2002 Britain: the Barry-Lee Hastings case

BBC.

A man who stabbed a burglar to death has been sentenced to five years in jail by an Old Bailey judge.

Barry-Lee Hastings from Wood Green, north London, was found guilty of the manslaughter of the burglar last month.

The 25-year-old was cleared of murder but found guilty on a 10-2 majority verdict of manslaughter.

Judge Brian Barker told him he had gone too far and his actions were not justified.

He has gone too far.

This was a robbery gone good, after all.

During the trial the court had heard that father-of-two Hastings was visiting his estranged wife's home in north London when he discovered Roger Williams ransacking the flat.

Mr Williams, of Tottenham, north London, 35, died in January after being stabbed twelve times in the back by Hastings who claimed he had acted to protect his family.

Mrs Hastings and the children, who were aged under four, were not at home at the time but Hastings did not know this.

Judge Barker told Hastings he had repeatedly stabbed Mr Williams in the back, mostly outside the house when the danger was over.

"You had gone into the attack and you were engaged in retaliation.

Citizens in the UK have no right to defend their home, nor their family.

"You had gone into the attack and you were engaged in retaliation.

He had gone on the attack in his own home against a thief who he thought was armed.

The judge said he had sympathy for a householder finding himself in those circumstances but said Mr Williams' presence "did not justify the actions you took".

"Although Roger Williams was a burglar and had no right to be there, a householder is not entitled to use more than reasonable force to defend himself," he added.

Vee vill decide what is reasonable force to protect yor familia!

Incidentally, you're not Jewish, are you? A soldier? A police officer? Non?

Oh, rightie oh then!

Nigel Rumfitt QC, defending, told the court on Thursday that Hastings was a thoroughly decent and hard-working man who loved his wife and was devoted to his family.

Another White loser, then. Working for a living, trying to raise his kids.

The court was told during the trial that as Hastings reached the flat he saw a man in an upstairs bedroom and found the front door had been forced open.

Hastings said he picked up a knife from the kitchen to scare off whoever was there.

He added: "At the time, I believed I was protecting my children.

"I was going to call the police on my mobile phone but I thought I heard my daughter crying. I thought I heard men's voices. I thought someone had the children up there.

"I never intended to stab anyone."

Then why did you, sir!?

Answer that!

The acceptable course of action is to let the burglar, who is the only victim here, of society's neglect and now of this murdering White loser, get a first stab in...

Then again, with the way cases like this are going, perhaps only the death of Mr. Barry-Lee Hastings would make the judge raise his eyebrow and say "Hmmmm" and then "Perhaps the man should have defended himself?"....

Naaaaw, just kidding, the judge would still call it excessive force - after all, Mr. Barry-Lee Hastings was fighting and trying to prevent the burglar from stabbing him, which is, of course, unacceptable.

Daily Mail:

A father who stabbed to death a burglar he found in his family's home was today jailed for five years.

Barry-Lee Hastings, 25, stabbed Roger Williams, 35, a total of 12 times after mistaking a jemmy in his hand for a machete.

But Old Bailey Judge Brian Barker told Hastings that he had gone too far and his actions were not justified.

Hastings, of Wood Green, north London, was found guilty of manslaughter last month and remanded for reports.

His family shouted "This country stinks" as he was led away and said later they would appeal.

HATE SPEECH!

Arrest these hoi polloi!

How dare they utter such.... heresy... in front of their betters, worse yet, in front of cameras!

I sincerely hope that these people who shouted these obscenities against the country, using racist bigoted speech, will get the most severe punishment - perhaps 10 years in prison.

Judge Barker told Hastings he had repeatedly stabbed Mr Williams in the back, the majority of the attack taking place outside the house when the possibility of danger was over.

He said: "What you did could not possibly have been done while you were still under threat.

"You had gone into the attack and you were engaged in retaliation.

"Although Roger Williams was a burglar and had no right to be there, a householder is not entitled to use more than reasonable force to defend himself.

"His presence did not justify the actions you took."

