Burglars and Booby Traps

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, Owner Lionel Legras, 50, operator of a local garage, 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.

One evening in 1976, Woodcutters Rene Vermeulen, 31, and Andre Rousseau, 30, climbed over the fence outside Legras' cottage, forced open a door and broke into the cupboard. Vermeulen , turned the radio on, and the cartridges exploded. He was thrown to the floor, his chest ripped open and his right hand blown away; Rousseau, partially blinded, went for help. Vermeulen died; Rousseau, one eye permanently damaged, was charged with attempted burglary.

Rousseau then took a step that raised the case from a local incident to a French cause celebre: he filed suit against Legras, seeking $22,000 in damages. Even more galling, as many Frenchmen saw it, he nearly got his way. After a month-long dual trial, a court let Burglar Rousseau off with a two-month suspended sentence. As for Owner Legras, however, while no damages were assessed against him, he was declared guilty of using excessive force to defend his home. His sentence: eight months, suspended.

Legras' neighbors were appalled. "A man should want to defend his property from the ravages of criminals," said Marcel Delahaye, mayor of a nearby village. Some 1,000 townspeople marched to the town hall in support of the garage owner, and 6,000 area residents signed pro-Legras petitions. Huffed one observer at Legras' trial: "Who knows when we will find burglars drawing unemployment insurance in case of on-the-job accidents?"

French law recognizes a right of "legitimate self-defense" for crime victims who are put in fear of their life. But Legras' home was not occupied when the burglars broke in, and the damage done by his device was deemed out of proportion to the petty thievery the burglars presumably had in mind. For these reasons, the judges decided that traditional definitions of self-defense did not apply in Legras' case. But many others disagreed. The case spurred the formation of a Paris-based Movement for Legitimate Self-Defense, which counts several lawyers and former magistrates among its members. Their goal: a broader legal definition of legitimate self-defense. Says the movement's founder, former senior magistrate 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."

Legras might have fared even worse in the U.S. Almost all U.S. law schools teach the common law doctrine that "spring guns," booby-trapped weapons that fire at an intruder, are excessively violent when used to protect empty premises. In a 1971 Iowa case, Katko vs. Briney, the State Supreme Court upheld an award of $30,000 in damages to a man who was injured by a spring gun when he broke into the upstairs bedroom of an abandoned farmhouse. In a 1974 case, San Anselmo, Calif, Homeowner Don Luis Ceballos was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon when his spring gun shot a teen-ager who tried to steal some musical instruments from his garage.

Generally, U.S. law permits "reasonable force" in self-defense, which usually means that life-threatening measures may not be used to protect property, only people. Indeed even when he is at home, a citizen takes a risk if he attacks a burglar; in such cases, the courts may consider whether the intruder was a fearsome marauder or just an unarmed teen-ager--and even whether the incident occurred by day or night. Explains Boston Criminal Attorney Joseph J. Balliro: "If you are in bed and the lights are out, and a man comes through the window and says to you, 'Keep quiet or I'll kill you,' you have a right to kill him. After all, how can you tell whether or not he's bluffing? But if the lights are on, it might be different."

Distinguishing between excessive force and legitimate self-defense can be difficult. In Cordele, Ga. (pop. 12,100), for example, the local prosecutor did not see fit to bring a charge of manslaughter against a store owner who responded to small thefts from his cigarette machine by booby-trapping it after business hours with dynamite, an act that resulted in the death of a teen-aged tamperer. But a court awarded civil damages to the boy's mother. Traditionally, though, juries asked to consider burglars' rights sympathize with the property owners rather than the intruders. It may be only a matter of time before a dramatic case stirs passions on behalf of self-defense in the U.S. as the Legras case has in France.

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