Is it true that had Mr. Grisby been at home, and used force to defend his property from this burglar, he could have quite possibly ended up with a stiffer punishment than the burglar?

That's the kind of thing we hear on this side of the pond, but I have a hard time believing it.

Yes, "quite possibly" pretty much sums it up. Legally, we are allowed to defend ourselves or our property with something called "proportionate force". The government have recently stated that we can use "reasonable force", but they have also stated that the law stands unaltered, which implies that they think that proportionate force is reasonable force. Most Britons disagree.

What proportionate force means is that you can use a similar level of force as your attacker. So, if he has a knife, you can stab him; if he has a baseball bat, you can club him with a blunt object. (Of course, if he has a gun, you can't use proportionate force, because even owning a gun will get you jailed, full stop.) You can see the reasoning behind it: the government don't think it's reasonable to shoot someone dead because he punched you in the shoulder. But it breaks down at two points: firstly, a burglar or mugger or rapist is likely to be stronger and better at fighting than your average bloke, so, in a fair fight, they'll win; and, secondly, it fails to take into account the possibility of hidden weapons. If you find an intruder in your house who looks unarmed, you've got to make a judgment about what weapons he might have in his pockets. If you stab him and he dies, a subsequent search of the body will reveal your situation: if he has a knife in one of his pockets, you used proportionate force and are probably OK (though the police will still give you a very hard time); if he doesn't, you're going to jail for murder.

In recent years, it seems to have turned into a demarcation issue: the police think that any action taken against criminals is their job, and that anyone else trying it is infringing on their turf. The official police line is that, if you find an intruder in your home, call the police and wait for them to arrive, while hiding and on no account confronting the intruder. In case you're wondering, no, they don't back this advice up with incredibly fast response times.

By far the best thing to do is kill the intruder and plant a weapon on them, although you're runnning the risk of forensics working out what you did. These days, though, if you let a burglar live, they'll take you to court. They have a right to a safe work environment, apparently.

Now, you know that's not quite right...

If you stab an unarmed burglar who you have the slightest reason to believe is armed, then you're not guilty of murder or manslaughter. Indeed, had Mr Grisby defended himself using more or less any means whatsoever, he'd've stood a very small chance of prosecution, and an even smaller change of conviction.

BTW, if you shoot an armed burglar with an unlicensed gun, you're definitely not guilty of murder/manslaughter (although you probably will be prosecuted for unlicenced gun-owning, which will earn you five years' porridge if it's a handgun, or rather less if it isn't).

There was a similar case a few years back, someone had their PC stolen but they had one of these distributed computing programs running on it, the ones that do SETI or Cancer Research when it goes into screensaver.

When he noted on his new computer that submissions were coming from another IP address he got it traced ...

> if you shoot an armed burglar with an unlicensed gun, you're definitely not guilty of murder/manslaughter

I didn't say you would be. I said that if a criminal threatens you with a gun, it is illegal for you to respond in kind, because you may not even own a gun with which to threaten him.


> If you stab an unarmed burglar who you have the slightest reason to believe is armed, then you're not guilty of murder or manslaughter.

Not quite what the law says, and certainly not what the police or the CPS say.

Here are some people who might disagree with you:

• Brett Osborn, 23, a labourer from Romford in Essex. In 2003 he was watching television with friends, including a pregnant woman, when a blood-covered drug addict forced his way into the house. During a struggle Mr Osborn stabbed the man, who died. Mr Osborn was prosecuted, convicted of manslaughter and is serving a five-year jail sentence.

• David Kent, 47, who was brought before Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court after he shot a youth in the leg during a night-time confrontation at Mr Kent's printing works. He was cleared of wounding with intent in 1996.

• Glen Kinch, 45, an actor from Nottingham, who was charged with assault last year after he apprehended a suspected vandal on his allotment and frogmarched him to a police station. A jury agreed that Mr Kinch had used "reasonable force" and cleared him of the charge.

• Andrew Robinson, 34, from Birch Vale in Derbyshire, who was given a suspended prison sentence in 1994 after a confrontation with drunken youths he found vandalising his property. Mr Robinson was found guilty of assault causing actual bodily harm.

• Kenneth Hall, 63, a farmer from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, who fired his shotgun and wounded a serial burglar who was stealing from his car. A jury cleared him of causing grievous bodily harm in 1996.

• Garfield Davenport, 47, a father of five from Cardiff, who, "petrified for his life", stabbed an armed intruder to death. A jury cleared him of murder in 2001.