In fact, his presence there is justified, based on the court system as it is now in the UK.

The court heard that Mr Williams, who had many previous convictions for burglary and was on the run from police, targeted the property where Hastings's estranged wife Nicola and their two children lived.

See? A poor victim of society, who needed help not stabbings by this... this... out of control animal!

Hastings told the court he picked up a knife from the kitchen to scare the intruder after finding the front door had been forced.

He said Mr Williams came running down the stairs and attacked him with what he took to be a machete and the fight spilled outside.

Aha!

But it wasn't a machete!

Mr. Barry-Lee Hastings is a liar!

After all, he should have been able to figure out that the burglar was unarmed, no matter what the light conditions in the house, and then just used a quick disarming karate chop or two, just like happened in that movie The Bourne something soemthing - after all, that is how fights really work in the real world, with the protagonist applying just the right amount of force to disarm an opponent.

Not doing so makes Mr. Barry-Lee Hastings a murderer, as he knowingly, with premeditation (duh! of course!) went on the attack, when he should have the house intruder, err, the victim, at the least run away, if not allowed himself to be attacked so the intervening police would know who was the house guest and who was the family guy.

The court heard how three of the 12 stab wounds were potentially fatal and one had penetrated the heart.

Animal!

Out of control thug!

Peter Kyte QC, for the prosecution, said that Hastings "overstepped the mark" when he caught Mr Williams "in mid-crime".

That's right!

He overstepped the mark, when he caught Mr. Williams in the middle of helping himself when obviously the society is to blame for his condition.

Just what is reasonable force?, in Telegraph, UK:

What counts as responding with reasonable force when confronted by an intruder in your home? Barry-Lee Hastings has just been convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years' imprisonment for stabbing an intruder to death. At the time when Hastings arrived, the intruder, named Williams, was burgling the flat in which Hastings thought his two children were sleeping.

Williams ran at Hastings, wielding what Hastings thought was a machete. Hastings picked up a kitchen knife and in the ensuing struggle repeatedly stabbed his assailant, who then limped out the house and eventually died of his wounds.

Williams ran at Hastings - of course this changes nothing!

Guilty!

Fucking animal, that man!

In fact, if you want to see other White men behaving badly, read on!

In May this year, the CPS prosecuted Peter Smith, a businessman who didn't kill anyone, but who did kick an individual suffering from a violent form of schizophrenia. The schizophrenic was attempting to strangle one of Mr Smith's colleagues when Mr Smith, in an effort to persuade him to desist, hit him with his motorbike helmet.

The assailant stopped strangling Mr Smith's colleague, and fell to the ground - but he started to get straight back up, at which point Mr Smith kicked him. The police arrived a few minutes later, but they didn't arrest Peter Smith's assailant. They arrested Mr Smith. The CPS later explained that it considered hitting the intruder with a helmet counted as reasonable force; kicking him when he was down, however, did not.

Kicking a poor, sick man like that - unbelievable what White people feel entitled to do in the UK!

And finally, lets finish with how gun ownership is such a colossal failure in the US, as opposed to the success story that is the UK laws against striking back at home burglars:

How can it be right or just to prosecute individuals when the law they are supposed to try and obey is so desperately confused? Consider the typical scenario: you wake up to find a burglar in your house; you're frightened for yourself and your family. You confront the burglar and a struggle ensues. What are you allowed to do? Are you allowed to stab him? Kick him? Or just hit him with your crash helmet?

In the unlikely event that you ask yourself those questions - as opposed to simply scrambling desperately to protect yourself and whack the intruder - it is impossible for anyone to provide answers to them.

In the United States, of course, homeowners are entitled to do just about anything they think necessary to deal with intruders. This has some disadvantages: innocent people knocking on doors asking for directions have been shot and killed. But it does have the advantage of clarity.

It also has the advantage of reducing the rate of domestic burglary, which, in the US, runs at about one fifth of the UK's rate. American criminals think twice before burgling homes because home-owners are entitled to shoot them. The law can be obeyed because both citizens and burglars know what the law is. Home-owners would be a lot safer if that were true here.

