Up in Arms Over Crime

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The fury of a victim can exceed his skill at handling a weapon defensively. A Kansas City couple, Thomas Hill, 76, and his wife Lillian, 72, were surprised by an intruder in their home. Thomas picked up a pistol off a table and fired. The intruder grabbed the gun. Thomas pulled a second pistol out of his pocket and tried six shots. The robber seized that gun too. Lillian emerged from the kitchen and squeezed off three more shots. Not one bullet hit the invader, who escaped with all three guns. As he fled, he avoided three more rifle shots from a neighbor.

Revenge rather than self-defense was involved when Leon Gary Plauche, 39, stepped from a telephone booth in the Baton Rouge, La., airport a year ago and killed Jeffery Doucet, 25, with a .38-cal. pistol. Doucet, who had taken up with Plauche's estranged wife, allegedly kidnaped and sexually molested Plauche's son Jody, then eleven. "A lot of people have stated that they would have done exactly the same thing as Plauche, if it had been their son," conceded Prem Burns, chief prosecutor in the Louisiana case. Burns said Plauche has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of manslaughter.

In most states a person can use deadly force when he perceives his life to be in danger, but not when only his personal property seems likely to be stolen. The key question is often what a victim thinks may happen to him rather than what more objective observers may see as the actual danger. "Even if there is some hideous mistake, and no threat really existed, the law entitles you to respond on the basis of your belief," explains Columbia Law Professor Vivian Berger. One common exception to the rule prohibiting deadly force in the defense of property is when someone invades a house. In most states the inhabitant can handle an intruder any way he wishes. Says Berger: "Under the law, your home is indeed your castle." When Louisiana passed such a law in 1983, attorneys referred to it as the "shoot-the-burglar" bill.

Law-enforcement officers are more circumscribed. The U.S. Supreme Court last week limited the right of police to use deadly force against fleeing criminals. In an exception to its recent law-and-order decisions, the court ruled that a Tennessee statute allowing police to "use all the necessary means to effect the arrest" of suspected felons violated the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable seizure. The case involved an unarmed 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed by Memphis police as he climbed over a backyard fence. "It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape," wrote Justice Byron White in the 6-to-3 decision. "A police officer may not seize an unarmed, nondangerous suspect by shooting him dead."