I've had fantasies of much worse punishments for package thieves, like a paint gun sentinel. I'd buy this if he'd manufacture it.
Dump 100mg of cadaverine in the thiefs car and they'll never use that car again. And possibly the clothes they wore at the time.
Or other chemicals.
It would be most exciting to find chemicals that yield strongest short-term effects without any damaging long term effects.
The packages were some rolls of vinyl, a box of sealed granola snacks, and some inexpensive jewelry, all rejected by the thief. If the person was homeless, I'm surprised they ditched the food, it was nutritious and shelf-stable. (I redelivered the packages.)
As far as I'm aware, it's the worst smelling chemical known to humans and has no damaging long term effects. You just have to be veeery careful about it unless you want to stink up the whole town by accident.
Kidding of course, but I it makes wonder how easy this would be for an amateur to synthesize. The consequences being making an entire town nauseous makes this whole thing pretty enigmatic.
I would love to see a thief try and bring that case...
EDIT:
NAL but... It's my understanding that the likelihood such a case is brought is small
1. Because it pretty much guarantees the alleged perpetrator will have charges brought against them and
2. Contributory negligence would make that case very hard to win.
It is my understanding that yes there have been cases where such cases are brought before a court, but they are infrequent, and not easy to win.
Certainly if you caused someone harm using one it would be illegal in the sense that causing someone harm is illegal anyway, but a harmless trap like this one doesn't seem to me that it would be illegal. I'm not a lawyer though, so I'd be interested to see if there is some law I'm not aware of.
The Geneva convention, for starters.
It's also a five second Google search: https://definitions.uslegal.com/b/booby-traps/
Which Geneva Convention applies to non-state actors not acting in the context of international or internal war? Please quote specifically the relevant provisions making it applicable to that case.
> It's also a five second Google search
Well, yes, that that's all the effort you devoted does explain the rather giant hole in your argument.
Is the full statement. Individual state laws vary but it's important enough to be international law was the point.
From the article:
>If a person sets up such a trap to protect his/her property, he/she will be liable for any injury or death even to an unwanted intruder such as a burglar. It is illegal to set a booby trap on one's own property to prevent intruders.
> Is the full statement.
And that statement is wrong, AFAICT; the Geneva Conventions do not address the conduct at issue here, whether “for starters” or otherwise.
They might prohibit somewhat analogous conduct in a very disanalogous context [0] but context and conduct are not orthogonal considerations in law.
[0] or, maybe not; the specific instrument you are probably thinking of is Amended Protocol II to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons; it does address booby-traps, but the device at issue here is not a booby-trap as defined in that protocol (not designed to kill or injure).
Seriously?
That betrays a total lack of comprehension for this entire discussion and the law.
The fact is, booby traps which cause bodily injury (including paintball, very easily, without protective equipment) are definitively illegal in most jurisdictions. This is the truth whether you spend 5 seconds or 5 hours googling.
Do better, all of you.
But the Geneva Convention? lol.
The point is that at some point an "innocent" citizen crosses a line and is no longer innocent. We are just debating where the line should be.
Is the death penalty issued for thievery?
That depends. Are we talking about a thief who was accidentally killed in a brawl with the property owner (or the troublesome death-by-glitter scenario that some in this thread are so concerned about)? Or a property owner who subdues, binds, and executes the thief? I'm open to arguments that it should be illegal to use lethal force against thieves when it's 100% clear that the thief poses no physical danger to the victim. I also believe that the property owner generally bears responsibility if their traps or other defenses are mistakenly employed against an innocent party. But in general, any injuries a thief incurs during a theft should be his own responsibility, and I'm okay with a world in which thieves live in fear of committing thefts.
I don't think anyone would disagree that generally stealing is wrong and people who do it in general deserve to face consequences. But the consequences should be proportionate to the crime. I don't think anyone deserves to die for petty theft, regardless of circumstances.
It seems like you are suggesting that if someone takes a $50 package off of my front porch, and then I come outside to confront them, and in the altercation this person makes a threatening gesture towards me then I would be within my rights to use lethal force.
That seems like a disproportionate escalation to me.
Anyway I think we just disagree about some of these proportionality issues.
If someone steals something, that doesn't mean they automatically lose all of their rights to life and property simply because in your mind they are now a "criminal".
Why is that okay?
What happens if you put a car airbag in a booby trapped package, and someone steals the package and brings it home. Then later that day their child or spouse finds and opens the package not realizing it was stolen. Boooom, an airbag in their face and they're seriously injured.
We don't need a world where we're surrounded by booby traps. It's a disaster waiting to happen because there are countless edge cases that people wouldn't consider.
We're quickly moving towards a future with door bell cameras and facial recognition software. We also have more parcel lockers showing up in different cities and neighborhoods where you can have packages safely delivered, available for pickup 24/7. These are better alternatives than setting traps.
Proving things in court is much less efficient, and more likely to harm those who are innocent, than to make sure the crime is punished immediately.
I agree that traps are a bad idea because I don't trust most people to devise traps that don't harm innocents; however, this is markedly different than the argument that "when a trap hurts a thief, the thief bears no responsibility". Also, the specific scenario we're discussing is a thief getting a bit of glitter in their eye.
