University of Tampa Criminology Blog

Instructions: 

For your internet blogging assignment #4, please read through the following information regarding the “Castle Doctrine” and the brief summary I included about the movie Felon, which we viewed in class on Tuesday October 13, 2009.  After your read the information, read and respond to all five questions at the bottom of this post.  When you respond to the questions, please be sure to number each response.  Your internet blogging assignment #4 is due by the time your class begins on Tuesday October 20, 2009 in order to be considered for full points.  Please post your responses here on the blogging site just as you would any other blogging assignment.

Information:

According to the Castle Doctrine, a concept that emerged from English Common Law, citizens are justified in using deadly force to defend their “castle”, which includes in many states their dwelling (home) and in some states, their workplace and their personal vehicle.  Under the Castle Doctrine, if an intruder threatens or attacks a person or persons in their “castle”, if deadly force is used, it may be defined as “justifiable homicide” because the killing occurred during an act of self-defense.

According to Holmes & Holmes (1998)*, justifiable homicide differs from state to state within the United States.

States where neither the dwelling nor the property can be protected by the Castle Doctrine by an intruder include:  Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. 

 States where the dwelling can be protected but the property cannot be protected include: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington D.C., Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.

States where both the dwelling and the property can be protected by the Castle Doctrine include the following:  Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Montana and New Mexico.

States where the dwelling can be protected but there is no specific reference to whether or not the property can be protected include the following:  Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, and Vermont.

 There is no law on the books in Ohio stating whether or not a person can use deadly force if threatened or attacked by an intruder in their own dwelling or on their property in the State of Ohio.

*Note:  Because of the date of the Holmes publication, some of the states listed above may have changed their laws regarding self-defense/justifiable homicide when threatened or attacked in their dwelling or on their property.  The above list is included to provide a rough idea of how much the justifiable homicide/Castle Doctrine laws differ across the United States .

 Other caveats included in the Castle Doctrine is that an intruder must be physically within the dwelling, acting illegally, the occupants of the home must have a reasonable belief that the intruder is going to inflict bodily harm or kill the occupants or that the intruder is going to commit some other felony act such as rape, robbery or arson, the occupant of the home (owner or renter) must not have provoked the intruder into their felony act and in some states, the occupant of the dwelling and/or property may need to make all reasonable means to “retreat” from the pending danger, thus leaving killing the intruder as the “course of last resort”.  In other words, because of the situation, the occupant had a reasonable belief that their life, and/or the lives of other occupants, were in danger and did not believe there was any other way to resolve the situation than to kill the intruder.

 Summary of Felon:

A loving husband and father finds his promising future transformed into a waking nightmare when he’s convicted of involuntary manslaughter after accidentally killing the burglar who broke into his home in this gritty prison drama starring Stephen Dorff and Val Kilmer. Wade Porter (Dorff) would have done anything to protect his family, and when they were threatened he did what any caring family man would have done. But somehow everything went wrong, and now Wade has been sentenced to spend three years in a maximum-security prison. It’s a place where the rules of society have been all but forgotten, and in addition to sharing a cell with a notorious mass murderer (Kilmer), Wade somehow incurs the wrath of the sadistic head prison guard (Harold Perrineau). Now, in order to survive the series of vicious beatings orchestrated for the amusement of the guards, Wade realizes that in order to survive the block and get back to his family he will have to become the toughest felon of them all. But even if Wade does manage to live through this harrowing ordeal, what will be left of that loving family man once he’s finally released back into civilized society?

Summary written by:  Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide (Retrieved 10/13/09 from http://www.fandango.com/felon_v453379/summary)

 Questions:

In the movie Felon, in an attempt to protect his family from an intruder, Wade Porter chased an intruder out of the family dwelling and hit the intruder once on the head with a baseball bat.  Although Wade stated to the police investigator he swung for the intruder’s shoulder, the intruder “ducked”, thereby causing Wade’s swing to make full contact with the back of the intruder’s head, instantly killing the intruder. 

1.  Should it matter whether or not Wade had the “intention” to kill the intruder when he said he swung for the shoulder and instead hit the intruder’s head?  (Does where Wade swung the bat at on the intruder’s body make a difference as to whether or not the killing was classified as “murder” or “justifiable homicide”, or does only the point of impact and resulting injury matter?

2.  Using the information provided by Holmes & Holmes (1998) above, what would happen to Wade Porter in a court the State of Florida?  How about in the State of Montana?

3.  What part of the movie Felon interested you the most?  Why?

4.  Do you believe situations seen in the movie Felon can happen today, or do you believe “Hollywood” is portrayed in order to give the movie more interest to the viewers?  Be sure to provide at least one scene from the movie to explain your answer to this question.

