Defending the Castle

Everyone has a right to defend, as best they may, their personal place of residence, their home, their security, their privacy, the place where they are themselves; their haven from the great world outside.
Enshrined in law in some degree or another in most countries of the world is the acknowledgement that a home is the refuge of the individual, and as such it is personally sacrosanct, that intrusions, and threatening invasions constitute a crime.

Even authority figures, those involved in state security must under the laws of most countries, obtain special legal documents establishing that an authorized legal entity has seen fit to give especial permission for police agents to enter a private home without permission. So when people are suddenly confronted with the entry of someone with hostile intentions penetrating their inner sanctum they are understandably justified in taking self-protective measures.

The very act of making covert plans to invade someone's home is vindication of the home owner's reflexive act of resistance, since the entry, unannounced and unasked, constitutes a threat. A threat very often accompanied by violence. And since violence is so often the intention of the intruders, it stands to reason that the victim may also use violence to defend himself.

But is there something that can be referred to as an over-response, a level of response so extreme, so disproportional to fears and threats of personal injury that a neutral observer can reach the conclusion that the response itself constitutes a crime?  One jury thought that to be the case in a trial that sought to bring a victim of a home invasion to account for having killed three and wounded two of five people who broke into his home.

Chris Bishop, 27, of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, a town of fifteen hundred people, was charged with murder in his violent response to the invasion of his small house at 3 a.m. on a day in January 2007. He was found  guilty and sentenced to prison. His claim of self-defence exonerating himself from responsibility in those deaths, however, has now been upheld by an appeal court panel of judges.

The appeal court has ordered a new trial for Mr. Bishop. They accepted his self-defence plea as plausible. Despite that the three intruders who were shot dead were shot in the back as they lay wounded, and the two that survived, shot in the back as well, as they attempted to flee.  An eyewitness described one of the wounded men fall in the snow and struggle to rise when Mr. Bishop raised the semi-automatic, aimed and shot to kill.

The intruders had been were armed with a Samurai sword and a golf club; the sight of Mr. Bishop's loaded firearm brought them to a panicked attempt to flee his house. Mr. Bishop, on becoming aware that people were forcing entry to his house called the RCMP. They were so tardy in arriving that he barricaded himself in his bedroom and withdrew a rifle, an SKS-D that he legally owned. But had illegally added a 25-bullet "banana clip" to.

"The invaders' aim was to injure Mr. Bishop seriously. Obviously a samurai sword can easily kill. They broke down the final refuge, the bedroom door", observed the judges in their ruling. They also made note of the fact that the judge in the original trial hadn't permitted jurors to be advised that the dead men had a history of burglary, violent crimes and home invasions.

"Self-defence law requires the threatened person to assess the risk, and past performance of the aggressor is very relevant to that. It is like considering whether the barking dog has bitten before", wrote one of the justices. There was animus between the men, but it was not relevant to a claim of self-defence, they ruled.

Mr. Bishop had been found guilty of three counts of second-degree murder and two of attempted murder, for which crimes he was sentenced to life in prison. Two of the three appeal judges were of the opinion that Mr. Bishop had been robbed of a fair hearing when bad-character evidence was permitted relating to Mr. Bishop's background but not of his attackers.

The dissenting opinion written by Justice Brian O'Ferrall was that "the real issue before the jury was whether the appellant used more force than necessary" since the shootings were directed toward retreating attackers with all the victims being shot in the back. "In my view, it was open to the jury, on that evidence alone, to find that the appellant could not have reasonably believed the force he used was his only means of protecting himself."

Mr. Bishop will remain in Kingston Penitentiary, where he is serving his sentence, and that is likely where he will remain until the time of his new trial is scheduled. And it is highly likely, despite the appeal court's having overturned his original trial, that a new trial will find him just as guilty of a disproportionately violent response despite the urgency of his situation as the first one had.


Convicted murderer Chris Bishop may get to appeal his triple murder sentence as early as this spring. Toronto lawyer James Morton, who took over as Bishop’s legal counsel last fall, says the appeal will centre around Bishop’s attempt to defend himself during a home invasion the night of Jan. 6, 2007, when Bishop shot and killed three people and wounded another two. (FILE PHOTO)