what is the law concerning lethal force in ones home?

[Caine 147]

I dont see how protecting my family is dumb. I admit that my exaggeration comment was dumb, but past that I strongly disagree.

Yes - that's the part I was referring to. We're agreeing

[KpdPipes 388]

If someone is in your home and you or other actors in your home are threatened, you will be legally immune to criminal charges if you shoot to stop the threat.

 

You don't have to warn them. Once the threat has stopped, you may not legally continue to use force. If you shoot the guy in the little toe, he goes down and begs for mercy, there is no threat. Any use of force after the threat has stopped will result in criminal charges.

 

If a guy bursts through the door with a gun in his hand, you can decide to open fire until the threat has ended. It is your choice to estimate the threat. It must be a reasonable estimate.

 

An extra "Safety round" into a perp on the ground will result in your incarceration. Shoot to stop the threat. Drill it into your head.

 

In your home, retreat is not required.

 

Sorry Mal, but while the rest of your post was Spot-on, The first sentence was 100% nonsense. While OTHER STATES grant Qualified Immunity from Civil prosecution for legitimate Self-Defense, NJ does NOT. If you as a Homeowner shoot a bad guy in your home, He (if he survives) or his family WILL attempt to sue you, just as if I shoot a BG in the line of Duty, He or his family will Attempt to Sue Myself and my Department. Now, the operative worde is "Attempt" in MOST cases the Assignment judge wont allow the suit..but you cant ever count on a Judge being Rational. Case in Point. One of my Coworkers many years ago did something dumb, He reached into a stolen car to turn off the ignition. the Actor dropped the car into drive, and trapped his arm in the window, and drove away, trying to crush him against a parked car. my Co-worker was able to draw and fire 3 rounds one of which went through the actor's Biceps (Both of them) 100% legitimate shoot......however that didnt stop the Sh*ttum from TRYING to sue for 7 Million dollars. No matter how ridiculous there will be SOME attorney willing to file the suit..it's up the the Judge to mae the determination to send it to trial or not.

 

The keyword here is Articulation...the same as it is for ME if I get involved on a LOD Shooting. If I cannot articulate WHY I took the actions I took, i;m looking at trouble. You guys are no different. while "He needed Killing" May be a reasonable Defense in texas...that WONT cut it here. You need to Articulate a Threat, You need to Articulate a fear for Your safety, and that of your Family. DO NOT LISTEN to the Internet Know-it-alls that will tell you to Put a knife in his hand, or drag him in/out side the home, or any of the myriad other BS people spout. NO Cop/Detective i know is going to break your stones for requesting an attorney, that said, while you're standing there getting the shakes during the aftermath is NOT the time to start flipping through the yellow pages. Prior preparation, and all that. Having an Attorney's name and number handy with you is NOT a bad idea. Also, you are going to be stressed and shaky. Requesting Medical attention might not be a bad idea either..there uis no shame in that kind of a situation to making sure there arent going to be any other problems. Also..Attitude goes a long way. There is a Huge difference between saying "Screw You Pig I Aint Saying Nothing" and something along the lines of, "I know you guys have a job to do and im not trying to be difficult, but I want an attorney present before making any statements or answering any questions concerning this incident".

[Malsua 1,422]

I wasn't speaking to civil liability. I was enumerating what it takes to prevent criminal prosecution under those statutes.

[KpdPipes 388]

I wasn't speaking to civil liability. I was enumerating what it takes to prevent criminal prosecution under those statutes.

Brain fart on my part..for some reason i saw "Civil" rather than "Criminal" My Apologies.

[vjf915 456]

I picked up on that as well. But Kpd everything you posted was definitely solid information. You dont want to move the intruder in ANY WAY, no matter what. No extra "just to make sure" shots. However, do NOT lower your guard until the cops arrive, it doesnt matter what kind of condition he is in. I remember within the past couple years a cop got into a gunfight with someone, the cop put something like 17 9mm shots into center mass, and this guy kept going. So you DEFINITELY dont want to lower your guard.

[fliks 20]

we'd have to stop and reload to put 17 rounds into anything...

 

big no no on the "safety shot" when the perp is down...

[jgofnj 5]

NJGF Addict -

 

I COMPLETELY, one should have an attorney already in mind ahead of time. So where do I start to find a good pro-gun lawyer? I don't know anyone, never used a lawyer before in my life, never needed one, no one in my family or friends ever used one. Where do you start?

[ChrisJM981 924]

I picked up on that as well. But Kpd everything you posted was definitely solid information. You dont want to move the intruder in ANY WAY, no matter what. No extra "just to make sure" shots. However, do NOT lower your guard until the cops arrive, it doesnt matter what kind of condition he is in. I remember within the past couple years a cop got into a gunfight with someone, the cop put something like 17 9mm shots into center mass, and this guy kept going. So you DEFINITELY dont want to lower your guard.

 

I'm pretty sure it was .40 S&W. It was a guy casing a shopping mall if I remember correctly.

[tommy3rd 132]

THIS IS BAD ADVICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

2 others that feel this way, Massad Ayoob - Expert witness for shootings and the Lead Forensic Scientist for New Jersey State Police.

