Thats far more likely to get your convicted and you'll have been stabbed too, not exactly a win win, if you stab a burglar defending yourself you'll be fine, but to then try and pervert the course of justice will make you look very guilty if you get caught and things like dna and the fact it's your knife means there is a real chance of that.Originally Posted by KIAEddZ
All the various reports do make you wonder what's going on, it's almost as if the CPS is hell bent on punishing the victim because they are an easy target (good for the crime figures)... and this sort of thing isn't limited to home invasion either. You stand up to yobs that have been harassing you or your neighbours, they swing at you and miss and in defence you fight back (because there's always more than one of them), result? police arrest you. Stand up to yobs, as they jeer, you poke one in the chest, the police arrest the victim (this has actually happened, the poker in question was a 76 year old lady with osteoarthritis who could only walk with the aid of a walking frame, she confronted one of the yobs that had been harassing her and poked one in the chest. The police then arrested her and dragged her through the courts. Info - courtesy of Co. Durham's Northern Echo, a reliable paper and not one known for over exaggerating articles).
It just seems that in today's politically correct climate and number driven target work culture that it's the innocent victim that gets the hammering by the law simply because they are an easy target (generally because they will say yes I hit him, he was breaking in to my house and thus an easy conviction whereas the perpetrator will happily deny the charges and thus make those in law enforcement actually do a bit of work).
The reason there's been a surge in what I would call yob culture is simply because the police wash their hands of it (the old hands are tied excuse) and the little #"%!! know that they'll get away with making the lives of people who just want a quiet life in a good community hell just because they are 'bored' (and could someone please explain to me why getting so drunk you can barely stand, never mind walk, is a desirable thing?).
In my book a little bit of retribution goes along way, though killing someone is going a little too far unless life is directly threatened(a good maiming on the other hand is always preferable, that way they know they did wrong for the rest of their miserable, pathetic life). Alas this subject will always get my blood boiling.
My knife... hes in my house.
DNA? lul CSI Dorset!!.. (Tv is bad mmkay)
He broke in, he stabbed me with a knife he picked up in my house, I stabbed him, he got me in the arm, I got him in the head.
Short of me breaking down and saying actually I'm lying, I am afraid that would stand up in a court of law with some ease (of course it wouldnt get to court, hes dead, my word)
^^ op was of course meant to be a chuckle, but since you forced me to, I gave it some thought.
you really think they don't use dna and finger print etc evidence for murders/manslaughters in this country?
The simple fact is you wern't going to go to jail with the truth, so adding lies just and hurting yourself makes you more likely to get done not less. I didn't say you would get convincted just you are increaseing the chance of it and getting hurt too. But you were joking fair enough.
I was joking but now I feel my sense of plausability is being challenged.
I am unsure what you would expect to find on a knife that is
a. Withdrawn from the wound by my own hand
b. covered in my blood
c. discarded into my sink along with various dirty dishes, whilst i attend to my wound with first aid kit that I keep in cupboard above my sink...
As I alluded to previously, CSI Miami is not how the real world works, a dead Burglar, a stabbed victim, would of course create a cursory investigation, but as long as you got the angle of entry into your own arm plausibly right, and created a reasonable story as to why the knife was left in a place that was in the path of the Burglars entry to the house, teh facts would hold up enough to clear your story.
Shorty of a creating your own downfall getting caught in an over elaborated lie (no need), or breaking down under pressure in the cautioned interview, there is no way your word wouldnt be held up.
1 dead Burglar, worlds a safer place....
Just have a Moose handy...!!
and if the burglar doesn't die from the single stab wound? and putting a knife through your arm and then pulling it out is a pretty stupid thing to do even if you know exactly where the important veins and tendons etc are especially when the law was on your side for defending yourself in the first place. As I said it doesn't mean you wouldn't get away with it but adding lies just makes getting done more not less likely. The more lies you add the more change you have of tripping up when you are questioned.I was joking but now I feel my sense of plausability is being challenged.
I am unsure what you would expect to find on a knife that is
a. Withdrawn from the wound by my own hand
b. covered in my blood
c. discarded into my sink along with various dirty dishes, whilst i attend to my wound with first aid kit that I keep in cupboard above my sink...
As I alluded to previously, CSI Miami is not how the real world works, a dead Burglar, a stabbed victim, would of course create a cursory investigation, but as long as you got the angle of entry into your own arm plausibly right, and created a reasonable story as to why the knife was left in a place that was in the path of the Burglars entry to the house, teh facts would hold up enough to clear your story.
Shorty of a creating your own downfall getting caught in an over elaborated lie (no need), or breaking down under pressure in the cautioned interview, there is no way your word wouldnt be held up.
1 dead Burglar, worlds a safer place....
Thats just wrong 100%, if you feel the person is a threat you can defend yourself from that threat, if thats from a policeman he doesn't know what he is talking about. a skinny tech geek using a weapon against the assailient you describe would very much be reasonable.
If he doesnt die, the head trauma is gonna be such that it would be nigh on a certainty that he wouldnt remember a thing about the incident, and even if he did, his lucidity could be easily bought into question.
Putting a knife into the fat of your arm, then pulling it out, wouldn't be a large issue.
you don't know that at all, it depends completely on where the stab wound is, you could of course call his recolection into question but you are stacking things up against you that arn't necessary.
You might be able to do it but I bet the majority of people couldn't put a knife through their arm, getting a reasonable angle of entry and making sure not to hit anything important and then pulling it out and even then you have infection etc to worry about.
but anyway this is getting silly, you were joking and I misunderstood and thought you were serious, I'm sure if you were in this situation for real you wouldn't try it, its foolish and there is no reason to.
