Whether a person who reasonably and in good faith believes that someone is stealing her automobile may use a firearm and inflict grievous bodily harm to prevent the suspected theft.
Holding
No. The defense of personal property does not justify shooting a suspected thief when the taking is not accompanied by force or danger to the defendant, her home, or another person.
Reasoning
The court rejected the broad proposition that deadly force is justified whenever it prevents a felony. The governing distinction is between an atrocious or forcible felony—such as murder, robbery, burglary, arson, rape, or kidnapping—and a nonforcible taking of property. Only the former category can, in appropriate circumstances, justify lethal force or force likely to cause grave bodily harm.
A person may resist an unlawful effort to take personal property, but the law values human life and bodily security more highly than property. Accordingly, a property owner may use only force necessary to protect the property and ordinarily may not endanger life or inflict great bodily harm unless the intruder's conduct also presents force or danger to a person or dwelling.
Even accepting Emmons's asserted good-faith belief that the car was being stolen, the suspected conduct was not an atrocious crime or a felony accomplished by force or surprise. She was not defending herself, her home, or her habitation; no one threatened her; and there was no force for her to repel. Thus, she had no legal justification for shooting Gray and causing grievous injury.
Because the jury could also find from the Commonwealth's evidence that Emmons intentionally shot Gray, the court upheld the aggravated-assault-and-battery conviction and affirmed the denial of a new trial.