I can say with a fair amount of certainty that if this farmer's property was broken into in the past then it would have a fairly severe impact on him,
and would almost certainly have lead to severe fear and paranoia.
I'm not a psychologist, but from my own much less severe involvement with Crime, I know that I now have a completely different sleep pattern than I used to. Any sound outside the house at night will wake me and I'll be out of bed and at the window without even thinking about it.
Given that this criminal showed up on his property it would appear his worries were justified. Would we have preferred to read about a farmer beaten to within an inch of his life or worse? No. We've read that story too many times. And you can be sure that had this criminal gotten away with what he planned that night there would have been more robberies, and with 11 kids there was a whole new generation of thieves on the way.
Have I sympathy for his family? None. They lived off his crime, this is the price you pay.
Personally if I owned a gun and encountered someone in my house I'd like to think I'd make damn sure I didn't need to reload. I certainly wouldn't waste my time calling the Gardai, been there done that.
The only arguments I've heard against this farmer are that he re-loaded and fired again? Would he have walked free if his first shot had been a kill? As for whether he was right to reload and finish the job. How would you feel knowing that this thug was out there willing and able to come back for revenge? It's not a justificiation, but It's something to consider. Do you think you'd ever sleep soundly again?
None of us thankfully know what it's like to be this man, but I hope he feels that his time in Jail will be worth it, and when he get's out he'll have years of peaceful nights sleep.
And hopefully the revolving door of our prisons get him out as quickly as the criminal that tried to rob him would have gotten out had be been caught.
Is Tresspass a lesser crime than Man Slaughter?
That's not the issue at all. Mr Ward was on someone else's property. WE have no idea how sever a crime he was willing to commit. What we do know is only one person was there with the intent to commit a crime.
We also know that Mr Nally is unlikely to ever commit a crime again, whereas Mr Ward would probably have committed more THAT NIGHT, and again, and again.
The right person is in the ground. Thank goodness.
Obviously not but that would be the logical extension of your sort of reasoning in this case.
That's about as illogical an extension as I could imagine. Having a crime committed against you while you yourself are in the process of committing a crime, is a completely different thing from having a crime comitted against you while you are doing nothing wrong.
Even putting this aside Rape is a terrible analogy. There is no way that rape can EVER be considered a defensive crime, whereas Manslaughter can be committed when defending yourself.
-Rd