Chris Grayling’s madness over Conservative “licence to kill” plans.

So the Conservatives want to strengthen the right of householders to defend themselves from burglars, of course it would be unreasonable to deny anyone the right to defend themselves, their family and property – and as is right the law already recognises this. As it stands anyone is allowed to use “such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime” – so this permits an individual to confront an intruder and use force, which isn’t excessive in the situation, to deter or detain the suspect. That to me is perfectly fair and allows the judiciary to make the distinction between genuine self-defence and disproportionate retaliation.

The debate has come to light in part, thanks to a ruling whereby Munir Hussain was sentenced to 30 months in prison after ‘defending his family’, on the face of it this seems pretty unreasonable. After all his family were held captive, tied up and threatened with a knife. But where this case crosses the line from self-defence to a violent attack is apparent when you look at what was said by the Judge at sentencing:

It is clear that you pursued that invader of your home, Waled Salem, up the road outside and you were joined by others, including your brother and co-defendant Tokeer Hussain.

Salem was apprehended and cornered in the front garden of …[another house in Desborough Park Road] and brought to the ground.

Four men including, as the jury found, the two of you, armed with weapons then proceeded to carry out a dreadful, violent attack upon him when he was defenceless on the ground.

That attack involved kicking and punching him, stamping upon him and striking him with weapons, including a hockey stick and a cricket bat.

The witness, Miranda McCloughlin, who was at the window immediately adjacent to where the attack was taking place pleaded with you and the two others to stop, telling you that you were going to kill the man on the ground.

She was disregarded and the attack continued. She described you and the other two men involved as acting like a pack of animals. It is purely fortuitous that the man Salem was not killed.

As it was, he suffered a number of fractures, including a skull fracture, and brain damage, giving rise to permanent injury.

The scene described by the Judge is not one of self-defence, rather a violent revenge attack whereby the victim took justice into his own hands – in this case Salem couldn’t be tried by the courts due to his injuries being so serious – for this reason its a misjudgement at best for Chris Grayling to say this case “reinforces the sense that the law doesn’t work on behalf of the householder”, although as its going to appeal they are refusing to say whether the changes they are suggesting would have resulted in a different ruling. Regardless on this occasion, its clear the actions went way beyond ‘reasonable force’ and if the Conservatives are really proposing that such violence should go unpunished then its clearly dangerous and quite a lurch to the right since David Cameron’s ‘hug a hoodie’ phase.

The home secretary, Alan Johnson has been little better on the issue he claimed that it was “impossible not to feel uncomfortable about [Hussain's] case” – how can this be when the facts laid out by the Judge clearly show that the attack went well-beyond self-defence after the first blow. He’s gone on to say that the Government will now review the law, stating it must be clear that defending the householder was the “predominant concern” – I can’t disagree with that but in this case the householder’s reaction was just as depraved as the original crime.

The proposal put forward by Grayling and the Conservatives is to change the self-defence law to one whereby only householders who use “grossly disproportionate” force should face prosecution, regardless if it results in serious injury or death. In a country which doesn’t have the death penalty this proposal makes it possible for a teenage burglar to be stabbed to death for committing a crime which would never result in such a draconian punishment with no charges every being sought.

Furthermore by encouraging confrontation, which the Tory policy clearly does, you’ll be placing the victims of burglary at greater risk of becoming a victim of a serious violent crime. This policy isn’t going to stop burglaries, it will just mean those individuals who are going to go out and commit these crimes will make themselves better equipped to deal with the perceived heightened risk. For example, would someone be allowed to sleep with a knife in a draw beside their bed just in case they were a unlucky enough to be a victim of a burglary? I can’t see how it could be stopped.

I fully understand that being a victim of crime in your own home is one of the most horrid experiences anyone could have to deal with, but that doesn’t mean we should openly advocate people taking justice into their own hands on a whim when emotions are undoubtedly running high – the likely result is that we would become a more fearful and less civilised society, is that what the Conservative’s want?

Update:

It appears that Chris Grayling has already started to backtrack from his original plans after lawyers called the plans ‘unwise’ and the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association said moving the bar up to ‘grossly disproportionate’ might be too high, futher adding – “The statute that we presently have allows the force to be proportionate which, I would have thought, is what most people would require the force to be. It’s a case of what’s proportionate and only the judge can make the decision. He did have discretion to come down in favour of householder.”

Chris Grayling has also failed to come up with a straight answer on what is ‘grossly disproportionate’ stating: “you have to let the courts form a judgement based on the circumstance.” If that is the case, I see no reason why the judiciary won’t just deem ‘grossly disproportionate to be much the same as ‘reasonable force’. Its become clear Grayling, much as Hague did in 2000, is attempting to strike a populist note amongst The Daily Mail readership whilst disregarding the facts and likely consequences of any change.

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Tags: Alan Johnson, Burglary, Chris Grayling, Crime, David Cameron, Justice, The Daily Mail, Tories