Human Rights

[Kata]

The self-defence thread reminded me of something I've been thinking about for some time now. We often hear about, say, a homeowner being arrested for self-defence, because something he did 'violated the burglars human rights'. This to me, as it seems it is to many of you, is sickening.

In my opinion, everyone should be entitled to the basic human rights. However, and this is what I think is currently missing, these should go hand-in-hand with human responsibilities. If you break these, such as attacking someone in their home, then you limit your human rights. You should not get any rights without associated responsibilities.

I say limit rather than waive because, of course, its unreasonable to torture someone for stealing a TV.

Thoughts?

[Saracen]

..... We often hear about, say, a homeowner being arrested for self-defence, because something he did 'violated the burglars human rights'. .....

Do we?

Actually, I'd have said it was pretty rare to hear about that.

Homeowners, or property owners (or, sometimes, property occupiers) do have certain duties and responsbilities though. There are things can you can can't do, and things you should do. For instance, property owners have a responsibility to protect people on their property from certain levels of danger, and that certainly can extend to people that shouldn't be there. Just because a naughty kid climbs over a fence doesn't mean you won't have some responsibility if the then falls down an uncapped mineshaft or well. So, it's best to have the mineshaft or well capped, or at least fenced with warning notices.

We need to bear in mind that not all people on our property without our permission are not there legally ..... the obvious example would be fire brigade or police there in response to an emergency. You might not expect them, or have given them permission, but in some circumstances, they;d be there quite legally. That's why, for instance, you can't nail burglars by sticking mains power through your door handles or set up shotgun boobytraps, but the same sort of provisions can apply to natural dangers as well.

So it is certainly the case that situations exit where an intruder getting hurt could leave the owner or occupier in trouble, the general case is that a burglar injuring himself in the act of breaking in (such as by cutting himself on glass he'd just broken) isn't going to get very far with a lawsuit.

[Funkstar]

Do we?

Actually, I'd have said it was pretty rare to hear about that.

But when it does happen the media pounce on it and "the man in the street" decides that the country-is-going-to-the-dogs-all-because-of-those-bleeding-heart-liberals,-bring-back-hanging-i-say,-but-that-would-be-too-good-for-them,-bloody-imigrants-taking-our-jobs-lock-them-up-i-would

[Saracen]

But when it does happen the media pounce on it and "the man in the street" decides that the country-is-going-to-the-dogs-all-because-of-those-bleeding-heart-liberals,-bring-back-hanging-i-say,-but-that-would-be-too-good-for-them,-bloody-imigrants-taking-our-jobs-lock-them-up-i-would

Tue enough .... but it's playing with words a bit. Kata said "We hear about ....." and I guess we do hear about it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it actually happened .... or not anything like as often as urban legend would have us believe.

[Lucio]

Morality isn't something you can discard whenever it becomes personally inconvient, it's something you have to live by, day after day, otherwise it's just a hollow pretence. It's one of the reasons that the US is often dispised on the world stage, is because they'll happily preach on and on about people's rights, and then trample all over them because they're "terrorists".

This is why, personally I don't subscribe to the human's rights act, almost none of us have a strong enough moral character to follow it, and sometimes the world needs bad things to happen to bad people to protect the majority and ultimately, it's our choice whether we live in part of the world where we are the majority or minority.

[Funkstar]

Tue enough .... but it's playing with words a bit.

You hear about it a lot, I just don't think there are many actual instances of it hapening. The media just harp on about it whenever they can. As you say it's become something of an urban legend.

[nightkhaos]

My favourite urban legand has to the one about the burglar who broke into a gargage when the owners were on hoilday, and had to live on cat food for two weeks because he couldn't get out, and then sued the owners for unsafe working conditions.

[postdaemon]

The problem is that this a nosy neighbour and annoying friends could be mistaken for burglars and if we allow homeowners to "defend" their homes in this way, they could harm someone who doesn't deserve. However I also understand the need to defend oneself and fear one may experience if one finds a burglar in the house.

