http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-ma ... r-13885457

This one might run and run.

Personally, I prefer this take on the matter.

In theory, the police are going to struggle to even get a charge to stick, if the three are at all bright or are well advised. If the police can't prove which of the three suspects actually stabbed yon burglar bloke, that's enough reasonable doubt for any jury not to convict on anything like murder or even manslaughter. They're even unlikely to be able to push for conspiracy, as conspiracy generally requires proof of forethought. If the three simply clam up then they could quite possibly all walk free.

It'll be very much down to whether they can get conclusive forensic evidence to point to one of the three as being the person wielding the knife. if they can't do that...

Jon

Lots of factors to consider, such as possible a relationship between burglar and victim and how many times they were stabbed to begin with.

My idea of "reasonable" might differ from yours, Mr Mulligan. I imagine a lot of people would consider a 12 bore shot gun in the face to be "reasonable" in the situation. Using a knife when confronted with 4 masked assailants in your own home almost seems like underkill.

+1
it was underkill only one of the four is dead ...

If only one person from a group gets stabbed, it's usually the one who slowest to run away. One scenario that springs to mind would be that the burglars tried to break in through the back door believing the house to be empty, then they saw a big angry bloke with a knife, so they legged it back over the fence. But the big angry dude catches the last one, drags him down and stabs him in the - let's say throat.

If the situation unfolded along those lines, then words like defence and reasonable don't spring to mind. If the act of showing a burglar a knife is sufficient to defend your life and property, then the additional act of chasing him and stabbing him with it is gratuitous.

That said, it could have been that the burglar had the knife, and the angry bloke took it off him and stabbed him with it. It would be pretty hard to sell that to a jury as murder. I'd say it's a bit early to take sides yet, perhaps we should be cautious about celebrating anyone's death today.

That is spooky, my gran was Ethel and my grandfather Leonard... That distracted me, what was the story again?

I'm with JJW, 1 knife against 4 burglars, doesn't sound like a fair match, I'd probably get myself stabbed if I tried to confront 4 people with 1 knife...

Why do I get the feeling that the guy who got stabbed was the first one through the window (or whatever) and his cohorts, on seeing the welcome he received, thought better of it?

The only crime here is that the other three survived.

Personally I think there is more to it than just a burglary.

Four burglars? I would think that a jury would probably think that it would be reasonable defence.

+1

The truth is that we don't yet know what actually happened. Until the circumstances are known, it could well be that the man got stabbed as he was running away - in which case being stabbed possibly wasn't reasonable.

Besides which, IMO it's perfectly reasonable for the dibble to arrest anyone who's stabbed and killed someone else, no matter what the circumstances.

Yeah, there's more to this than they're reporting. I'd put money on drugs being involved somewhere along the line. There was obviously something very "valuable" in the house that they wanted and by valuable I mean the street value!

Since burglars generally operate in small groups unless there is something of value that they are after, you could be right. It could be a drug dealers house. That would definitely get the attention of a group of addicts.

Surely stealing from the hand that feeds is clearly a stupid thing to do

Oh wait... addicts, nevermind

One of the other burglars has been arrested on suspicion of aggravated burglary. Clicky

This will certainly help the defence of the home owner.