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.”
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.