Who's the Lead Forensic Scientist for the NJSP?

[vjf915 456]

I'm pretty sure it was .40 S&W. It was a guy casing a shopping mall if I remember correctly.

It may have been, Im not sure. I think it may have happened ~1 year ago. Regardless, dont stop shooting until the intruder is no longer a threat anymore, and once they are down.....still dont let your guard down.

[Shane45 807]

Who's the Lead Forensic Scientist for the NJSP?

 

 

Tommy, I appologise but there is just NO WAY my aging brain is going to remember his name. His moonlight job was teaching forensic science at colloge so this converation is OOOOOOLD but even then its where my thinking was .

[KpdPipes 388]

I picked up on that as well. But Kpd everything you posted was definitely solid information. You dont want to move the intruder in ANY WAY, no matter what. No extra "just to make sure" shots. However, do NOT lower your guard until the cops arrive, it doesnt matter what kind of condition he is in. I remember within the past couple years a cop got into a gunfight with someone, the cop put something like 17 9mm shots into center mass, and this guy kept going. So you DEFINITELY dont want to lower your guard.

 

 

it was SOP in NYPD and many other agencies for YEARS to Cuff a suspect once he was down, no matter HOW dead he seemed to be, after a "Dead guy" woke up and shot 2 Officers...unfortunately as usual, PC got in the way and since it "Didnt Look Good" to have the dead guy handcuffed, most places have changed the policy.

[vjf915 456]

Well if he has drawn a weapon, I will walk over and kick it away. Hopefully I will have the presence of mind to take a picture of it before hand....but like I said I am NOT taking chances.

[mcbethr 42]

Well, when in doubt, look at the code, specifically code: 2C:3-4 Use of force in self-protection.

 

http://law.justia.com/newjersey/codes/1600/163a.html

 

You have no "Duty to retreat" to a safe place and:

 

"The use of force or deadly force upon or toward an intruder who is unlawfully in a dwelling is justifiable when the actor reasonably believes that the force is immediately necessary for the purpose of protecting himself or other persons in the dwelling against the use of unlawful force by the intruder on the present occasion."

 

So basically you have to assume that you are under immediate threat.

 

I'm mainly a skeet shooter and home defense is pretty low on my priorities. But I do have one shotgun and 5 rounds of buckshot in my bedroom closet under the same logic that lead me to put a fire extinguisher in the closet by the stove. I don't plan on being robbed or having a fire, but you never know. So you prepare.

 

I think that every home invasion or robbery is unique. I don't know if you can plan for every situation, but the general family plan is that if anything ever happens, the wife and kids retreat to the master bathroom which is protected by 3 walls and has a window where they can escape if they have to. I stay at the top of the 2nd floor with the shotgun and we call the police. Any intruder is free to take anything they want from the bottom floor of the house... TV, Wii, computers, whatever. They have 10 minutes until the police arrive and can back up a truck and shop till they drop. My TV is not worth a human life.

 

If the intruders try to come upstairs, they have probably met the criteria of immediate threat. Nothing they could want is upstairs but my family and I would do anything to protect them.

 

I have no intension of going around the house looking for an intruder unless someone in my family is at risk. The police can do that better than me.

 

Who knows what you will do in a situation like that? But just for reference, I searched news records back a few years.

 

It looks like the last "self defense" shooting was the case of the 70 year old woman who fired a warning shot at a man who was on her property with a tractor. (http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/08/bridgewater_woman_fired_shot_a.html). That case is still up in the air.

 

But I had to go back to 2008 to find something topical in the news about a burglary that resulted in a justified shooting, and that was in Lakewood ( http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/07/one_injured_in_lakewood_shooti.html ). The story seems to end there, which I would assume means that the homeowner was justified.

 

Know the law. Do what is right and you will probably be okay.

 

One edit, I changed the year two paragraphs up to the correct year.

 

I thought about this some more when I woke up today. I think that the general trend is that most intruders are unarmed. You you want the easiest target for the most gain and least risk. Carry a gun, and you increase the risk of jail time if things go wrong. When only 10% of the state owns a gun, you have a 90% chance that the people in the house are unarmed. Those are pretty good odds. I also think that most intruders would leave quickly once they figured out that a person was in the house whether he was armed or not. Your risk level just chanced, you so you need to re evaluate the situation and recalculate the reward potential weighed with the risk.

 

I would agree with the assessment that most burglaries happen during the day now. My town has plenty of landscapers and workmen that are always coming and going. We have teenage kids who break into cars for iPods and houses for prescription drugs. Like I said before, they can have it, it's not worth their life.

 

Then I started thinking about why I had to go back 2 years to even find a robbery that involved a shooting in self defense. There were plenty of news stories about shootings, but most involved the police, drugs/gangs or jealous lovers. So trying to find a case of justified self-defense during a burglary was pretty hard to do.