Anyway, I welcome any advancement that can help deter thieves (and/or make sure they're prosecuted) while protecting innocent bystanders. I'm not convinced pervasive facial recognition software is the key given the privacy concerns, but maybe it's inevitable. However, all of this is orthogonal to the question of who is culpable for injuries incurred by a thief during a theft.
What happens if I setup a machine to fire baseballs at high speed when someone touches my fake parcel? Some teenager comes to steal my package, catches a baseball between the eyes and dies or ends up disabled for life. I'm in the clear because the kid was a thief? Now, I don't think a thief deserves a payday when they slip on ice running from my property, but I also don't believe people should be free to create harmful traps without consequence.
What about those people that run wires across trails on private property? They've killed and decapitated people trespassing on motorcycles or 4-wheelers. Once again, don't blame the property owner that installed the invisible wire? They're in the clear because the person decapitated shouldn't have been riding on that private trail?
How about we don't try to harm thieves. We document and report the case to the police to the best of our ability. Yes, the glitter bomb is extremely innocent, but it's easier to say no to all traps than it is to define what type of traps are acceptable.
because the police are basically never going to do anything unless the squad car happens to roll by as the thief is running away with the package. you may as well send your documentation straight into the circular file.
now I understand that kids do dumb stuff from time to time. riding a dirtbike around someones fifty acre estate is not that serious, and could easily be done unintentionally if property lines are not well marked. going up to someones door/porch without an invitation is quite something else. if you can find a way to mess these people up without putting the mailman at risk, I am all for it. I would be very happy to live in a society where messing in/around a person's dwelling is understood to be a serious risk.
Then move to a state with liberal firearm laws. Seriously, It's amazing how much an intangible line on a map affects the behavior of people seeking to commit property crime in the state I live vs the adjacent state I used to live in.
Stop moving the goalposts, it makes you look silly.
And just for the hell of it, no, it is not categorically innocent even when talking about morals, either. Morality is, by definition, something that is personal to each person. Therefor there can be no such thing as "categorical innocence", as moral innocence will be different for each person.
And while each person may have their own opinion about morality, every society in the world has decided that theft is wrong enough to outlaw, so clearly morality isn’t purely subjective (certainly not by definition). Similarly, every society respects an individual’s right to defend themselves (note that “defense” here is defined as some minimal force required to confidently stop an aggressor thereby excluding things like executing an aggressor after he’s been subdued) so clearly this is moral as well.
Please don’t accuse me of moving goal posts. It’s clear that I haven’t. If you can’t participate in good faith this conversation is over.
Find one place where I said that the law is morally correct. I'll save your trouble: you can't, because I never did so.
So now not only are you moving the goalposts, but you're setting up a strawman. Nice. Two fallacies for the price of one.
This conversation has been about the law and legal liability since the beginning. Nobody brought up morality until you did in your attempt to, yes, move the goalposts. It is very clear that you have done so, and it's absurd of you to accuse me of not participating in good faith, when you're doing all you can possibly do to avoid admitting that your argument is ridiculous.
And yes, by the way, if you drive by someone knowing that by doing so you will launch debris towards another person in a manner that could injure them, and your car kicks up a rock and hits that person in the head, you would also be liable.
Innocence is also irrelevant, as you do not have the right to injure another person, even if they stole from you.
There is a reason we don't want a society where that kind of thing is OK.
EDIT> I think part of why the glitter fart bomb works so well is that it has a sense of humour, and that the designer doesn't come off as cruel.
In certain jurisdictions the ideological pendulum (closely followed by official public policy) has swung a little too far toward idea that criminals have no agency and are victims of an unfair system that forces them to commit crime to get by and that prosecuting minor crimes is a path to further criminality.
The idea is that by not prosecuting certain crimes we can prevent people from becoming criminals at the ground floor which will prevent them getting stuck in a loop where they can't get a real job and have to commit crime to survive and become a career criminal. While this is not totally baseless and is something I generally agree with there's a categorical difference between applying this thinking to victimless crimes and crimes with a victim (a trap which pretty much all real world implementations fall into).
In the case of petty victimless crimes where there's disagreement over whether or not the crime should be a crime at all (e.g. weed possession) having a don't prosecute by default policy is fine IMO. For petty crime with a victim that pretty much everyone agrees should be a crime (like petty theft) having a don't prosecute by default is stupid because it increases crime in order to score political virtue points for the people who implement it at the expense of the community as a whole (I'm looking at your SF and your failure to prosecute minor property crimes, yes I'm fully aware this will not be a popular opinion circa 9am and 12pm West Coast time).
But intentionally doing nothing about theft is just harmful. It rewards the crime and breeds vigilantism.
A lot of times people commit crime for the same reasons they eat unhealthy, fight with their family members, and get addicted to harmful behavior. They aren't thinking long term and they don't care about the consequences that much.
There is no political or economic system that you can design that will keep people from being stupid.
I have very different degrees of sympathy for these groups. The first group needs access to better options. The second group needs to be held accountable. The third group cannot really be allowed to participate in our society.
We might disagree on the prevalence of each group.
As an aside, I don’t know if it legal to ship scorpions.
That's easy, simply refer to Exhibit 526.5: Restrictions on Mailing Live Scorpions https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm#ep203359
A thief is already open to the idea of invading your personal space for gain, why not revenge?
I don't understand why everyone thinks the homeowners are helpless and just waiting to be robbed/vandalized/whatever.
Who wants to sign up for that?