U.S. Security Influenced By The French
Taylor Jensen writes about ADT home security for http://yourlocalsecurity.com, is considered an expert in the field of home security, and has published hundreds of articles informing consumers about what to look for when considering a home security system.
As reported by Time Magazine in June 1978, “The isolated country cottage in the Aube region of northeastern France was easy pickings for burglars, who regularly made off with furniture, children’s toys, sheets and kitchenware. After a dozen such thefts, homeowner Lionel Legras, age 50, fastened some shotgun cartridges to the inside of a transistor radio and locked it in a cupboard; he wired it to a timer that would detonate the shells 90 seconds after the radio was moved or switched on. Outside, he posted a warning: ENTRY PROHIBITED. DANGER, EXPLOSIVE DEVICES.”
Granted, this was long before most home alarm systems existed, and such free “alarm equipment” might have been the only effective rural method of protecting one’s property back in 1978. And moreover, Legras had posted a clear warning. But French lawyers disagreed.
The article goes on to describe how a couple of men had ignored the warning and climbed over Legras’s fence and forced a door. They broke into the cupboard and sure enough, encountered the danger they had been warned about. The cartridges exploded and one burglar died. The other was partially blinded and only charged with attempted burglary.
The survivor, Rousseau, raised the case from local incident to cause celebre by filing suit against Legras, seeking thousands. Many were outraged because he almost won, but after a month of trials he was simply let off with a suspended sentence. On the other hand, the homeowner, Legras, was declared guilty of excessive force and given a year in prison.
This turn of events appalled thousands of locals and millions around the world, while setting international precedent for a new turn of events in the ongoing battle of homeowner against home violator.
French law came to recognize the concept of excessive self-defense in proportion to a crime, prompting a Paris-based “Movement for Legitimate Self-Defense,” which can only be considered tame to many conservative gun-toting Americans from Texas, North Dakota, and Utah, who believe they can break from the Union over mainly gun-related issues.
Said the French movement’s founder, Francis Romerio, “Burglars can choose the time and place of their activities; police cannot. So it is only legitimate that a citizen should be able to defend his family and property the way he chooses.”
But French law disagrees, just as it does in America, where almost all U.S. law schools teach the common law doctrine that “booby-trapped weapons that fire at an intruder are excessively violent when used to protect empty premises.”
Then again, it’s no surprise that we inherit much of our “egalitarianism” to the country from which the word stems, and to whom we owe much of the enlightened language that comprises our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
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