Property protection turns into killing season in US
3 May 2014 4:57 AM IST
A Montana man is accused of setting a trap and blindly blasting a shotgun into his garage, killing a 17-year-old German exchange student. A Minnesota man is convicted of lying in wait in his basement for two teenagers and killing them during a break-in. The two recent cases take the ‘stand your ground’ debate to a new level: Do laws that allow private citizens to protect their property also let them set a trap and wait for someone to kill?
‘We don’t want it to be easy to be able to prosecute people. But we want to be able to hold individuals accountable when they have stepped outside the bounds of society,’ David LaBahn, president of the Washington, DC-based Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said on Wednesday. More than 30 states have laws expanding the self-defense principle known as the ‘castle doctrine,’ a centuries-old premise that a person has the right to defend their home against attack, LaBahn said. The name evokes the old saying, ‘my home is my castle.’
Most of these changes have come since Florida in 2005 became the first state to interpret the ‘castle doctrine’ to apply outside the home with a measure known as the ‘stand your ground’ law. These laws make it far easier for a person to shoot someone and avoid prosecution by saying they felt an imminent danger - whether or not the person who was shot was armed.
The principle became central to the defense of a 2012 shooting of an unarmed Florida teenager, Trayvon Martin, by a neighborhood watch volunteer who was following the 17-year-old. George Zimmerman was acquitted last year. The Montana and Minnesota cases involve homeowners who had been burglarized and said they were afraid of it happening again. Prosecutors say they lured intruders into fatal encounters.
In Montana, Markus Kaarma told investigators his Missoula home had been burglarized twice within the last week before Sunday’s shooting death of 17-year-old Diren Dede. Kaarma told his hairdresser he had stayed up three nights waiting to shoot a kid, the woman told investigators. The night of the shooting, Kaarma and his partner, Janelle Pflager, left their garage door open. Pflager left her purse in the garage ‘so that they would take it,’ she told a police officer. She also set up a video baby monitor and installed motion sensors, prosecutors said.
‘We don’t want it to be easy to be able to prosecute people. But we want to be able to hold individuals accountable when they have stepped outside the bounds of society,’ David LaBahn, president of the Washington, DC-based Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said on Wednesday. More than 30 states have laws expanding the self-defense principle known as the ‘castle doctrine,’ a centuries-old premise that a person has the right to defend their home against attack, LaBahn said. The name evokes the old saying, ‘my home is my castle.’
Most of these changes have come since Florida in 2005 became the first state to interpret the ‘castle doctrine’ to apply outside the home with a measure known as the ‘stand your ground’ law. These laws make it far easier for a person to shoot someone and avoid prosecution by saying they felt an imminent danger - whether or not the person who was shot was armed.
The principle became central to the defense of a 2012 shooting of an unarmed Florida teenager, Trayvon Martin, by a neighborhood watch volunteer who was following the 17-year-old. George Zimmerman was acquitted last year. The Montana and Minnesota cases involve homeowners who had been burglarized and said they were afraid of it happening again. Prosecutors say they lured intruders into fatal encounters.
In Montana, Markus Kaarma told investigators his Missoula home had been burglarized twice within the last week before Sunday’s shooting death of 17-year-old Diren Dede. Kaarma told his hairdresser he had stayed up three nights waiting to shoot a kid, the woman told investigators. The night of the shooting, Kaarma and his partner, Janelle Pflager, left their garage door open. Pflager left her purse in the garage ‘so that they would take it,’ she told a police officer. She also set up a video baby monitor and installed motion sensors, prosecutors said.
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