Of course, this is the most famous UK case illustrating what can happen when you outlaw the right to self defense and impose repressive firearms laws:
On 20 August 1999, Tony Martin, a bachelor, was living alone at his farmhouse in
Emneth Hungate, Norfolk, nicknamed
Bleak House, which he inherited from his uncle in about 1980.
[2] He claimed to have been burgled a total of ten times, losing
£6,000 worth of furniture. Police sources say they are not sure that all the incidents took place.
[3] Martin also complained about police inaction over the burglaries and claimed that multiple items and furniture were stolen such as dinnerware and a grandfather clock.
[3] Martin had equipped himself with an illegally held
pump-action Winchester Model 1300 12 gauge
[4] shotgun which he claimed to have found.
[5] Martin had his shotgun certificate revoked in 1994 after he found a man
scrumping for apples in his orchard and shot a hole in the back of his vehicle.
[6] Pump-action shotguns with a magazine capacity of more than two are illegal to hold on a shotgun certificate however, and can only be held with a firearms certificate.
[7]
On the evening of 20 August 1999, two burglars –
Brendon Fearon, 29, and 16-year-old Fred Barras (both
Irish Travellers from
Newark-upon-Trent in
Nottinghamshire)
[8] – broke into Martin's house.
[9] Shooting downwards in the dark with his shotgun loaded with
birdshot, Martin shot three times towards the intruders (once when they were in the stairwell and twice more when they were trying to flee through the window of an adjacent ground floor room). Barras was hit in the back and both sustained gunshot injuries to their legs. Both escaped through the window but Barras died at the scene.
[10] Martin claimed that he opened fire after being woken when the intruders smashed a window. The prosecution accused him of lying in wait for the burglars and opening fire without warning from close range, in retribution for previous break-ins at his home.
[11]
On 10 January 2000, Fearon and Darren Bark, 33 (who had acted as the
getaway driver), both from
Newark-on-Trent,
Nottinghamshire, admitted to conspiring to burgle Martin's farmhouse. Fearon was sentenced to 36 months in prison, and Bark to 30 months
[9] (with an additional 12 months arising from previous offences). Fearon was released on 10 August 2001.
[9] Fred Barras, the dead youth, had already been convicted of total of 29 offences by the time of his death at the age of 16, including seven convictions for theft and six for fraud.
[12] He had been sentenced to two months in a young offenders' institution for assaulting a policeman, theft and being drunk and disorderly. On the night he was killed, Barras had just been released on bail after being accused of stealing garden furniture. His elderly grandmother, Mary Dolan, stated: "It's not fair that the farmer has got all the money and he is the one that took Fred away."
[13]
Murder trial[edit]
On 23 August 1999, Martin was charged with the murder of Barras, the
attempted murder of Fearon, "wounding with intent to cause injury" to Fearon, and "possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life".
[9] Martin did not hold a valid
shotgun certificate (licence), let alone the more restrictive Firearms Certificate he would have needed to possess the Winchester pump-action shotgun that held a maximum of five rounds.
English law permits one person to kill another in self-defence only if the person defending him or herself uses no more than "reasonable force"; it is the responsibility of the jury to determine whether or not an unreasonable amount of force was used.
[14] The jury at the
trial were told that they had the option of returning a verdict of
manslaughter rather than murder, if they thought that Martin "did not intend to kill or cause serious bodily harm".
[15] However, the jurors found Martin guilty of murder by a 10 to 2 majority.
[16]
He was sentenced to
life imprisonment, with a recommended minimum term to serve of 9 years, reduced to 8 years by the Lord Chief Justice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)
