SB 1 is the defend your home against tyranny bill. Sounds great when you put it like that. “Look at me! I’m George Washington. Take that King George! Blam! Blam!”
But, really what we’re talking about is a lot of grey areas where citizens pissed off about government action – even legal government action – will selectively perceive tyranny when law enforcement is acting legally or in a way that can be remedied after the fact unless someone gets hurt. Used to be, the General Assembly sent the message that you probably ought to wait and sort things out later instead of shooting first. Now, they offer up a word salad that doesn’t do anyone any favors.
The first sign of danger is that the General Assembly felt it necessary to offer a “purpose” section. Good legislation is like a good joke. If you have to explain it first, you’re doing it wrong.
Then, we get three new subsections:
(i) A person is justified in using reasonable force against a public servant if the person reasonably believes the force is necessary to:
(1) protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force;
(2) prevent or terminate the public servant’s unlawful entry of or attack on the person’s dwelling, curtilage, or occupied motor vehicle; or
(3) prevent or terminate the public servant’s unlawful trespass on or criminal interference with property lawfully in the person’s possession, lawfully in possession of a member of the person’s immediate family, or belonging to a person whose property the person has authority to protect.
(j) Notwithstanding subsection (i), a person is not justified in using force against a public servant if:
(1) the person is committing or is escaping after the commission of a crime;
(2) the person provokes action by the public servant with intent to cause bodily injury to the public servant;
(3) the person has entered into combat with the public servant or is the initial aggressor, unless the person withdraws from the encounter and communicates to the public servant the intent to do so and the public servant nevertheless continues
or threatens to continue unlawful action; or
(4) the person reasonably believes the public servant is:
(A) acting lawfully; or
(B) engaged in the lawful execution of the public servant’s official duties.
(k) A person is not justified in using deadly force against a public servant whom the person knows or reasonably should know is a public servant unless:
(1) the person reasonably believes that the public servant is:
(A) acting unlawfully; or
(B) not engaged in the execution of the public servant’s official duties; and
(2) the force is reasonably necessary to prevent serious bodily injury to the person or a third person.
So, if you got evicted from your property but don’t believe the court proceedings were proper (perhaps you are a sovereign citizen), then you would seemingly be able to use force, but maybe not deadly force, against the Sheriff enforcing the writ under subsection (i). A person can use force if the person “reasonably” believes the force is necessary to prevent the public servant’s unlawful interference with the person’s property. When does a person’s belief become unreasonable? I have no idea.
Are they calling this the “You Can Shoot Census Workers If You Want To” bill?
Whaaaaaahhhh!!!!!
The citizen is sovereign, and his home is his castle, despite the anti-individualist efforts to strip freedom and collective property.
The eternal freeman’s notice to the wise: tread lightly where you’re not invited.
“I’m George Washington, blam! blam!”
Hey RoadSalt, here’s a tip, if you don’t pay the tax then you better stay off those public roads you drive on…and don’t expect the fire rescue folks to come when your house is on fire. Ya know, all that intrusive government stuff.
Do you know RoadSalt, personally? This reads as though you are responding to something that he or she said somewhere else, or that you thought that he/she may have said. Do you respond to all people who assert their rights by suggesting that they should either accept everything that their government may do, or else reject everything that it does?
I particularly enjoy that unarmed trespass is a de facto capital offense. If that postal carrier doesn’t stay off my yard, I’ll have to defend my property.
If he manages to commit a crime while delivering your mail, then yes.
If we can judge what is a “reasonable belief” to prevent serious bodlily injury by the patent misinterpretation of the Indiana Self-Defense law presented by Allen County Prosecutor Karen Richards to excuse an execution, then it will be fire away.
http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120309/NEWS/120309494
A bar patron participated in a fight, continued the fight outside, and when he was seperated by some others, and protected by any delusion of deadly force being used against him, he pulled out his pistol and shot and killed the other man.
Richardy incorrectly stated that “this was a classic case of self-defense” and that the “murderer] may have been hurt or killed had he not been armed,”Richards said. Sorry, Richards, this is not the test for the use of deadly force in self-defense. People that are armed are frequently hurt or killed when engaged in unlawful activity. These people are called criminals.