And finally, lest you think seditious, supportive thoughts of this... unrestrained, out of control... White... man... let TheEConomist set you straight:

SIR JOHN STEVENS, the head of London's police, thinks that Britain's burglary laws are too soft on criminals. A troupe of indignant newspaper columnists agree. Listeners to “Today”, an influential BBC breakfast radio show, voted it their most-wanted new law.

For shame!

Those Tories!

I bet they are against mass immigration from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, North Africa and the rest of Africa into the UK also!

Scum!

This week, the Tories hoped to catch the mood, tabling a bill that replaces the old idea that householders can use “reasonable force” against intruders with a new one, that all but “grossly disproportionate force” is allowed. Tony Blair, always unwilling to be outflanked by the Tories on crime, responded by saying that the law might need to be changed.

The facts suggest otherwise. Under the existing law, only two people have been imprisoned for using force against burglars within recent memory. The first, Tony Martin, shot a teenager in the back with an unregistered shotgun while the boy was climbing out of a window. The second, Barry-Lee Hastings, stabbed a man 12 times in the back, and kept stabbing even after the burglar had left the house. Neither makes a credible folk hero.

There you go!

Barry-Lee Hastings - NOT a credible hero for the rulers.



Oh, and in case you are wondering... There is a very happy ending.

You see, this Barry-Lee Hastings character did go to prison for his heinous deed. I did not find anywhere that he was released early.

All is well that ends well.

Interestingly, different laws are for the ruled, and different for the enforcers:

mallestminority.blog:

When a defendant deliberately used a lock knife he had opened prior to an incident, and stabbed an assailant after the defendant had received a single blow to the face, it was held that this could not possibly be reasonable.

On the other hand, if a plea of self-defence is raised when the defendant had acted under a mistake as to the facts, he must be judged according to his mistaken belief of the facts regardless of whether, viewed objectively, his mistake was reasonable. So where a policeman shot dead a man who was unarmed and had already surrendered he was still entitled to claim his action was self-defence if he honestly believed this to be the situation. The test is whether his action was reasonable in the situation as he perceived it, rather than as it actually was.

Note, it's apparently OK for cops to shoot people they believe to be armed, but not for people to stab - in the back - people they believe to be a danger.

Everything is as it should be.

Good night.


Bonus

..... or not.

Lets go to Wikipedia, :

In R v Lindsay (2005) AER (D) 349, the defendant who picked up a sword in self-defence when attacked in his home by three masked intruders armed with loaded handguns, killed one of them by slashing him repeatedly. The prosecution case was that, although he had initially acted in self defence, he had then lost his self-control and demonstrated a clear intent to kill the armed intruder. In fact, the defendant was himself a minor cannabis dealer who kept the sword available to defend himself against other drug dealers. The Court of Appeal confirmed an eight-year term of imprisonment. It would not be expected that an ordinary householder who "went too far" when defending against armed intruders would receive such a long sentence.

Fun times.

To gain an acquittal, the defendant must fulfil a number of conditions. The defendant must believe, rightly or wrongly, that the attack is imminent. Lord Griffith said in Beckford v R:

"A man about to be attacked does not have to wait for his assailant to strike the first blow or fire the first shot; circumstances may justify a pre-emptive strike."

The time factor is important. If there is an opportunity to retreat or to obtain protection from the police, the defendant should do so, thereby demonstrating an intention to avoid being involved in the use of violence.

You MUST run.

It is the police or peace officers job to unkill you.

Basically, when it's soldiers and police officers, the Lords decide on what is reasonable force.

When it is a hoi polloi scum, a jury decides - and THERE IS NO LAW SPECIFYING - it is up to a jury to decide, based on each case with no precedents... this is simply a jury's feelings.

Fun times.

I am so unhappy that I decided against visiting my friends in the UK.

UK is a lovely country, and everyone there is so photogenic...


Bonus Bonus

As far as I know, there was no reform of the self defence law in Brittain.