Court Opinion

ID: 9581487
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:15:27.33778+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:59.989510
License: Public Domain

Smith, Justice,
dissenting.
“Every man’s home is his castle.” This statement all of us have heard since childhood. This case involves the extent to which a man may use deadly force to protect that “castle.”
In the venerable case Collins v. Rennison, 1 Sayer 138 (K.B. 1754), an English court describéd the allowable extent by employing the phrase “moliter manus imposuit.” The use of this phrase indicated that a person should gently push a non-felonious intruder out the door. Blackstone, in advocating a tougher response to intrusions into the home, noted that all felonies were punishable by death. He advocated sanction of the use of deadly force to prevent an intruder from entering a home to commit a felony. 4 Blackstone’s Commenta*141ries 188.
In 1820, the first “spring gun” case came on the scene. In Ilott v. Wilkes, 3 Barn. & Aid. 304, 106 Eng.Rep. 674 (K.B. 1820), the defendant set up a spring gun in some woods on his property. The gun worked as planned, injuring a trespasser. The Court of King’s Bench entered a non-suit in favor of the defendant when evidence emerged showing that the plaintiff had notice of the spring gun.
In the case of Bird v. Holbrook, 4 Bing. 628, 130 Eng.Rep. 911 (C.P. 1828), the Court of Common Pleas heard a case similar to Ilott in which the plaintiff was injured by a spring gun while searching a neighbor’s garden for his fowl. In Bird, unlike Ilott, however, the plaintiff had no notice of the spring gun. In the opinion of Chief Justice Best, who had taken part in the Ilott decision, the lack of notice distinguished the two cases, and the plaintiff was entitled to a verdict. In these early cases, the spring gun owner was arguably not subject to civil damages, much less a murder or assault charge.
Around this time, Parliament became involved in the spring gun debate, passing a statute which criminalized the use of spring guns. 7 & 8 Geo. 4, c.18 (1827). Parliament did, however, create an exception allowing the use of the guns between dusk and dawn in the home for the prevention of a felony. Id.; Bohlen & Burns, The Privilege to Protect Property by Dangerous Barriers and Mechanical Devices, 35 Yale L.J., 525, 541 n.46 (1926).
The first spring gun case in the United States appeared in Kentucky in 1832. Gray v. Combs, 30 Ky. 478 (1832). The Kentucky court neither approved nor disapproved of the earlier English cases in holding use of a spring gun to protect property justified under the circumstances. In Johnson v. Patterson, 14 Conn. 1 (1940), the Supreme Court of Connecticut in dicta rejected the use of spring guns sanctioned in Gray.
Since the early cases, the courts and legislatures in this country have, in the absence of complete prohibition, drawn a line between spring guns used in the home and spring guns used elsewhere. Some cases have stated that spring guns could be used to protect dwelling places when the owner could have used deadly force had he been present. See Prosser on Torts, p. 136 n.40 (5th ed. 1984). Others like the majority opinion here, flatly forbid the use of spring guns.
From the broad range of standards dealing with spring guns and criminal law, I would select the rule that views as justified a homicide committed by spring gun at night in the home of the defendant when the defendant can establish under the totality of the circumstances that he possessed a reasonable expectation that someone would be breaking into his home to commit a felony and that the victim was, indeed, breaking into his home to commit a felony. To do this, we simply should look to the intent of the defendant at the time that he *142sets the spring gun, setting the chain of events leading to the death in motion, rather than to the time at which the victim is shot. Viewed in this manner, OCGA § 16-3-23 would justify a homicide such as the one involved in this case. I would reverse.
Decided June 4, 1987.
Word & Flinn, Gerald P. Word, Farmer, Rosenzweig, Kam, Jones & MacNabb, Joseph P. MacNabb, for appellant.
Arthur E. Mallory III, District Attorney, Randall K. Coggin, Assistant District Attorney, Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, J. Michael Davis, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.