Is the law an ass?

[DodgyGeezer]

I can't help thinking that there is more to this tale than we are privy to since, on the face of it, a violent and larger intruder ending up dead would appear to be justified. What should the poor kid have done - let himself be beaten up? Or does the fact thst there was a knife by the bed move this over to 'premeditated'?

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/dean-kerrie-21...

[LosingGrip]

It's hard to comment as we don't have all the information, but the judge who does has said the use of force was grossly excessive says a lot.

[thompson9745]

The trick is not to involve the po po at all which was Tony Martin's mistake. If he'd simply buried the bodies (deep) somewhere on the farm using a nearly JCB then nobody would have been any the wiser; with the added benefit of no more break ins in the village.

[HazzaT]

The 'grossly excessive' bit seems to refer to using the knife at all.

Honestly I think the lad is very hard done to here, I don't know how else he was supposed to react to a grown man smashing through the window and kicking the st out of him.

[Evanivitch]

LosingGrip said:

It's hard to comment as we don't have all the information, but the judge who does has said the use of force was grossly excessive says a lot.

This. There's no mention of the person bearing the knife suffering any injury, but says the knife was acquired quickly. You have to wonder at what point he acquired the knife and then into a fight with a home intruder.

It also says there's a high chance of violent re-offending, which doesn't align with someone that has no history of such conflict.

[whimsical ninja]

It'll be the jury who decided the force was grossly excessive (I presume Irish law isn't massively different to British). Certainly in Britain there's established case law on these sorts of cases. There's self defence, excessive self defence, and excessive self defence that leads to death. It would appear that in the individual circumstances of this case, a jury found the threat posed was not enough to justify using a knife to cause fatal injury. That's about as much as we can deduce

[whimsical ninja]

What interests me is how has it taken four years to get this far?

[8IKERDAVE]

Doesn't seem fair to me. Coupled with the fact that the guy attacked this lads mother he clearly meant business. It's not uncommon to keep a weapon under your bed for protection. IMO if someone breaks into your house and threatens your life it's fair game!

[LunarOne]

Seems totally unfair. You break into someone's house to attack them, I would be defending myself with any means possible. If not a knife, I'd be looking for something to hit them over the head with. How else do you stop an attacker who is bigger and more powerful than you? If it had been me, and a knife had been within reach, I'd have used it for sure.

[WolvesWill]

How does Irish law differ from British, I wonder, when it comes to self defence?

The lack of detail in the article does not help one to understand the verdict. If, for example, the victim had 45 knife wounds in his back, sustained whilst exiting the property, and where the suspect failed to call emergency services immediately upon the incident taking place, that would paint a sonewhat different picture than if he had sustained a single knife wound sustained whilst in the suspects bedroom.

Edit: A cursory Google search suggests the victim was stabbed once to the chest, and died outside of the property.

Edited by WolvesWill on Thursday 27th October 15:19

[Pica-Pica]

I assume the knife ‘nearby’, and the death meaning repeated stabbing, would be ‘excessive self-defence’.

[DodgyGeezer]

Evanivitch said:

It also says there's a high chance of violent re-offending, which doesn't align with someone that has no history of such conflict.

That is an interesting bit tbh - which is why I did wonder if there was more to it.

Regardless I can't help but think on the self-defence side of things quite a few of us could be in a similar situation with a bit of bad luck

[Dingu]

Classic pistonheads. Take probably 5% of the information and decide categorically that the people who had all the info were wrong.

I’m surprised there isn’t more flat earthers here actually.

[Largechris]

Dingu said:

Classic pistonheads. Take probably 5% of the information and decide categorically that the people who had all the info were wrong.

I’m surprised there isn’t more flat earthers here actually.

Indeed, there's nowhere near enough information been reported to form an opinion on the sentence. They had already had an altercation outside at some point earlier, they were known to each other, we do know this was not a random home invasion.

[alscar]

How do “we” know they had already had an altercation earlier and were already known to each other Chris ?

[Evanivitch]

alscar said:

How do “we” know they had already had an altercation earlier and were already known to each other Chris ?

At 3am in the morning, how did the victim know where the convicted lived after finding damage to his car?

"The trial heard that Jack Power had been drinking into the early hours and at about 3am saw damage to his car which he believed had been caused by Dean Kerrie."

[otolith]

This testimony might be relevant;

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/courtandcrime/a...

[alscar]

Victim was drunk and could have lived close to defendant and had history - not necessarily earlier that same day which was implied by previous comment posted hence my question.
Agree without full story bit academic posting but PH.

[pistonheader10101]

needs a better lawyer

[OutInTheShed]

If you've ever done jury service and later looked at the reporting of a case where you've been on the jury, you'll trust the papers even less than you should trust the legal process.
In other news a knife-wielding yob got jailed.