This is the law, Ms. Learned Public Official:
IC 35-41-3-2
Use of force to protect person or property
Sec. 2. (a) A person is justified in using reasonable force against another person to protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person:
(1) is justified in using deadly force; and
(2) does not have a duty to retreat;
if the person reasonably believes that that force is necessary to prevent serious bodily injury to the person or a third person or the commission of a forcible felony. No person in this state shall be placed in legal jeopardy of any kind whatsoever for protecting the person or a third person by reasonable means necessary.
Not a mere thought he “might be hurt or killed if he is not armed.” Collier engaged in mutual combat with an unarmed man. When pulled apart by bystanders, he pulled out his pistol, murdered the other man, (and manages to shoot his left-hand pinkie in the process) and his conduct is excused.
So bring a pistol to a fist fight in Indiana. There’s a winner everytime.
There is little doubt that this law will get public servants injured or killed.
Bad facts make bad law. Bad electorates make bad legislatures. Ain’t God been good to Indiana.
Castle Doctrine is a wonderful thing. The citizen is the master in our government. Don’t really care if you don’t like that.
I don’t recall calling you away from your dog bowl.
I can’t get to it. Your wife’s in the way.
Reminds me of Jimbo from South Park, “it’s coming right for us!”
Good one!!! But South Park is only a cartoon and cannot happen in the real world, right?
That episode was truly South Park’s finest (half) hour.
The most perverse thing about such legislation is that, on the one hand, criminal lawyers tell me it is becoming nearly impossible to win a suppression hearing and suppress evidence or statements legitimately through the court system. The average citizen may be happy with the unconstitutional conduct of police officers and prosecutors because it only involves crooks gettting off on technicalities. So we have a defacto or dejure admission from Hoosier voters that they either understand the consititutional violations of Indiana law enforcement and are willing to accept them, or do not know what they are and do not wish to make any attempt to understand the gravity of the erosion of consitutionally protected rights.
Additionally, we have battery laws in Indiana that make any battery that involves physical injury to a law enforcement officer, a school official, or the state chemist or his agent a felony. So it would appear we value the physical integrity of such a public servant to an extent that makes them inviolate.
Yet in reaction to a properly-decided Indiana Supreme Court case a legislature of insurance salesmen, health supplement store owners, and others that must supplement their income from amatuer lawmaking empower the average citizen with an understanding of consitutional principles, rules of search and seizure and presienct to predict the outcomes of about 30 cases on the various Appelate Court documents. People that have to be told not to text and drive and prevented from opening auto delearships on Sunday to prevent a moral breakdown in society are know called upon to outhink law professors, federal judges, and US Attorneys in the blink of an eye. But most of which will swear that the promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” opens the Constitution.
A bit of an aside, but a thought in reaction to this:
I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate. I think it’s more of a function of the services we ask some public officials to provide, and I think it’s good policy to recognize that we don’t want to give law enforcement officials an incentive to ignore and stay out of troublesome situations to the detriment of the general public. This is in contrast to private citizens who, mostly, we want to just avoid problems and conflict.
Because we want law enforcement to feel comfortable going into conflict and acting to eliminate it, we give them immunity from suits for mere negligence and provide additional penalties against people who would do them harm.
Does that mean we have perverted/expanded our demands on public servants to the point where we have reached a level that is constitutionally irreconcilable? I can think of anecdotal examples that support this, although admittedly, the examples are not numerous or similar enough to constitute an irrefutable body of evidence.
I wouldn’t think so. When the Constitution was drafted and for years thereafter, the notion of sovereign immunity was stronger than it is today. And, at the time, application of the federal Constitution – particularly the bill of rights – to state actors was also many years away.
Are you referring to the state itself (as being covered by that sovereign immunity) or its servants as well?
Individuals acting on behalf of the State are the ones protected by sovereign immunity; the State itself being a legal fiction of sorts.
I was being a little sarcastic in making the point. But we likely elevate the penalties for battery to an LEO or state chemist to provide them with greater legal protection and to reduce batteries against them by misdemeanants such as Richard Barnes. And they should have that protection. That is why SB1 is such a counterproductive and dangerous law.
One of the few times I agree with Mr. Masson. SB1 is absurd and dangerous.
