Irish Man sentenced after killing home intruder with a knife. "Excessive Force"

[America Needs R'hllor]

This is framed like it was an unjust verdict. But I'm not familiar with the pecularities of the case (and certainly I haven't attended the trial), so I won't pass judgement simply based on a British tabloid article.

The peculiarities don't matter. Convicting someone for defending themselves in their own home is injustice by definition.

I mean it depends. If you've incapacitated someone and tied them up while waiting for the police to arrive, at that point cutting their throat would be an execution.

I'm not saying that's what happened here, or that it's even the most likely scenario, but there are extenuating circumstances that matter.

If you're cutting the throat of someone's who's tied down, you're not defending yourself. There's a reason I used this phrasing.

Well then you’re just stating a tautology. Obviously if you’re lawfully acting in self defense, it would be unjust to convict you of murder. But the jury here necessarily had to have found that the defendant was not in fact acting in self defense.

from the second linked article

Mr Justice Paul McDermott said he had to accept the jury's verdict that Kerrie had acted in self-defence, although he said the convicted man had used excessive and disproportionate violence by using a knife on someone who was unarmed.

the jury acknowledged it was self defense, just that the smaller, younger child used "too much weapon" in protecting himself from getting the sh**t kicked out of him and possible murdered.  Irish self defense laws are garbage.

I don’t know the ins and outs of Irish law, but even here in the U.S. the “Castle doctrine” only creates a rebuttable presumption that a person is justified in using deadly force against an intruder in their home. The jury can still find that the killing was unwarranted. The peculiarities matter very much.

the most progressive judge/jury in the most progressive court in the most progressive county in the most progressive state in the US would not find this child guilty of anything.

more from the above link

The judge said Mr Power was behaving in a very violent and threatening way. He assaulted Kerrie and the court was told he had also assaulted Kerrie's mother.

Kerrie said he grabbed a kitchen knife, which he said was in a bedroom, to defend himself and his mother, although the judge said he did not accept he had been told the full truth about where the knife came from.

Mr Justice McDermott said he did accept Kerrie, who was younger and of slight build, had made decisions under a degree of pressure in a very short time frame in the context of the unexpected attack on his house by Mr Power, who was a tall, well built young man.

He said he also had to take into account that Kerrie was only 17 years old at the time and that his regret and remorse were genuine. He said this was evident from the immediate aftermath of the stabbing. Kerrie called gardaí who came to the house and found him sobbing in the kitchen.

so a violent asshole violently broke into someone's home in the middle of the night, attacked a child and his mother and now the child is going to prison because of the closest weapon to him was a knife and the laws in Ireland are a funking joke.

Yeah, pretty clear-cut case here. I'm not sure about the Irish laws on the books so I won't judge them, but I do strongly believe whoever decided this case was outrageously wrong and shouldn't be allowed to decide any other case. I personally don't even know what the laws are in Israel, but I don't really care either way- if someone breaks into my home, I'm finding the closest and most effective weapon to make sure me and my family are protected at any cost. I think this is a no-brainer.