DNA and fingerprint evidence are, of course, used in the UK. But the way they're used in certain TV programs is pure fantasy. There are rules of evidence that have to be met, and some of them relate to what evidence shows. If a burglar got stabbed with a knife that had my fingerprint on it, what does it tell you about who stabbed the burglar? Not much, unless you can establish that that fingerprint had no right being there. If the knife was my own, and in my own property, a fingerprint established precisely nothing probative. Similarly, what does DNA prove? I recently bought a new set of very sharp kitchen knives. Naturally, shortly after getting them I managed to cut myself. Not much of a cut, but being extremely sharp, it went pretty deep with me barely feeling it and bled profusely, including over the knife. Finding someone's blood or DNA or a knife, or on anything else, proves nothing if there's a valid reason for it being there.
Of course, in my knife, with my DNA on it, was found in your house after a burglary gone wrong, I'd have more explaining to do. But someone could have stolen it from me and used it when burgling you.
I think the point KIAEddZ was making is that his blood or DNA, on his knife in his home is, in itself, proof of very little. If he killed a burglar with that knife, after a struggle in which he got stabbed, it's quite reasonable to expect his blood on it and DNA doesn't establish much, other than that that knife was involved, and that probably isn't in dispute anyway.
His point, I think, was that the burglar's dead so can't give evidence or present a different account of how it went down. And the prosecution would have to prove, probably to a sympathetic jury, that the householder used excessive force. While perhaps possible to do it, it certainly wouldn't be easy in the "struggle" scenario.
Sure, shaithis, I'm sure you wouldn't. The throat-slitting example was to present an extreme situation in response to you sayingIt is, I think, an example of something too excessive.I find it a complete joke that anything could be excessive when it comes to defending yourself and your property.
And is anything at all can be too excessive, then there has to be a line. And that means we have to come up with a way of defining that line that is both versatile enough to cover unexpected situations, while being useful in guiding judges on how to interpret things when trying cases.
I also have to say that the exact meaning of "reasonable" in the context of self-defence as a defence has been the subject of intense legal argument, numerous appeals and House of Lords rulings, and has been refined and amended countless times over many decades. I doubt there's been many words that have been the subject of much more time and legal effort. And after, oh, 100 years or more of arguing about it, the current situation is the best they've come up with.
I think that the way the authorities interpret it in deciding whether or not to prosecute is every bit as important as the term itself, and the standard applied there seems to be that you have to go quite some way in defending your own home before you risk prosecution, but that if a burglar ends up seriously hurt, let alone dead, there will be and frankly ought to be a serious investigation. Even so, prosecutions of homeowners for excessive force against intruders are pretty rare.
Perhaps one that did knock but you didn't or couldn't hear him. Maybe you were asleep, or he believed (whether right or not) that you may be unconscious due to fumes. Maybe you were listening to a loud TV or using headphones?
You aren't required to just let them get away. Under certain circumstances, every single member of society has the right to "arrest" someone. And, you're allowed to use ..... wait for it .... "reasonable force" to do so.
So .... providing the circumstances are right, and you only use reasonable force, you are legally entitled to detain someone, by force if necessary .... just like a policeman. Police still have to use reasonable force to arrest. If you decline to be arrested simply by being told you're arrested, and try to walk away, they'll step up the force a bit, but they won't pull a Glock 9mil and blow you away because that would be excessive. If, on the other hand, you pull a gun and point it at at an (armed) policeman, expect him to respond with deadly force because it would then be reasonable.
A policeman has much wider powers of arrest than the general public do, but the basic provisions are much the same. If, repeat IF you do it in the right situations, you can arrest people , and by reasonable force if need be. But, and it's a serious point, if you get it wrong and try it when you aren't legally entitled to do it, then that "reasonable force" becomes assault or worse.
So my general advice is that while we can all perform a citizen's arrest, in the right circumstances, I advise great caution before trying it. For a start, police are both trained and better equipped than most of us so less likely to get hurt doing it, and secondly, they're very emphatically trained in when they can and can't arrest someone because, just like us, if they arrest someone with no legal justification, they could end up facing any of quite a set of pretty serious charges themselves, especially if violence was involved.
So sure, you can detain people and aren't obliged to let them just run away. But be VERY careful if you decide to do it, because you could potentially end up in far more trouble than the burglar you "arrested". Is it worth risking that?
I reckon that most people would recognised a uniformed officer/fireman even if they did not hear an announcement, and I would expect that most people won't rush in to incapacitate the 'intruder' in those instances (just hope no burglars get the idea of impersonating a uniformed individual).
But while burglars may be a non-confrontational bunch, there is still the concern that the person you've caught in the your house is not after your possession. The odds are considerably slimmer (I should hope) but there -are- some very deranged people capable of terrifying things.
The issue is that the typically untrained householder has to essentially 'guess' their capabilities vs the intruders, and making the wrong call could cost their lives (wrongly assume that the intruder is unharmed) or freedom (kill a desperate 15 years old who only wanted things from the fridge).
There have been a number of incidents in the US where police or federal agents executing 'no knock' warrants have been shot at by the homeowners.
Guys carrying guns and wearing ski masks breaking in the door of a house without warning. I lack sympathy, even if the people inside are criminals. (actually they usually turn out to be meth dealers, even if that 'no knock' warrant was issued under the patriot act's anti-terrorism clause.)
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