Comments for Eroded liberties 10 at http://adamsmith.org , comment 1 to 1 out of 1 comments http://adamsmith.org Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:53:12 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://adamsmith.org/blog/justice-and-civil-liberties/eroded-liberties-10-200806301627/#comment-518 Madsen, You erroneously give the impression that the law has somehow changed when you say that "People.... WERE entitled to use what the law called "reasonable force"". The law hasn't changed and so they still are. And what are these "recent decisions" you refer to? I haven't hard of any. Very few such cases end up in court and in even fewer cases does a jury convict. It's very rare indeed, for the simple reason that juries tend to be sympathetic to people acting in self defence in stressful situations and so it takes blatantly unreasonable violence before they consider it not to be "reasonable force". I suspect that you are confused because nowadays the police have to openly refer such cases to the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision to be made - this doesn't mean that the police think there should be a prosecution. In the old days when the police themselves decided on prosecutions, they would have made the decision internally and in most cases, no more would have been heard. Nowadays the referral is public, but there is no evidence I know of that the CPS is any more likely to launch a prosecution than were the police when they were responsible. Incidentally, before you mention the Tony Martin case, you should ask yourself why he so blatantly lied about the circumstances in which he shot and killed an intruder if he believed he acted with "reasonable force". - HJ Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:44:08 +0100