Posted on 03/10/2017 4:56:09 PM PST by naturalman1975
An 83-year-old farmer who shot a convicted burglar on his land has been cleared of inflicting grievous bodily harm.
Kenneth Hugill, from Wilberfoss, near York, shot Richard Stables injuring him in the foot on 13 November 2015.
Hull Crown Court heard Mr Hugill saw a car drive past his remote farmhouse at around 02:00 GMT which he thought "was up to no good".
Mr Stables, 44, had claimed he had stumbled onto the farm accidentally.
.....
Speaking outside the court, Mr Hugill said: "I'm very, very pleased. We thought I shouldn't have been prosecuted right from the start, I didn't feel it was justified at the time.
"I pulled the trigger because I thought that car was going to kill me."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
In the United Kingdom, you do have a legal right to self defence - you may use reasonable force to defend yourself or another person. If you are in genuine fear that you could be killed or seriously injured, any level of force is reasonable including deadly force, including the use of a weapon.
In the infamous Tony Martin case of late 1999, when a farmer (Tony Martin) shot a man who died of his injuries, and was convicted of manslaughter (on appeal, he was initially convicted of murder) and served three years in prison, the problem for Mister Martin was that the man he shot was running away from him and Mister Martin admitted under police questioning that he did not consider the man a threat at the time he shot him - which meant he could not effectively claim self defence or fear or his life at his trial.
The strictness of British gun laws means a person is probably unlikely to have a weapon available to defend themselves if they need it, and that is certainly a major problem. But self defence is itself legal.
Anybody facing questioning police after they have defended themselves should say nothing until they have a lawyer present to make sure they don't wind up saying something that reduces their ability to claim self defence in the future. And once they have a lawyer present should make sure they make it clear that they felt themselves to be in serious danger. Understand, that the danger does not actually have to have existed, objectively speaking - what matters in law is whether a reasonable person had a good reason to believe they or another person they were protecting were in danger.
One of the best articles I have ever read about gun control was by a British constable, Colin Greenwood.
He pointed out that before 1919 (I think) England had no gun contols at all except you were required to purchase a stamp before buying a handgun. The stamp was issued as routing at the post office.
At the time Britain had virtually no crime at all.
That should have been routine instead of routing.
Gun Registration and Confiscation in England and Wales
http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2014/10/gun-registration-and-confiscation-in.html
Thank goodness. Been thru there many times.
Piss Mohgun must have had his panties in a wad about this case!
The problem with the British right to self defense is that it reflects a socialistic aversion toward protecting private property. In other words, a thief is entitled to walk off with your property without deadly resistance from you as long as the thief can convince a jury that he told you that he would not harm you while he was walking out the door. Sure, you can call the police, but the odds are that you won’t see that diamond ring again and that the perp will be out of jail in a few months to rob you again.
You also have the right under British law to use reasonable force to prevent the commission of a crime and to perform a citizens arrest (legally it is referred to as an “any person arrest”). That is separate from the right of self defence, but it is legal. So, you certainly do not have to just let a thief walk away.
It’s true you cannot use deadly force in the defence of property, but you can use reasonable force to prevent the escape of a criminal and if while doing that, you are threatened or believe yourself to be in danger, then the right to self defence comes into play.
It’s important to know the difference, especially once the police are involved, but I’ve performed such arrests myself in the UK, including on somebody who was trying to steal my car, and I had no legal difficulties because I knew the law and I knew my rights.
I read some testimony in this case. I was pleased to see that the man who was shot was allowed to be questioned about his past convictions.
On reflection, it would likely be allowed in the U.S. as well, as he testified in the trial of the farmer, thus opening him up to cross examination.
My Mother’s family came from the Island of Colonsay in the Southern Hebrides. At one time there were over a thousand residents but now just over a hundred.
Until just a couple of years ago there had never been a serious crime on the island. That record ended when someone stole over a hundred dollars from a tourist cabin. It turned out to be a laborer from the mainland and not a resident.
I go to their website every few months and check out their newsletter, “The Corncrake”. One of the things I have noticed is they have regular skeet shoots and list the winners etc.
It really surprised me that they even have the guns.
Glad to know that British subjects can still use a gun to defend themselves if they are attacked while attempting a citizen’s arrest. But you still have to put yourself in harm’s way before this will work, and the burden of proving that you were scared still falls on you.
Glad to know that British subjects can still use a gun to defend themselves if they are attacked while attempting a citizen’s arrest. But you still have to put yourself in harm’s way before this will work, and the burden of proving that you were scared still falls on you.
Very interesting, thanks for the excellent clarification.
It really surprised me that they even have the guns.
There are 1.8 million legally owned gund in the UK, of which 1.3 million are shotguns. Shotguns and various classes of sporting rifle have never been banned - in fact there are probably more of these now than at any time in the past, because of the growing popularity of countryside shooting sports, which have replaced the golf course for out-of-office networking by many businessmen.
There are now more legally held guns than there were before the 1997 handgun ban. There was never a culture of widespread handgun ownership in Britain, even before they were controlled. Sporting guns and shotguns for vermin control in rural areas always dominated the market.
Incidentally, I spent some time on Colonsay not long ago. A beautiful but in many ways untypical Hebridean island, now mostly given over to tourism.
It's only in the last 15 years that a change in the law has made this possible.
gund = guns. I’m getting too old to manage without an edit function.
Further correction - the statistics I quoted are for England and Wales. Scotland keeps separate statistics, but they will be broadly similar.
Although you may think of it as socialistic, it derives from centuries of Common Law, long before socialist doctrine was conceived.
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