I think you were right the first time, in disagreeing with him. S.B. 0001 does nothing but confirm existing law, which the Supreme Court ignored. It is absolutely necessary, as a matter of justice.
You are absolutely incorrect. The Supreme Court decided the issue that was before it, whether there is a right to resist to unlawful law enforcement action. The court noted that the common law right to resist unlawful law enforcement action has been abrogated in most states, dropped from restatement of the law of Arrests and not included in the Model Penal Code.
What is incorrect about what I wrote? The Supreme Court’s decisions would have been wrong as a matter of justice even if the Court had had the power to do what it claimed to be doing, but the Court did not only eviscerate one of the most important and most well-established elements of the common law — it ignored the plain requirements of the Indiana Code, unless it was somehow changing those, too (which the second *Barnes* decision seems to suggest, actually).
Karl,
I believe that the case is stunningly simple. Should Indiana adhere to the largely abrogated common-law right to resist unlawful law enforcement action? The common-law right to resist unlawful arrest was eviscerated. A law that has almost uniformlly been rejected in the 20th century. The Barnes I and II made this clear.
When I read the case on the day it came out, my thought was, yeah, most states have abrogated the common-law right to resist putatively unlawful law enforcment actions. Indiana arrived in the judicial mainstream. “Move along people, nothing to see here.”
Only Rucker’s fairly inarticulate dissent mentioned the irrelevant issue of 4th Amendment jurisprudence.
You and others conflate the Indiana self-defense statute and 4th Amendment proscriptions with the holding and implications of the Barnes case. There are well-devloped remedies for 4th amendment violations. The exclusionary rule and private law suits against law enforcement organizations. Self-defense is a right granted by statute. And as the Court noted, is not relevant to the issue, and the legislature may amend that statute.
Has anyone followed the George Zimmerman case from Sanford, Fla.? The one with the self-appointed neighborhood watchman who shot an unarmed black teenager because he looked suspicious? The guy who still hasn’t been arrested, and who is being told by the POLICE not to say anything? The guy who may well fall under Florida’s shoot-first-ask-questions-later law that allows deadly force if you “reasonably” think you’re under threat? Do we really want more legal cover for paranoid vigilantes to blast anyone who gives them the willies? And why are PROSECUTORS supporting this idea?
It all depends on the facts of the case and the evidence than emerges, but I do not see any reason to believe that Zimmerman will be protected by Florida’s self-defense law. It looks as though you have read journalists’ articles about the law instead of reading the law itself (and if you did read the law itself, I suggest re-reading it). Florida’s law does not protect aggressors, and it does not protect people who use deadly force without reason to believe that it is necessary in order to save someone’s life or prevent serious bodily injury to a person. (Neither would Indiana’s, if Governor Daniels would sign it, or if it would become law in any other way.) Even if it would work out that way, that is no reason to abolish the right to self-defense (as though anyone could do it). When people actually are in danger of losing their lives (or of being the victim of some other serious bodily attack), they should not be arrested, prosecuted, or imprisoned for defending themselves. The fact that this exception/defense, which exists for the purpose of protecting innocent people from crimes committed by a state, could inadvertently aid a guilty person is no more reason to eliminate it than the same result resulting from due process of law (the result that some guilty people will be mistaken for innocent people) is a reason to abolish due process of law.
Your position, here, seems to be somewhat beyond what Doug was arguing (though I disagree with what he wrote, too). Whatever he may think of people who defend themselves against illegal attacks by law enforcement officers, I seriously doubt that he or anyone else thinks that people should be imprisoned for defending themselves against illegal attacks by *anyone else*. Distinguishing between the innocent and the guilty is a key element of justice, and we’re not going to imprison or exterminate the innocent, just to make sure that we hit all of those who are guilty. People who try to keep the guilty from hurting them, where hurting them would be a violation of the law, are innocent.
S.B. 0001 deserves to be enacted.
If Zimmerman isn’t covered by the law, then how come police haven’t arrested him? How come charges haven’t been filed against him? Why is he walking the streets freely?
And I don’t think it’s a leap to compare SB1 with these shoot-first-ask-questions-later laws. Hell, why bother with police and a legal system? Just arm everyone to the teeth, and let God sort them out, right? Freedom!
Because enough time has not passed yet, or else evidence that you do not know about exists.
