attorney that they could expect minimal cooperation in prosecuting a guy who’d tried to save one of their own that the prosecutor went away.
That’d be a real-world example of what “an actual official” would do. Good thing for Good Armed Samaritan the victim was a cop, huh?
Some parade!
Good thing you have clownin’; I’d hate to see what’d happen if you had to know anything about the law for a living.
Actually, the Department of Justice number for defensive gun uses was around 800,000 annually, not 80,000, and that while Clinton was President.
But we won’t worry about “Mr. Projection I’ll pull numbers out of my *** and accuse you of doing what I just did” AC figuring out that reality stands squarely against his fantasies…
Clownie thinks St. Paul (or Minneapolis) functions under the rule of common sense.
The Twin Cities: All the common sense of Berkeley, all the integrity of Chicago.
Mitch has it right, on most of the stuff. Uup; we do have “defense of dwelling” in Minnesota. As a practical matter, though, the big deal about it is that it removes the duty to retreat, even if it’s (arguably) practical and safe to do so.
And it’s very limited; the law talks about your “place of abode” — which pretty clearly isn’t your front lawn. Your porch? Maybe, if you’re inside; see the McCuiston case. (The judge refused to give a defense of dwelling instruction to the jury; McCuiston was convicted in what pretty clearly was a case of self-defense, anyway; the appeals court later ruled that he should have gotten the instruction, and sprung him.)
But, as we emphasize in class, it’s not a hunting license for intruders. There’s that word “necessary”, and it’s entirely possible for a prosecutor to decide that it wasn’t necessary at all, and after tens of thousands of dollars spent on defense, a jury might or might not agree.
Tony Cornish’s bill — which I think is a very good one — doesn’t deal with that, but does remove the legal obligation to retreat, hence the “stand your ground” monicker. But it goes further, in a good way — it would allow you to threaten to use deadly force if it becomes lawful in a situation where you can’t, quite yet — where you’re in fear of substantial/severe bodily harm, but not, yet, in fear of death or GBH.
That strikes a reasonable balance — it doesn’t allow you to say, “I’m going to shoot you if you touch me” in a situation where you’re only reasonably in fear of being jostled, but would allow somebody to appropriately threaten an attacker even if their “only” reasonable fear is that they’re about to be seriously injured, if not necessarily killed or crippled.
One of the best things about it, though, is that it requires law enforcement to at least consider self-defense issues before making an arrest.
Mitch wrote:
The Twin Cities: All the common sense of Berkeley, all the integrity of Chicago.
That’s the entire federal government these days.
The Twin Cities: All the common sense of Berkeley, all the integrity of Chicago.
And if you don’t believe it, RT Ryback has a $50,000 drinking fountain you might want to sponsor.
“Good thing you have clownin’; I’d hate to see what’d happen if you had to know anything about the law for a living.”
😆
Good one, Mitch!
😆
“It was only when a whole s**tload of cops told the County Attorney that they could expect minimal cooperation in prosecuting a guy who’d tried to save one of their own that the prosecutor went away.”
…and you say the system doesn’t work. 🙂
The Twin Cities: All the common sense of Berkeley, all the integrity of Chicago.
now thats not fair, to Berkeley and Chicago.
Yeah, you have to love a police state. No really. The EPA just declared one, and you have to love it. Or else.
Yes, who could doubt “settled science” that needs to be “homogenized”?
That was a poor choice of words. The science is not homogenized, it’s pasteurized: they’ve heated it up until they’ve removed any germ of truth.
he EPA just declared one, and you have to love it. Or else.
Yep command and control economy. How’d that work out for the Soviets?
Sure Mitch, Angryclown fell right into your trap. That one crazy guy shooting a cop then killing a witness and then a fourth guy comes along and shoots out the crazy guy’s rear window, all of which apparently happened outdoors, is EXACTLY like the criminal breaking his way into some old lady’s house. Angryclown should have seen that one coming down Sixth Ave.
Yes, trap.
You said “Maybe the evil libruls on Planet Wingnut behave that irrationally. Here on earth, any actual elected official would give her a parade.”
The only parade Tom Foley tried to throw the Good Samaritan with a SIG was the unit of frog-walking perps during the winter carnival procession.
I’m unclear on the clowns statistics. Where did he post those?
“Funny how whenever some old Okie lady shoots a guy in completely justified self-defense, the news rockets around the wingnut gun-fetishist world. Not so much when some kid gets accidentally shot or some nut hears voices telling him to kill his family.”
Seems clear he is saying the tragic shootings far outweigh the self defense shootings. What cites did he use to defend that statement?
If that’s a trap, it sure ain’t of the bear or burmese tiger variety. Think Angryclown just stepped on your roach motel.
Oh AC, you’re just bitter that your argument got soundly trounced by reality.
It’s okay to be wrong, you should know that since you frequently are. Otherwise you’re gonna have self-esteem issues.
Buzz: I wouldn’t at all be surprised if bad shootings are more numerous than good ones. By far, the majority of defensive gun uses — including mine — don’t involve shooting at all. The example that Mitch cites, while it obviously can and does happen, is a rarity. And the sequel — where the guy was in very serious risk of prosecution — shows how crazy the enforcement side of this can be. (And let’s not get me started on poor Scott Treptow.)
That was, not orthogonally, a major problem with the Kellerman study — he was comparing bad killings with guns in the home to good killings with guns in the home, and found, unsurprisingly, that if you exclude things like the display of a gun, mentioning that you’re going to get yours out, or even wounding an intruder, you’re left with the very rare defensive gun use where the intruder is not only shot but killed.
I’ve had a very small number of my carry permit students report to me that they’ve been involved in a defensive gun use. Not one of them’s had to put their finger on a trigger; not one of them was other than, on balance, delighted by that.
My uncle emailed this to me today:
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