5.  Why do you believe the movie Felon was chosen to be viewed during our class?

By Karl Penhaul Special to CNN Editor’s note: Journalist Karl Penhaul spent several weeks tracking the gangs of the Mexican underworld, the corrupt officials who support them and the cops trying to halt the violence. This is the second of three exclusive reports. Part one looked at the violent rules gangs live by. The faithful leave this “Holy Death” statue offerings including cigarettes and cocaine, visible in the nose. 1 of 3 more photos » CULIACAN, Mexico (CNN) — A baseball cap dangles from a cement cross. The slogan on the hat reads “power, money, respect.” On the brim there’s the logo of the classic gangster movie “Scarface.” Etched on the gravestone, the words: “Jesus Guadalupe Parra. 12 December 1986 to 25 August 2008.” “Lupito,” as friends and family knew him, went down in a hail of bullets before he reached 22. Authorities said he died alongside three others in a gunfight with a rival drug gang high in the Sierra Madre mountain range that is the backbone of Mexico’s Pacific coast state of Sinaloa. A printed banner draped over his tomb offers a deeper insight. It shows a photo of him alongside a marijuana plantation and an AK-47 assault rifle fitted with a 100-round ammunition drum. The drab grave of this cartel triggerman, at the Jardines de Humaya cemetery in state capital Culiacan, stands in stark contrast to the mausoleums of dead capos, or drug bosses. Those are elaborate two- and three-story constructions, some perhaps 25 feet high, made of bullet-proof glass, Italian marble and spiral iron staircases. A bricklayer at work in the cemetery told me the fanciest cost between $75,000 and $150,000. He said grateful drug barons often pay for loyal hitmen to be buried here, the city’s toniest graveyard. Like so many other people we’ve met over the last few weeks, he declined to give his name or speak on camera. “I can’t. El patron [the boss] would kill me,” he said. Days later I track down Lupito’s cousin, Giovanni Garcia, on the phone. He’s an undertaker and by coincidence he took the call that Lupito, had been shot. “My cousin loved that way of life,” Garcia said briefly before turning down a recorded interview. “We can’t talk. You must understand how things are around here these days. It’s not a good time.” That Sunday, I linger at Lupito’s graveside. Three young men show up. They look about the same age as the dead gunman, the same cropped-hair, one heavily scarred around his eye. In the breeze they struggle to light a dozen foot-high candles. I introduce myself. A few grunts later and I can see this conversation is going nowhere fast. “We couldn’t make it to the burial. This is the first time we’ve come to pay our respects,” one of them explained. He never offered his name. Drug rivalries have been known to spill over at funerals so many mourners opt to stay away leaving only the closest relatives to bury their dead quietly and without public complaints. I stick around hoping to meet more talkative mourners. My wait is cut short. A fourth man appears between the tombstones some 20 yards away, apparently having seen me. As he talks into a phone I hear him say: “Hey, take your chance. Go grab f**king baldy.” Don’t Miss Hitmen’s reign all about logic, trafficker says Obama heads to Mexico amid escalating drug violence I look around. No other bald men in sight — just me. Time to leave. At Jardines de Humaya and across town at the 21 de Marzo cemetery, rows of recently dug graves are filled with the young foot soldiers of Mexico’s drug war. A crosscheck of their names in the obituary columns of the local newspaper reveal tales of men in their late teens and early 20s, gunned down in firefights, shot in cold blood on their doorsteps or killed in prison clashes. Jesus Gaston earns around $40 for every three graves he digs. But he can see the lure of easy money in the drug trade is little more than a mirage. “The easy money lasts for just a few days because it’s all about time before they kill you too. You kill somebody and somebody will come back for you,” he said. “Some how, some way they will find you.” When the reality boils down to kill or be killed, it’s unsurprising the hitmen and the narco-traffickers want to improve their odds of survival. Most days, you can hear a brass band or a cowboy trio thumping out tunes in a small building on a Culiacan side street. It’s a shrine to a highway robber called Jesus Malverde. In the century since he died he’s become known as the patron saint of the drug trade. Watch men pay respects to their narco-saint » Men in cowboy hats and ostrich-skin boots duck in and out of view. Some try to conceal their faces behind a musician’s trombone or tuba. The day I dropped in, one man was paying around $600 for a band to play for three hours. Off camera he told me it was his way of repaying a favor to Malverde. I asked him about that favor and he said he was celebrating a bumper harvest — of beans and corn. He said he was shy about appearing on camera. I told another man, who gave his name as “Rosario,” that he looked like a stereotypical narco. He had the ostrich-skin cowboy boots and shaved head. Besides that he seemed to be spending a small fortune, by Mexican standards, on live music, foot-high candles and fresh flowers to place at Malverde’s altar. Rosario laughed off my suggestion and laughed again in my face as he told me he was paying tribute to Malverde after a good few months working as a carpet fitter in Arizona. It was refreshing to find a straight-talking trombone player at the shrine, Jaime Laveaga. He makes his living playing music and he’s clear about who his main clients are. “It sounds bad to say it but Culiacan is a city with a big drug mafia. They like brass band music and they love to celebrate — 15th birthdays, weddings, family birthdays. They even celebrate their dogs’ birthdays,” he explained. Needless to say, the Catholic Church takes a dim view of those who worship Malverde and another growing cult known as the “Holy Death,” which critics say is also popular among thieves and narcos. “People are looking for easy solutions where they don’t have to make any sacrifices. If they don’t find any support for their killings or their drug trafficking from the Catholic Church then they look for other options,” Father Esteban Robles, spokesman for the Culiacan diocese told me. “They’re looking for something that will justify their actions.”