Also, I agree that it is not a leap to compare Indiana’s self-defense law, even as it currently exists, with Florida’s self defense law. However, it is a mistake to call them “shoot-first-ask-questions-later laws,” since they do not justify shooting anyone unless someone’s life is in danger (or someone’s serious bodily injury is threatened). No one who cares what these laws say, or whether they even exist, would think that they authorize people to murder other people and hope for the best, afterwards.
Also, I stand by what I said about your point being very much unlike Doug’s argument. His argument concerns defending against police officers. You apparently think that people should not be considered justified in defending themselves against *anyone,* even when their lives or limbs (or other important parts of their bodies) are threatened, which is the only time any self-defense statute in this country would justify the use of deadly force (though they should also extend to cases of rape or kidnapping). I think it is only fair that I let you know that I have no intention of holding you to that opinion, since I sincerely doubt that you had thought it through.
In theory, the “stand your ground” laws — as the NRA, which pushes them, likes to call them — are there to protect innocent people who are really under attack. In practice, the laws have turned just about any confrontation into “justifiable homicide.” http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article1220845.ece
“Since the law went into effect, reports of justifiable homicides have tripled, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. It has been used to absolve violence resulting from road rage, barroom arguments and even a gang gunfight. In 2008, two gangs in Tallahassee got into a shootout where a 15-year-old boy was killed. The charges were dismissed by a judge citing the “stand your ground” law.
“In a high-profile Tampa Bay case, Trevor Dooley is using “stand your ground” as his legal defense, claiming that he was entitled to shoot and kill David James, his Valrico neighbor, during an argument over skateboarding on a basketball court. Hillsborough Circuit Judge Ashley Moody will consider Dooley’s motion to dismiss the charges against him on April 26.”
Pass SB1, and you’re going to have a target on every law enforcement officer, Census taker, postal worker, door-to-door salesperson, or anyone else who steps onto a particularly paranoid person’s property. That’s what will happen in practice, because like what’s happening with George Zimmerman walking free in Florida, you’ve got a humongous legal hole to blast right through.
I do not think so. First of all, Indiana has had a “stand your ground” law for years, so whatever deadly effects are supposed to invariably follow that policy should have materialized, by now. It will not be introduced to this state by S.B. 0001. S.B. 0001 simply makes the existing law clearer (specifying that, yes, it does apply to defense against people employed as police officers), other than in that it actually rolls back (somewhat) the right to use deadly force, in defense against a police officer. It does not institute “stand your ground,” which we already have in Indiana.
Secondly, I may have to look into the facts of those Florida cases mentioned by the editorial, because I have read Florida’s law, and it should not have that kind of effect unless there is a technical flaw in it that its drafters overlooked, or unless it is being grossly misapplied (which could not be blamed on the law itself). There is no reason why the “stand your ground” policy itself should have that effect. It does not protect aggressors (unless they try to withdraw), and it does not allow the use of deadly force other than in certain, specified circumstances. If the law itself really is to blame for the problems that the editorial refers to, then maybe it will need to be modified, but the idea that “stand your ground” itself is the problem does not make sense.
Doug, I am surprised that you wrote this. You do not seem, here, to be your usual, level-headed self. A person does not have to think that he is the next George Washington to justify him in defending himself against illegal action taken by a police officer (or to inspire him to attempt to do that), or to justify us in protecting him from prosecution or imprisonment for it. Suggesting the contrary may be one of the better ways to accuse anyone who defends himself or other people (or his home) against law-breakers (who may happen to be employed as police officers) of being crazy, but for the most part, don’t you think it is a straw-man argument?
Additionally, the bill is pretty clear, and more importantly (or at least substantially importantly), it is intuitive. It protects people in doing exactly what they ought to be able to do, and in what a thoughtful person would expect to be able to do. People would not have to actually memorize and recall the provisions of this bill in order to follow it, because it confirms good sense and natural justice. Additionally, it is very similar to (and little more than a clarification of) the existing statutory right-to-defend, and does not even change the effect of the law, unless the *Barnes* decisions of last year are considered to have actually changed it (even though the Supreme Court lacks the power to freely alter acts of the General Assembly for policy reasons) in the other direction. I do not think that the previous (or current, depending on how you look at it) state of the law was/is confusing and deadly. If the existing law was good, what is wrong with correcting the Supreme Court’s error? It was a pretty grotesque error. They’re lucky that the General Assembly did not simply repudiate what they did, and deny their power to do it, through some sort of a resolution. That court can apply higher law, and it can interpret a law, and it can develop the common law, but it cannot possess any share of the legislative power, which it pretended to have, in the second *Barnes* decision, last September. S.B. 0001 simply clarifies that the law of self-defense, in Indiana, is no different than what it was at the beginning of last May, which is as it should be.
