Boobytraps and the American Legal System
At 6:36 PM 7/22/96, Vinnie Moscaritolo wrote:
You pop a claymore in a building with any substance up to the level of concrete re-enforced, and you _will_ be going with them.
booby traping your home is a really stupid idea, I promise that your dog/child/spouse will be theone to accidentally set it off. besides for this you can get sued..
every hear the one about the case of a guy who constantly had his radar detector stolen out his his car, he decides to set a trap and rigs his next one with exposive. The perp steals the box, sells it. someclown powers it up on his dash board and BANG!.. well you'd figure justice is served, but the NYC judges awarded the mass of flesh damages and charged the guy with manslaughter.
Agree, very foolish to ever plant boobytraps in one's own home. Still, I remember vividly in college when the court case was decided involving a guy in Florida who was tired of being burglarized and the cops doing nothing about it: he rigged a shotgun to go off when someone broke a window and entered. A perp did, was shot, survived, and the case went to trial. The boobytrapper was found guilty of some serious crime--I don't recall the details (this was circa 1972). However, all of my dorm roommates at the time were chortling over the stupidity of imprisoning someone for the crime of trying to defend his property against repeated invasions by scum. This was a "touchstone" example for most of us, raised on Heinlein and Rand as we were. More than chortling, we were uniformly angry. (The world seems to be divided into two basic types over issues like this: those who are outraged that the burglar could collect damages from his victim, and those who are outraged that the owner was even able to buy a shotgun in the first place.) (Later examples were to be even worse. For example, the burglar who climbed on a roof and stepped through a skylight. He sued, and won. I guess the owner of the property was obligated to install night lights so burglars could see their way, and to generally make his property more "burglar-friendly." Or the woman who sued a hospital, claiming her psychic abilities were lost after a CAT scan. She won.) As Vinnie said, "only in Amerika." --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) writes:
Agree, very foolish to ever plant boobytraps in one's own home.
The problem that I would have with boobytrapping my home is that there are numerous people (police, firepersons, maintainance workers, etc...) who might have a legitimate reason to try and gain entry. An automatic device cannot anticipate some complicated scenario which might play itself out while I was away, such as someone with a medical emergency trying to get to a phone, or public service personnel needing to gain entrance to fight a fire or to search for people to evacuate in case of a biological or chemical accident. The other reason I wouldn't do such a thing is that I do not own anything that I consider worth death or serious injury to another human being. I recognize that this is a personal view, and others opinions on the value of their possessions may differ from mine. Regarding the topic of children with guns, I recall a classmate of mine whose father gave him a loaded rifle to keep in his room for "protection" when he reached the advanced age of 12. That very night, he got scared when he thought he heard an intruder sneaking up the stairs, and emptied the gun into his dog. He really loved the dog, and the whole experience was very traumatizing for him. Statistically, guns in the home are far more likely to be used to shoot someone in a domestic dispute, or to be taken away by a criminal and used against the homeowner, than they are to be used to defend the homeowner against injury. I can see very little purpose for guns in densely populated urban settings, where people tend to be paranoid, and stray bullets can hit almost anyone. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $
I think Tim May is growing senile... tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) writes:
(Later examples were to be even worse. For example, the burglar who climbed on a roof and stepped through a skylight. He sued, and won. I guess the owner of the property was obligated to install night lights so burglars could see their way, and to generally make his property more "burglar-friendly."
Actually, he fell through the roof of a school he was trying to burgalize. In a similar incident a burglar broke into a house that was being treated for pests (i.e., was full of toxic fumes). He died; his family sued the owners and won. Maybe someone can post a reference to these two cases. I recall that both happened in New York, but I could be wrong. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
On Tue, 23 Jul 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
Agree, very foolish to ever plant boobytraps in one's own home.
Still, I remember vividly in college when the court case was decided involving a guy in Florida who was tired of being burglarized and the cops doing nothing about it: he rigged a shotgun to go off when someone broke a window and entered. A perp did, was shot, survived, and the case went to trial.
The boobytrapper was found guilty of some serious crime--I don't recall the details (this was circa 1972).
Set-guns are illegal in most, if not all jurisdictions (IANAL), as it is generally illegal to use deadly force to defend property. I would expect that any "booby-trap" would fall under the same legal category.
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