After nothing but horror story after horror story about homeowners being charged for having the audacity to defend themselves against home invaders, the latest case of an Ontario man stabbing his home invader to death has come to the correct end.

Thank God!

While it seems that common sense has arrived at the offices of Ontario’s Justice Department too late for Ian Thomson, the man who dared defend himself as three scumbags tried to burn his house down with him inside it, it has arrived in time for Nathan Woods and his son.

To quote Meghan Hurley‘s article in the National Post,

An Ontario man who is alleged to have stabbed an intruder to death after a home invasion in Arnprior earlier this month will not be charged.

OPP investigators, in consultation with the Crown attorney’s office, determined that no charges will be laid against the homeowners.

While he apparently told his girlfriend that he was going for a bike ride, Corey Blaskie decided, it would seem, to do a little more than just ride his bike.  That decision, to force his way into the Woods home,  cost him his life.

As it should.

Harsh?  I’m sure some will say so.  I’ve always believed that a man’s home is his castle, and that no person has the right to invade that castle without just cause in law.  Anyone violating the sanctity of a man’s castle deserves exactly what he gets.

Period.

This is about where the bleeding hearts and distraught family members cry, “My son didn’t deserve to die!  He was only breaking into their home and stealing their stuff!  Burglary shouldn’t be a death sentence!”

Yeah, whatever.

I fail to see why homeowners should place themselves at the mercy of burglars; that homeowners should entrust their lives to the “good will” of the person who’s just broken into their home and clearly has no right to be there.  That’s absurd.

Am I “happy” that Corey Blaskie is dead?

No, of course not, but I also don’t feel much sympathy for him.

He broke into someone’s home.  He made that choice.  Nobody forced it on him.  It was his choice, and one that cost him a lot more than he thought it would.

I feel for the family and for his girlfriend for their loss, but I’m glad the right person died that September evening and not the homeowner.

While we will never know exactly what went on inside the Woods residence that fateful night, there are a few things that we know for certain.

1. Corey Blaskie was inside a home where he had no right to be.

2. A fight ensued that left him stabbed and bleeding to death on the floor.

3. Nathan Woods will live with what happened that night for the rest of his days.

Those things are certain.  What is less certain is why Corey felt the need to enter the Woods home after midnight and uninvited.  It’s odd behaviour for a man who “enjoyed the tranquillity of being able to bike around the town for an hour when he couldn’t sleep.”

Meghan Hurley skirted around the issue when she wrote,

In cases of self-defence, particularly ones that happen inside the home, suspects initially may be charged, but they usually have a good chance of avoiding prosecution — particularly if they face a jury trial.

The issue here shouldn’t be that they “have a good chance” of not being prosecuted, especuially since it’s not true.

Those charges should never be layed in the first place.  THAT is the point.

The homeowner defending themselves against intruders are almost always prosecuted.  It’s only when there is a massive public outry at those charges that they tend to go away.

We should not be forced into court facing murder charges because someone broke into our home in the middle of the night and tried to do God knows what.

The default position of our laws ought to be that the homeowner is in the right unless there is compelling evidence to the contrary.  If the bad guy dies, that’s simply the results of their own poor choices; choices the homeowner should never be forced to pay for, either with lawyers fees or jail time.

I spent quite a bit of time writing about the Lawrence Manzer case over the past year.  Why?  Because Laurie Manzer is a man of compelling honesty and sincerity.  I spent many hours on the phone with him going over what went on and helping him deal with some of the legal fallout of doing the RCMP’s job when they refused to.

Charges against him should never have been brought in the first place, but the RCMP and Crown Prosecutor Paul Hawkins decided to take the word of three drunken teenagers over two community-minded men.

That shows just how wrong-headed the “Justice” system is in Canada.  The perpetrators of crime are treated like the victims, and the victims like they were the offenders.

Perhaps the tide is turning, finally.

I’m very grateful, as I’m sure Nathan Woods is too, that he won’t be facing charges.  It’s the right decision.  Recent Ontario court decisions have backed up the right of the individual inside their home, which probably played a huge part in the Crown not moving forward against Mr. Woods.

One last thought before you carry on with your day…

While Meghan Hurley mentioned the cases of Lawrence Manzer, Joseph Singleton and Dan Olineck, she failed to write about Ian Thomson’s case, which baffles me.  If ever there was a case of a man having a clear-cut self-defense case, it’s Mr. Thomson.

Three masked men hurled Molotov cocktails at his home while screaming death threats at him.  The only thing that caused these cowards to run away were the warning shots Ian Thomson fired to scare them away.

Video surveillance cameras caught the masked would-be killers on tape.

It couldn’t be any clearer, yet Ian Thomson was charged with being a danger to the public.

That’s a justice system upside down if ever there was one, and certainly deserved better than being ignored in Meghan’s column.

Then again, Ian Thomson used a firearm to save his own life.  That’s still a sin in Canadian society for some unknown reason.

I guess Mr. Thomson should have chased his would-be killers away with a kitchen knife.  Maybe then police wouldn’t have charged him.

Then again, if he’d done that he’d probably be dead.

Still, it’s a difficult thing to feel “grateful” for having to defend yourself against charges that should never have been brought in the first place, isn’t it?