Posted on 02/13/2015 8:36:34 AM PST by Oliviaforever
A Montana homeowner was sentenced to 70 years in prison for the “stand your ground” killing of German exchange student.
Markus Kaarma, 30, was convicted in December of deliberate homicide after he gunned down 17-year-old Diren Dede in his garage. He’ll have to serve 20 years before he’s eligible for parole.
(Excerpt) Read more at m.nydailynews.com ...
“I don’t think I misunderstand.”
It’s pretty obvious to me that you do, since you seem to think you can shoot anyone who sets foot in your home uninvited with no other qualification (and apparently, that you can apply a “coup de grace” even after they are no longer a threat).
“How does one “specifically entice someone to enter” a garage simply by leaving the door open?”
He didn’t simply leave the door open. He left the door open, placed valuables near the entrance, in plain view of passersby, and then laid in wait with his weapon. If he was not enticing someone to enter, then what was he doing?
If I go to the woods, place a bunch of tasty food on a tree stump, then climb a nearby tree with my weapon trained at the bait, there isn’t a game warden in the country that would believe I wasn’t bait hunting. It’s self evident.
“Anyone who dares enter is a criminal, and no good people are walking the street at 1 am seeking to enter strangers’ garages.”
That is immaterial to the point. The point is that when you entice a criminal to enter, you can no longer claim that the criminal’s entry alone justified your shoot. If you had been so afraid of someone entering that you needed to use lethal force to stop it, you would not have set up a situation in which you enticed someone to enter. Your actions themselves prove that you had no such fear.
“Dede would have gone in even if the garage door was closed, given the already-extant prevalence of so-called “garage hopping”.”
What he may or may not have done is immaterial, we are dealing with the actual facts of an actual incident, not hypotheticals.
“Does not justify use of deadly force according to whom?”
In this case, according to the laws of Montana, and a jury of his peers.
“Quibbling about “normal fear” is equivocation.”
No, it isn’t, it is a very relevant point. You are claiming that the time of day grants him reason to believe he was in danger, but his own actions demonstrate that he had no such belief, so your speculation is unfounded.
Indeed, what Dede actually did is material. He entered a stranger’s garage at 1 am thinking that it would go unpunished. There was no trap. Dede was not “hunted” as the prosecution painted it—which reduces Dede to a dumb animal running on instinct rather than a human with free moral agency, albeit demonstrably on the side of evil.
Why would someone enter your home uninvited? Especially at 1 am? I have never had a stranger dare do that.
The guy shot a thief inside his house and helped protect countless other future victims; he deserves a medal, not a prison sentence. And no, I don’t care what the law says, the law is an a$$ and I would never convict someone who was protecting their property. It is idiotic to believe that criminals who are willing to commit felonies aren’t a grave threat to all of us at any time.
Apparently, he did.
The time of day most certainly indicates danger. Of course, any time of day when someone dares to enter a garage that is not his can indicate danger too, but the middle of the night is always more of a danger due to perpetrators presuming occupants being asleep and the absence of daylight concealing one’s actions.
Try and come up with a wholesome reason for Dede entering that garage at 1 am. I’d sure like to hear that one.
No, he didn’t. Review the case facts again.
Go back and read what I wrote again.
“The time of day most certainly indicates danger.”
Normally, but when you entice someone to enter at that time, it demonstrates you have no fear of the danger, or you would not be enticing them.
Nobody was enticed. That is absurd. An open garage at 1 am is not enticement. Based on that point of view, all bait cars are “enticement” too (and yes, that is a proper comparison).
That may be, but it's not the Castle Doctrine. The Castle Doctrine is only that you aren't required to retreat from your home. Stand Your Ground effectively extends the Castle Doctrine to any place you have a right to be. Neither authorizes the use of force, they simply remove the duty to retreat. That doesn't mean there aren't statutes that do authorize force, but that's not the point I was making.
“There was no trap.”
You keep saying this, but the investigators and jurors disagree with you. Do you have some evidence to present that they didn’t have?
“Why would someone enter your home uninvited?”
A multitude of reasons. Perhaps someone is drunk and thought it was their house. Perhaps they were a friend or relative of yours stopping by, and thought they were familiar enough with you that you wouldn’t mind. Perhaps it was a police officer who thought they saw a situation where someone might be in immediate danger and they were investigating. Or perhaps they were chasing a fugitive and thought he may have fled into your domicile. Just because you can’t think of a reason doesn’t mean one couldn’t exist.
In every state one of the required elements for valid self-defense is that you have a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm.
I don't need to read it again as this is absolutely a lie in Texas.
Go back and read what I wrote again. I was specifically addressing self-defense, not any situation in which force can be used. The claim I responded to was your life doesn't have to be threatened to *defend yourself with deadly force*. There may be other situations in which force is authorized, but if the claim is self-defense then yes, your life does have to be threatened.
This statement is all I know about this case.Assuming it's accurate as to time of day and the nature of the trespass I'd say it's *possible* that the guy had no bad intent...perhaps he was drunk and lost.
But OTOH if any stranger entered *my* garage at 1AM without my permission I'd be *very* concerned.So concerned I'd probably be shooting.
Tell it the jury, not me.
12 people in his home state apparently unanimously agreed that he DID violate a law.
And, iF he stopped to reload his weapon before firing an additional, fatal, shot in to a wounded and incapacitated burglar, then I tend to agree with them. Once the threat has been ameliorated, continued self defense becomes assault and then murder.
And once again, force is authorized in other situations in some jurisdictions. That's not in dispute. For a SELF-DEFENSE CLAIM, yes, your life must be threatened. Any other legal use of deadly force would not fall under self-defense.
“Nobody was enticed. That is absurd.”
Again, the investigators and jurors disagreed. What evidence do you have to present that they did not have access to, which makes you so certain they were wrong?
Until you come up with something along those lines, nobody has any reason to believe the judgement of you (a random uninvolved person on the internet), versus those who were tasked with reviewing all the evidence and determining the facts of the case.
I guess “Bait Car” is illegal too then. Go arrest all those Cops.
I’d love to tell it to the jury. It’s not impossible for a jury to be biased.
It was not established that Kaarma “stopped to reload” any more than he supposedly “hunted” Dede (which seems to imply that police “hunting” criminals is a bad thing by extension). The police were summoned and Kaarma’s girlfriend attempted to revive Dede.
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