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Monday, August 07, 2006

So what happens when the cops barge in the way the Supreme Court said they could?
Posted by Jill | 6:06 AM
When bad law meets bad law:

In June, the Supreme Court decided in Hudson v. Michigan that police with search warrants may barge into homes without knocking. Now, more states are expanding the right to shoot first and ask questions later:

In the last year, 15 states have enacted laws that expand the right of self-defense, allowing crime victims to use deadly force in situations that might formerly have subjected them to prosecution for murder.

Supporters call them “stand your ground” laws. Opponents call them “shoot first” laws.

Thanks to this sort of law, a prostitute in Port Richey, Fla., who killed her 72-year-old client with his own gun rather than flee was not charged last month. Similarly, the police in Clearwater, Fla., did not arrest a man who shot a neighbor in early June after a shouting match over putting out garbage, though the authorities say they are still reviewing the evidence.

The first of the new laws took effect in Florida in October, and cases under it are now reaching prosecutors and juries there. The other laws, mostly in Southern and Midwestern states, were enacted this year, according to the National Rifle Association, which has enthusiastically promoted them.

Florida does not keep comprehensive records on the impact of its new law, but prosecutors and defense lawyers there agree that fewer people who claim self-defense are being charged or convicted.

The Florida law, which served as a model for the others, gives people the right to use deadly force against intruders entering their homes. They no longer need to prove that they feared for their safety, only that the person they killed had intruded unlawfully and forcefully. The law also extends this principle to vehicles.

In addition, the law does away with an earlier requirement that a person attacked in a public place must retreat if possible. Now, that same person, in the law’s words, “has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.” The law also forbids the arrest, detention or prosecution of the people covered by the law, and it prohibits civil suits against them.

The central innovation in the Florida law, said Anthony J. Sebok, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, is not its elimination of the duty to retreat, which has been eroding nationally through judicial decisions, but in expanding the right to shoot intruders who pose no threat to the occupant’s safety.

“In effect,” Professor Sebok said, “the law allows citizens to kill other citizens in defense of property.”


So what happens to the guy who's at home, in bed, when the cops come barging in without knocking, and he shoots a police officer because he believes he's acting within the law in defense of his home?

He becomes Cory Maye, that's what happens:

Cory Maye shot and killed a police officer when that officer burst into his home on December 26, 2001. Cory lived in one side of a duplex. On the other side was a certain Mr. Jamie Smith. In a surprise midnight raid, the officers stormed Smith's side. A local police officer, Ron Jones, went around to break in the other side of the building, into the other unit of the duplex. And on that side lived Cory Jermaine Maye.

Maye was awakened from sleep by the commotion at the door, went into the bedroom and fired at an intruder. This was after the intruder had broken down the back door and entered the living room, and was coming toward the bedroom. The officer was hit by one .380 caliber bullet in the abdomen. He staggered back out of the apartment and died some hours later.

Search warrants had been procured by the police for the side containing Smith, naming him by name. For the side containing Maye the search warrant just said "unknown occupants". Police statements indicate that Maye and was not the target of the raid. Maye claimed he fired in self defense at intruders fearing for himself and his 18 month old daughter. The man he killed, Officer Ron Jones, was the son of the police chief of Prentiss, Mississippi.

Maye was convicted in 2004 by a jury comprised of ten whites and two blacks. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection.


...because killing a police officer trumps all.

Here is the operative phrase:

They no longer need to prove that they feared for their safety, only that the person they killed had intruded unlawfully and forcefully


Because Fat Tony Scalia and Sammy the Stem Cell Alito have made sure that a police officer barging into your home without knocking is legal, if you live in a state that has passed such a law, you will believe that shooting first is legal -- until you find out who you shot.

These laws are so dangerous in combination with the Hudson v. Michigan decision that one can only assume the goal is to ensure that America's death row prison wings are continually stocked with fresh meat.
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