This article is intended as a companion piece to Christopher di Armani’s September 28th post titled Ontario Crown Counsel and OPP Finally Find Some Common Sense.
“There exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman, before Christ
In my opinion, the September 27th Ottawa Citizen article explained the Nathan Woods story better than the National Post.
Besides bringing forward the circumstances of Laurence Manzer and Joe Singleton, the Citizen also touched on cases involving Ian Thomson, David Chen and Steve Forde, as well as providing some good thoughts from the neighbours about “being safe in your own home”–the castle law–and anybody crossing the sacred line uninvited does so at his own peril.
No longer do citizens have patience with home invaders…then hear that the police have insensibly charged the victims of the violence.
Maybe the justice system’s sorry-ass prosecutors–who are always beating the bushes to find guaranteed-win cases with which to feather their political nests–and the bleeding-heart activist judges, working in tandem with the police, will finally smarten up and quit trying to skirt criminal law.
By not prosecuting Nathan Woods for murder of a home invader may mean they are finding they can’t coddle deadbeats any longer at the price of prosecuting the victims, especially when home owners and their families are supposed to be safe and secure in the privacy of their own sanctums.
In 1983, Seventh Circuit Judge John Coffey said “your home is your castle”, which rings just as true in Canada as in the United States because, as Cicero is quoted above, we’re talking “natural law”:
“I join others who throughout history have recognized that an individual in this country has a protected right, within the confines of the criminal law, to guard his or her home or place of business from unlawful intrusions. … Surely nothing could be more fundamental to the “concept of ordered liberty” than the basic right of an individual, within the confines of the criminal law, to protect his home and family from unlawful and dangerous intrusions.”
— Circuit Judge Coffey
But if a quote from an American doesn’t appease Canadians, how about the words of Canadian Supreme Court Justice Roland Ritchie in January 1981 as he quoted from a 1604 ruling:
“That the house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for him defense against injury and violence, as for his repose…”
How much clearer do we have to get? Yet the Canadian justice system has badly strayed off course.
Over the years, the so-called justice system’s interpretation of Canadian laws has emboldened the thugs. Now they brazenly walk into houses when the owners are at home.
The thugs have been protected for so long by the courts that they have come to be secure in their belief that the homeowners can’t touch them, otherwise the homeowner will be the ones prosecuted and maybe jailed for assaulting or killing a person, regardless that the culprit is the trespasser.
The courts have given trespassers and burglars permission carte blanche to go about their merry robberies under the protection of unwritten, unnatural, politically-correct laws drawn on from a Soviet model.
Well, more likely the burglars were safe from prosecution because they were paying off the courtroom bureaucrats with drugs, money…loot of some description.
Another factor that comes into play is that trespassing started to become an acceptable, fashionable infringement under the Young Offenders Act.
Young offenders–a modern euphemism for bureaucrats-in-training–would no
longer be punished for trespassing property, we heard from Parliament and the
courts, because these little darlings were possibly potty-trained wrong and didn’t know better.
Wouldn’t it be smarter for society to teach right from wrong so the little creeps at
least suffer embarrassment when caught? Oh, no, that would destroy their self-
esteem.
The darling delinquents grow up to become professional robbers and sometimes government law enforcers and are granted legal mandate to violate your house and plunder your valuables.
Home invasions became epidemic because the bleeding-heart court system wouldn’t touch the juvenile delinquents who were considered to be nothing more than innocent young babes who had lost their way and therefore were cloaked in anonymity from the public–regardless of how horrendous the crime committed.
That is going to come to a screaming halt. The fed-up public isn’t going to put up with the thoughtless police charging homeowners for actions they were forced into taking to protect self and family.
There won’t be a snowball’s chance in hell much longer for government prosecutors–especially in jury trials–to win these type cases while trying to argue against the natural laws of “self-defense” and the “castle doctrine”.
As soon as that fact is crystal clear that homeowners are recalling their legal rights to take whatever means necessary to defend self, property, family and other innocents, then home invasions will be minimized.
“If you can’t come into your own home, lock your doors and feel safe we’ve got nothing,” Nathan Woods’ next door neighbour Jeremy James was quoted as saying in the Citizen.
Another neighbour, Dwight Miles, pointed out that the Woods family had installed a security system and flood lights only after their home had been broken into several times.
Dwight was quoted as saying: “Once he (an intruder) steps foot in your house, to me that’s fair game. That’s my feeling on it. He (the homeowner) should not have to pay to defend himself.”
The Citizen goes on to report that “Dahn Batchelor, a Mississauga-based criminologist said recently in commenting on homeowners’ self-defence rights: ‘You’re expected to be absolutely safe in your home, you may not expect to be safe in a gas station or store, but in your home, that’s something that’s a given.’”
Ditto, Jeremy, Dwight and Dahn. You have lots of company sharing your opinions. We just have to make sure that all the out-of-control bureaucrats working under the same judicial umbrella listen to us.
The Ottawa Citizen’s picture of a cocky, tattooed misfit, wearing dark glasses and a T-shirt with an image of a skull and crossed swords, portrays Corey Blaskie as a “real winner”.
According to newspaper reports, his girlfriend said Blaskie had gone out for one of his habitual hour-long bike rides when he couldn’t sleep because he liked the “tranquility of the night”. (I’ll just bet he did!)
I read those words to mean a pedal bicycle–not a motor bike–and immediately questioned why someone going out for “nighttime tranquility” therapy on a bicycle would be dressed in menacing black clothing and slash-proof police-style gloves, as per the description given for the intruder’s attire….
The entire Ottawa Citizen article, “OPP Won’t Lay Charges in Fatal Stabbing During Arnprior Home Break-in” is available at:
Jane Gaffin, September 29, 2011
Author
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Jane GaffinAs a freelance writer, she became a voice for the mining industry. Her numerous analyses on such subjects as mining, law, economy, politics, justice and firearms have appeared often in the Yukon News and the Whitehorse Star; some articles were syndicated in national and international publications and posted on various Internet Websites. From her mining-related articles and personality profiles came her first book, Cashing In, a definitive history of the hardrock mining industry. It was followed by two more books bearing Northern themes: Adventures of Chuchi, a delightful children’s novel about an adorable Siberian Husky always in trouble; and Edward Hadgkiss: Missing in Life, a biography that probes the pilot’s and girlfriend’s mysterious disappearance after surviving the crash of his Harvard on a remote island of coastal British Columbia. Gaffin has also contributed to two other books: Writing North, an anthology showcasing contemporary Yukon writers; and Up From The Permafrost, a collection of reflections on learning as told through short stories and art. Sadly, the Yukon and Canada degenerated slow-motion into a place she no longer recognized nor understood. Her latest book-length project, Justice Served Up Yukonslavia Style, was motivated by a strong sense of justice to somehow right the wrong of a Yukoner criminally convicted in Canada’s highest court for a law that did not exist.
I have always felt that my home was my “castle” and therefore I could defend it from intruders. My parents and grandparents taught me that protecting one’s family comes above all else. I do hope I never have to defend my home against the thugs out there but if it ever comes to that I have made it quite clear one of us is going out in a bodybag and it ain’t gonna be me. What our courts and police services have done to recent defenders of their homes is scandelous at best and almost criminal at worst.