Quote Originally Posted by MMI View Post
I cannot see how the dreadful law you quoted, which allows a person to execute a robber (not a killer) trying to escape with some property by shooting him in the back, enables that person (the killer) to say, the robbery backfired!
I'd say ending up dead as a result is just about the ultimate in backfiring. Most of the US has a law of 'felony murder', that a death which occurs in the commission of a felony (for example, someone you run over while making a getaway in a stolen car, or someone gets shot in your armed bank robbery) is legally considered to have been murdered by the perpetrators, because the original cause of the death was the crime itself, even if otherwise the death would have been a less serious charge (run someone over while driving your own car legally, it isn't classed as murder unless you actually drove at them deliberately). England and Wales had this rule too, but weakened it in 1957 to apply only to crimes of personal violence.

If I crash a stolen car and die through my own fault, or because I am drunk, that is an unfortunate accident that prevents justice running its course.
I neither see that as unfortunate (as long as nobody else is harmed: as I've said, I have no objection to criminals dying from their crimes) nor as having prevented justice from running its course. As for the booby-trapped car, if you hadn't stolen it nobody would have been harmed, so why is it the owner's fault rather than your own? My booby-trapped car is entirely safe, as long as nobody tries stealing it!

Much like the idiots every year who illegally obtain display-grade fireworks, not knowing that the fuses on them are non-delay ones (designed for remote triggering, or having a separate delay fuse attached), or indeed the IRA bombers who started experimenting with radio controlled detonators - then learned the hard way that anyone can send radio signals, not just the person assembling the bomb. Do you object to terrorists getting blown up by their own bombs thanks to radio jamming, too?

On a relevant footnote, I was relieved to see the Crown Prosecution Service declining to bring any charges over the stabbing of the burglar John Bennell in Salford this June. At the very least, one less burglar out there - and it wouldn't surprise me if burglary rates in the area fell afterwards too.