And, besides, there's more to it than whether you're guilty. There's the issue of whether you're presumed guilty by the police and have to spend months clearing your name. As things stand, the police put a lot of effort into going after people who defend themselves.

It is illegal for anyone to even own mace or pepper spray, let alone to use it on a mugger. In most of our cities, it is illegal to carry a knife — even a small penknife. The police's official advice to anyone who is attacked in public is to run away or to curl up into a ball and on no account to fight back, as that would make it more difficult for eyewitnesses to work out who the victim was. If a burglar attac

... If a burglar attacks you in your kitchen, you're allowed to grap a handy knife (as long as the burglar has a similar weapon), but you aren't allowed to put a kitchen knife under your mattress in case of intruders, as that would constitute premeditation and would land you in front of a murder charge if you were to use the knife.

As someone-or-other was writing the other day, the problem is that all this is currently down to the discretion of the police and CPS. They want to reserve the right to prosecute us for self-defense whil reassuring us that it's OK, they won't actually do it. What people want is a law which says that we cannot be prosecuted for self-defense, not that we probably won't be unless the police take a disliking to us.

Everyone above was acquited except Osborn who was maliciously prosecuted, badly advised, and never got the chance to be acquited (which he would have been), and Robinson, who beat the crap out of people for breaking his stuff - the logic was that it was punishment not self-defence. The courts worked.

The Telegraph's cases do prove beyond reasonable doubt that prosecutors are a vicious bunch of bastards, who charge people with crimes they know they aren't guilty of in the hope of getting them to plead guilty to something less serious.

This is a genuine scandal. However, it's a shame that the popular press and its followers only draw attention to such behaviour in the context of home defence, rather than in the context of it happening absolutely all the time to everyone who's ever accused of any kind of crime ever.

Everyone above was acquited except Osborn who was maliciously prosecuted

My my John, you have come a long way. This time last week you would have been adamant that no-one gets 'maliciously prosecuted' for self-defence. Most other moonbats would continue in denial, far beyond the point at which it became obviously stupid. You seem to be turning yourself around. {applause}

Of course, it makes you wonder why one would think that all these other cases of prosecuting, or attempting to bring charges against, people who defend themselves, don't also count as 'malicious'. If the Osborn case was prosecuted out of malice, is that not an element in all the other cases, that ended in 'acquittal'? What were they trying to achieve by bringing charges against these people? Why do you think that malice should come into play when judging people who have defended themselves?

Egad. Read my comment above: I believe many prosecutors *across the spectrum of criminal offences* are more focused on getting guilty pleas when they think they can get away with it than on bringing to trial people who they genuinely believe to be guilty.

This is true for people accused of drug offences, it's true for people accused of offences committed in the course of home defence, it's true for people accused of sexual offences - effectively it happens whenever people who aren't used to being on the receiving end of the court system (effectively, people who aren't underclass thieves and thugs) run into prosecutors, because the prosecutors know they're far more afraid of court and jail than a seasoned pikey would be.

And it's wrong. But it has bugger all to do with the law on home defence.

Hi, John.

I'd definitely agree with your last paragraph. Personally, I think the solution is to have the CPS and the police accountable to the public rather than Whitehall.

But there are reasons why the self-defense issue atracts so much attention. When an innocent man is wrongly prosecuted for, say, fraud, that's certainly a problem for him and it may be indicative of a problem with the police and CPS, but it doesn't have a wider knock-on effect. Same goes for burglary, rape, even murder. But prosecutions for self-defense have two major knock-on effects. Firstly, they cause the public to worry about what they're allowed to do, so that, when faced with a burglar or mugger, they're thinking not just about saving their own skins but about avoiding prosecution. This makes people far less likely to even attempt to defend themselves. This in turn makes violent crimes safer, less risky occupations, which leads to an increase in them. And the crime stats bear this out: home invasion used to be a rarity; burglars would aim to break into houses when they were empty. Today, the majority of burglaries take place with the owners at home, because the criminals have been taught by the police and the CPS that victims aren't allowed to hit back.


Mr Of Losers,

Your sarcasm is rather laboured. But practice makes perfect, I suppose.

John,

When I said "your last paragraph", I meant of your previous post. Bloody cross-posting. Mind you, the alternative's a chat-room, so I should stop whinging.

S2 - that's a very good point (although the best response to this, perhaps, isn't to scare people further into believing they'll be locked up forever if they hit a burglar with a shovel).

So how are we going to persuade the police/CPS of that, John? Seeing as they're the problem.