 

I would assume that this is because this state has such a low rate of gun ownership. It's like trying to find cases of accidental electrocution in Lancaster county. If you don't have electricity, you can't get electrocuted. If you don't own a gun, you can't be in a justified shooting. There probably are plenty of burglaries, but not a lot of shootings. So this brings us back to the initial question of whether a in-home self-defense shooting could work out poorly for the homeowner regardless of the potential for immediate harm.

 

Is it possible that this happens so rarely that prosecutors wouldn't quite know how to handle it and assume that you are at fault, purely because you are a gun owner and therefore was looking for an excuse to kill? Is it possible that you could be under more risk of prosecution if you had a "tacticool" shotgun as opposed to a $1300 Over/Under? I have a Mossberg 500 that I use as a "starter gun" for people when I take them to the skeet range so they don't have to touch anything expensive. That gun has wood furniture. It's also my home defense shotgun because of the capacity, reliability and low cost. When non-gun owners heft that Mossberg for the first time, I think they feel better about handling it than they would if I gave them and all synthetic version with rails and tactical lights. It may be silly. It may be the same gun. But it's all perception and its true. I think that the way your gun looks could be part of the equation if there was a shooting and you made a mistake that blurred the line of justification.

 

But like I said... Follow the law. Do what is right. Keep your head about you. Call the police. And I think that you will probably be okay.

 

 

Bether

Edited September 17, 2010 by mcbethr

[Regulator72 80]

It was also mentioned by Chet at the NJ2AS meeting on Monday (yes that was a NJ2AS Plug! :-) )that most often burglaries, and professional thieves will strike during the day, when the chances of someone being home are slim, AND they are most likely unarmed, because if caught it would add years to their sentence.. .. At night, you run into the possibility of dealing with the crackhead junkie or gangbanger types..

 

so, know who it is your dealing with... I would like a LEO's opinion on this theory, if any care to weigh in..

 

It was also mentioned, and as KpdPipes said, if this worst case scenario does go down, request medical attention, chest pains, whatever, it will give you time to digest what happened and be better prepared for whats next.. often times people can't even remember their own names right after a shooting...

[KpdPipes 388]

It was also mentioned by Chet at the NJ2AS meeting on Monday (yes that was a NJ2AS Plug! :-) )that most often burglaries, and professional thieves will strike during the day, when the chances of someone being home are slim, AND they are most likely unarmed, because if caught it would add years to their sentence.. .. At night, you run into the possibility of dealing with the crackhead junkie or gangbanger types..

 

so, know who it is your dealing with... I would like a LEO's opinion on this theory, if any care to weigh in..

 

It was also mentioned, and as KpdPipes said, if this worst case scenario does go down, request medical attention, chest pains, whatever, it will give you time to digest what happened and be better prepared for whats next.. often times people can't even remember their own names right after a shooting...

Just dont LIE about it... "I'm shook up, and I would like Medical Attention, Please transport me to the Hospital" should suffice... YOU DO NOT WANT TO LIE to us...then we have to suspect your credibility for everything. Which is why again you dont want to go into detail or make ANY statements as to the incident without counsel present. Look at that NBA Idiot with the Chauffer who got shot. As time goes by it looks more and more like it was jsut an accident..but his Coverup, and dicking around with the scene is what dragged it out as long as it has. Shut your mouth, get your lawyer, and make sure you have what happened clear in your mind before you make any statements.

[Genewarper111 18]

WOW - what a spirited discussion. Three things caught my attention. First the LEO who is offering advice such as don't make stuff up, be polite and straightforward when asking for a lawyer etc is possibly giving the best advice any of us will ever hear - the police I believe want to be on our side and it just isn't worth pissing them off. Second, the range of ideas about what will be OK etc reflects problem here in NJ of uncertainty because of the widespread anti-gun culture. Finally the comment about a TV not being worth getting into a gunfight about is right on the button for two reasons - it just isn't and second, you can't use lethal force to protect property, only human life that you believe to be in imminent danger.

 

I was at Chet's talk the other evening too, and it was a mini-version of the NRA "Personal Protection in the Home (PPIH)" that he teaches. It isn't a course about how to shoot people legally in your house. This course covers how to make your home less of a target for random intrusions, how to set up a danger plan for you and your family, how to call the police and be prepared for their arrival, how to consider whether a firearm should be part of that plan, how to determine the use of a firearm, choice of ammunition and so on, and most importantly a thorough discussion of the law in NJ presented by either a NJ certified lawyer or serving LEO that goes into when you can and when you can't, what the consequences will be likely to be if you have to. The other thing the course does is to present in-home shooting scenarios and gun use that may be very different from how you normally train at the range and the range work for this course is quite intensive, thought provoking and great fun.

 

So, I'd advise that the best answer for the original poster and his or her work colleagues, as well as everyone who has posted is to get training that addresses this specific question. Being able to throw or catch a ball isn't the same as being able to shoot a 3 point basket and the use of a firearm in home defense is not the same as being able to shoot bullseye. Every task has its speciality skills. If you're thinking about incorporating a gun in your home and family defense plan, I'd implore you to get specific training on that topic. The consequences for you and your family if you kill someone in your house and, with the best of intentions make some trivial mistake, can be huge.

 

Grant