Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling has said the Conservatives would “look at” emulating the Irish Government’s new “licence to kill” household defence law.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling has said the Conservatives would “look at” emulating the Irish Government’s new “licence to kill” household defence law.
Speaking on this morning’s 5ive Live Breakfast (2:36:56-2:41:58), he said:
“I think the legal system should accept that people may overreact through fear and that’s the point really, they’ve done this in Ireland, they have raised the hurdle effectively, they’ve not used the test of grossly disproportionate, they’ve used a different one, and we’ll look at their option as well.”
His remarks echo today’s Daily Mail headline “Tories’ licence to kill a burglar”. However, when questioned about the implications of his plans for certain scenarios, he failed to give any straight answers.
Q. Woman in kitchen stabs intruder to death; “grossly disproportionate”?
Grayling: “It’s difficult to give a straight answer to that because the circumstances could be so varied, and I think you’d have to leave it down to the court, but I think y’know…”
Q. What if it was a man?
Grayling: “Well, it’s, I mean, the reason why I’m kind of not giving you a straight answer, is actually it’s very difficult to define it exactly every circumstance, and you have to let the courts form a judgement based on the circumstance.”
The legislation, a draft bill appended to a report on Defences in Criminal Law, was launched by Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern last week. The Irish Times reports that under the new law:
“If a person is defending his or her dwelling, the requirement to retreat would not apply. In this situation, if the attack is serious and immediate, and the force used is necessary and proportionate, a person would be acquitted of murder if the intruder was killed during the incident.”
13 Responses to “Grayling seeks to emulate Irish Government’s “licence to kill” home defence bill”
The Parallax Brief
It’s difficult to understand the problem LeftFootForward has with this proposal. At the very least, when a burglar enters a house he is ALWAYS tacitly — at the very least; sometimes, it’s implicitly — threatening the lives of those inside. Do we not have the inalienable right to life free from persecution? A person should be able to take whatever action he deems necessary to subdue that threat — and it IS a threat. Offering simplistic hypothetical scenarios does not prove the point. First, they’re far too simplistic: it’s impossible for Grayling to offer an answer based on that, and he was quite right to say he didn’t want to give a straight answer to them. Second, laws are not made based on single examples. An example can be conjured in favour or against ANY law (eg. the risible “ticking bomb” hypothetical justification for torture), but that’s simply not how laws are, or should be, made.
The Parallax Brief thought that Munir Hussein was wrong. The danger to his family and person had been subdued, and the force was more than necessary to make a citizen’s arrest. But had he given the man brain damage with the cricket bat in the house, with his family tied up and threatened, he would have been absolutely justified.
It is bizarre that any civilized person could think otherwise.
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