[Jonessie]

This is where the systems fails, the dudicial system in the UK used to be one of the best in the world and the older the judge the more experienced they are at law. This is were it all falls to bits. All because some baraster of judge decided get a law past, to state that any person or persons whom enter a premises with the intent to steal items from this premises or from somebody else. The perpetrator involved in the act are injured due to inflicting by the owner of the property or their guard dog bit the perpetrator inflickting damage. He/she under human rights can take action against you, even though he/she were intent on removing property from your premises.

Now as far as I'm concerned any person whom are intent on breaken entry in any premises lose their human rights as soon ad they decided to break in. No criminal should have any Hunan rights what so ever. "Commit the crime, do the time" I think is the term. If there us beyound reasonable doubt a perpetrator intended to commit a crime for profit; then they lose all rights.

[Saracen]

This is where the systems fails, the dudicial system in the UK used to be one of the best in the world and the older the judge the more experienced they are at law. This is were it all falls to bits. All because some baraster of judge decided get a law past, to state that any person or persons whom enter a premises with the intent to steal items from this premises or from somebody else. The perpetrator involved in the act are injured due to inflicting by the owner of the property or their guard dog bit the perpetrator inflickting damage. He/she under human rights can take action against you, even though he/she were intent on removing property from your premises.

Now as far as I'm concerned any person whom are intent on breaken entry in any premises lose their human rights as soon ad they decided to break in. No criminal should have any Hunan rights what so ever. "Commit the crime, do the time" I think is the term. If there us beyound reasonable doubt a perpetrator intended to commit a crime for profit; then they lose all rights.

Where to start?

Firstly, judges don't get laws passed .... or at least, not for a very long time they haven't, in the UK. It's not in their power to do so. Parliament does that. Judges interpret laws, determine how they apply to a given set of circumstances and, if necessary, balance the situation if two different laws conflict with each other.

And I suppose it's true that burglar can try to sue a property owner. After all, just about anybody can take action against just about anybody else over just about anything. But that's a very long way from saying they stand a realistic chance of winning.

And there's a problem with the notion of a burglar suing a homeowner. Anyone convicted of an imprisonable offence can only sue over injuries received during that act if they can get the permission of a court to do so, and the court can only grant such permission if either some conditions aren't met, or if the act causing the injury was, and I quote, "grossly disproportionate". Otherwise, civil actions under such circumstances are barred by statute.

I mentioned conditions. If you injure an intruder, you must "believe" he is about to, or currently is, or has just committed an offence, and is necessary to :-

- defend yourself or someone else, or

- protect or recover property, or

- prevent an offence, or stop one currently being committed, or

- apprehend, or secure the conviction, of the offender.

In other words, this is not a charter to assault intruders, it isn't open season. But, it does mean that anyone there are some fairly strong protections for homeowners against frivolous lawsuits from burglars and the like.

In case anyone's wondering, the above is s.329 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

So for a burglar to be able to sue a homeowner, they either have to not have been convicted of an arrestable offence, or they have a very steep mountain to climb just to get a court to grant permission for them to take action, because by law, they can only take such action with court permission .... and the court is very restricted on circumstances in which it can grant permission.

In a true case of a burglar being injured by a homeowner, the burglar essentially has to convince the court that the force used "grossly disproportionate", or the lawsuit simply won't be allowed to happen. Only if the burglar has managed to get past that first legal hurdle with the homeowner ever face the possibility of a court case.

So assuming all that does come to pass, you'd think that the Tony Martin case was about as good a case of "grossly disproportionate" force as is ever likely to occur. I mean, if killing one burglar and wounding another with an illegal shotgun doesn't qualify, what does?

Yet, what happened when Brendan Fearon tried to sue Tony Martin over his shotgun injuries? Tony Martin promptly sued right back over the damages from the break in, and after farting about over it for a while, Fearon dropped his claim on condition that Martin did too.

So before we get to excited about how if we get burgled, we don;t dare tackle the burglar for fear of getting sued, how about someone come up with a case (since that 2003 Act) where it's actually happened, because I'd bet the circumstances of the case, if anyone can actually find one, will be pretty extraordinary.

So yes, it's certainly possible that a burglar could sue, though more in theory than in reality, but to suggest that it's anything other than very rare is, well, just hogwash.

[PetrolHead]

IMO People should lose the majority of there human rights when committing a serious offence such as burgulary etc, and if the homeowner takes a bat to the idiot for trying the wrong address then so be it.