The homeowner who fatally shot a 20-year-old University of South Carolina student who tried to enter the wrong home on the street he lived on Saturday morning will not face charges because the incident was deemed “a justifiable homicide” under state law, Columbia police announced Wednesday.
Police said the identity of the homeowner who fired the gunshot that killed Nicholas Donofrio shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday will not be released because the police department and the Fifth Circuit Solicitor’s Office determined his actions were justified under the state’s controversial “castle doctrine” law, which holds that people can act in self-defense towards “intruders and attackers without fear of prosecution or civil action for acting in defense of themselves and others.”
Only if done with criminal intent. You know, you’re allowed to break into your own house.
If you think it’s your house and it’s not, your mistaken claim of right negates the intent. You might assume your lock broke or something and your only intent is to get inside and take your drunk ass to sleep.
This is scenario where you wake up and find a trespasser asleep on your couch, you can’t just murder them, even if you can see evidence that they broke the window to get in.
There is no duty to retreat in the home, but deadly force is still only authorized to counter deadly force.
In places authorizing deadly force to repel a felonious entry, the intent to commit crimes once inside supplies the justification for force. You cannot know the intention from the mere fact that they are breaking in. That’s why you can’t blindly fire through the door at someone trying to break your door in.
If the person ignores commands to stop, ignores warnings, threatens you, says something like “this is a robbery,” or has a weapon, that’s a different story; there, it’s reasonable to infer their criminal intent.
What you’re saying flies in the face of mens rea. The person who’s state of mind is examined here is the homeowner. If they perceive their life is in danger they’re allowed to use force. In your state there may be a duty to retreat but even there there are exigent circumstances.
Good luck convincing a jury this guy knew the person who had just smashed his window and was trying to unlock the door from the outside wasn’t quite literally breaking and entering.
Nope. I’ve stated the rule correctly. Again, breaking and entering without more is insufficient justification for deadly force. Castle doctrine is inapplicable to mere breaking and entering. There has be something else, warnings or commands to stop that get ignored, something.
In my examples the homeowner has no basis to conclude that there is any threat.
The test is both subjective and objective. Otherwise, insane people could murder anyone that knocked on their door and claim they were in fear for their life.
By the way, there is no jury instruction on self-defense unless there’s an offer of proof that the homeowner knew of facts upon which a reasonable person could conclude that deadly force was authorized. Someone breaking your window, without more, is not a threat of deadly force against you, even if you are incredibly fragile and emotional.
Obviously you’re wrong about castle doctrine because this guy isn’t being charged.
Yeah some backwards country sheriff, ignoring law, bastardizing castle doctrine.
What if this guy throws an empty beer bottle through the window and it strikes an occupant or uses the wood splitting axe on the front lawn to smash the door frame? Does the nature of the entry matter at all? Not trying to argue with you, just trying to understand. I had a similar conversation down this line of thought with a friend who is a cop in a state without castle. I left that conversation somewhat bewildered by how much an intruder can get away with in proximity to my person before I am legally able to use or even brandish a weapon on them.
Beer bottle, no. No deadly threat. Person is still outside.
If they have an axe in their hand they have a weapon, you can infer their intent to do crimes once inside. No question as to reasonableness of fear for safety. I’d still warn a bunch of times and command them to stop, and I’d only shoot if it was clear they were coming inside.
The thing to remember is that it’s all evaluated from the standpoint of self defense of your person, not property. Deadly force is never authorized to protect mere property.
I guess where I have the hardest part with this is around the “infer” — I personally feel it’s a bit too much to ask an occupant to attempt to read an unfolding situation clearly, accurately, and quickly enough when things are going down in real-time. “Someone is forcing entry into my dwelling, but do they intend to harm me or simply watch Netflix with me?”
I guess I just disagree with the law, but then again my mind always goes to the most unsettling scenarios and probably not those that are statistically most likely. For instance, when you wrote elsewhere about waking up and finding an intruder in your home asleep on your couch, my mind immediately went to: “Ok, but what if I wake up and find an intruder fully alert, not touching anything, but standing in the doorway of my daughter’s bedroom and staring at her as she sleeps?” The amount of time and the element of surprise that I would lose to correctly deduce this person’s intentions (assuming they wouldn’t try to deceive me, which is a whole ‘nother rabbit hole) could mean the difference between life and death/injury, given how easy and quick it is to kill someone with a concealed weapon. And though I suppose the same could be said of anywhere outside my home, too, I have to believe that I am statistically in more danger from someone who has forced entry into my home than someone just passing by me at the supermarket.
By the way, I fully recognize that what you’re saying is the correct interpretation of the law and tracks with what my LEO friend told me. I just don’t like, haha!
Cheers!
Thank you for recognizing. It sounds complicated but it’s really not, and I think you do like it, without fully realizing it.
To your point, you can jump to reasonable conclusions without having to be a mind reader.
On finding an alert intruder, you give clear commands. Should be able to be pretty sure of their intent pretty quickly after that.
Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do, and you get murdered in your sleep, very rare though. One thought there is to outsource the job of issuing commands and waking you up to a burglary alarm. If you wake up to a stranger who is not warded off by a blaring alarm, that tells you a lot about what they’re doing.
If I roll out of bed to the sounds of someone banging on my door, trying my doorknob, then breaking a window to get in - I’m probably going to believe that shots will start flying through the door in my direction if I confront them at that point, and/or that they intend to harm me or my family, not that they will politely go away if I ask them to, especially in the fog of having just awakened.
I’m not a gun owner, but if I had one, I doubt I’d consider a warning in that case. Without the escalation to smashing my window I’m likely to handle it differently.
Same thing happens in the middle of the day while I’m wide awake, maybe I interpret it differently. Maybe.
I agree that deadly force isn’t appropriate to protect property. I don’t agree that protecting property is what was likely going through this person’s head.