Also, I think that the idea that the bill will get anyone killed is unfounded. First of all, I doubt that the sort of person who would form an opinion of S.B. 0001 without even reading it, concluding that it allows him to be aggressive and violent with law-abiding police officers, would be the sort of person who actually cares whether the law allows him to defend himself against illegal enforcement action. Seriously: who actually believes that that kind of person tracks self-defense news in the newspapers in deciding how to deal with police officers? Secondly, people would have to have such a distorted idea of what this bill says to be emboldened by it in fighting the police (without knowing the law or having ascertained the facts, as far as possible) that it would be inappropriate to attribute whatever they might do to the bill and its actual content. If we can agree on nothing else, let’s agree on this one rule: we will not replace just laws with unjust laws, fearing that otherwise, people with no real interest in their legal obligations will develop a mistaken view of their rights and do something unpleasant, somewhat more than they would do if S.B 0001 were not to become law. Is that the proper way to form our code of law — trying to avoid protecting the innocent in any way that could conceivably set off some guy with the lesser sort of mind, who might understand it as a license, of sorts, for him to kill any police officer who comes to his door, even if the officer has a warrant or says, “I am chasing a murderer; look! There he is,”? Thirdly, again, this bill simply reaffirms (or restores, depending on your point of view) the law of this state as it was before the *Barnes* decision, so it is not as though S.B. 0001 would be leading us into unknown territory. It would be taking things back to around May 10, 2011. May 10, 2011 was fine, as far as anything relevant was concerned.
All that the bill does is prevent people from being prosecuted or imprisoned when they have not done anything wrong. We should demand that, at least, of all of our laws.
My fear isn’t based on people defending themselves against illegal force used by someone who happens to be a police officer. My fear is that they’ll use force against a police officer legally using force that the individual incorrectly perceives to be illegal because people, by and large, aren’t good at knowing what the law actually is. And, of course, there will be plenty of people who were just trying to resist law enforcement who make up some kind of self defense excuse after the fact.
You can avoid this to some degree by requiring people not to guess at what the law might be where whatever is being done to them can be undone by a judge later. If they are in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury through no fault of their own; then, sure, they should be able to use force to stop it.
Preventing people from defending themselves against illegal police action may not be what is motivating you (in fact, I entirely believe you when you say that it is not; I do not know why it would have been, if it were), but that would still be the effect of your position, wouldn’t it? We would take from people the freedom to do something not only innocent but rightful, with the hope that it would prevent people from doing something bad, by mistake.
I do not think that the bill would encourage people to fight police officers who they might mistakenly think are violating the law. For one thing, it isn’t necessarily even in a person’s interest to fight a police officer, even when it is justified, and anyone who has even a little sense ought to know that he’ll be in legal jeopardy if he fights a police officer who actually is following the law. (I am not sure that this bill will even encourage people to defend against illegal police action — what I think is important is that people who do defend themselves, or others, or their homes against unlawful attacks not be arrested, prosecuted, or imprisoned for it.) Those who have such a limited grasp of the law that they do not realize *that* probably are not even going to take notice of this bill.
Additionally, if by “whatever is being done to them,” you were thinking of trespasses, searches, and seizures, I disagree that a judge can undo that, later. Compensation in terms of money is not the equivalent of the actual enjoyment of a constitutional right. It is thought of as an equivalent (or is intended to be one), after the fact, but that is only because it is impossible to actually undo the violation, at that point. Compensation certainly should not be seen as an equivalent *prospectively.* Also, the exclusionary rule does nothing for people for which there is no evidence of a crime to be excluded. Anyway, over all, I do not agree that people could justly be obligated to submit to an unlawful violation of their own rights, even in exchange for the possibility of monetary compensation.