(Note: There is a second article below the first. This is what property rights can be like 'across the pond.')

April 20, 2000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

A farmer who opened fire on two burglars who broke into his remote farmhouse has been found guilty of murder.

Tony Martin, 55, was sentenced to life at Norwich Crown Court for murdering 16-year-old Fred Barras by a majority verdict of 10 to two.

The jury also found him guilty of wounding with intent Mr. Barras' accomplice Brendan Fearon.

Martin, described in court as eccentric in the extreme, had earlier been cleared unanimously of attempting to murder Mr. Fearon and of possessing a firearm with intent at his farmhouse called Bleak House in Emneth Hungate, near Emneth, Norfolk.

As the guilty verdicts were read out a cry of "Yes" was heard from the public gallery.

'Dire warning'

Martin, dressed in smart blazer and floral tie, remained impassive but there were screams of joy from members of the Barras' family.

"I hope you die in jail," one shouted at Martin.

Jailing Martin, Mr. Justice Owen told him there was only one sentence he could pass.

"This case should serve as a dire warning to all burglars who break in to people's houses," he said.

He said a householder could use reasonable force to defend themselves from burglary.

"People have the right to use that reasonable force and it can have tragic results," he said.

After the trial Fred Barras' family said he had been fun-loving and always happy.

"Let's remember he was just 16 and the baby of our family," they said.

"We are devastated by our loss. The outcome of this trial can't bring him back and our loss has torn our lives apart."

'No satisfaction'

Det. Chief Insp. Martin Wright, who led the investigation, said he took no satisfaction from the outcome of the case.

"It has been a tragedy from start to finish," he said.

"Burglary is without doubt one of the most despicable crimes there is but I would stress to everybody it is up to the police to resolve it and this very tragic case when there has been no winners shows that is the case."

Martin had denied murdering 16-year-old Fred Barras on 20 August, saying he was a victim of crime and was acting in self-defence.

But Rosamund Horwood-Smart QC, prosecuting, said Fearon, 30 and Barras, both of Newark, Nottinghamshire, had been shot "like rats in a trap."

The jury of six men and six women took nine hours and 36 minutes to return the guilty verdicts after the judge had told them he would accept majority verdicts on the remaining charges.

Martin was jailed for life for the murder of Barras, with 10 years to run concurrently for the wounding offence and a further 12 months for possession of an illegal firearm.

Martin's actions were given support after the verdict by chocolate heir Sir Peter Cadbury, who told the BBC it was legitimate for a householder to use force against an intruder "if the householder himself feels threatened."

Crossbow

He told BBC Two's Newsnight programme: "A lot of my friends sleep with loaded guns under their beds and I don't think they can be criticised for doing that, because if they ring the police, it will be 35 to 40 minutes before a car gets there.

"I have had a loaded gun by my bed for the last 40 years, but in July last year, when a burglar took every piece of jewellery my wife had and my wallet and a lot else, he took the gun too."

He added that he had now armed himself with a crossbow instead, and said he would not hesitate to use it if a burglar broke in late at night.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/717511.stm

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Tony Martin faces a peculiar freedom, with his champions clamouring for his story and vigilantes out for revenge

October 31, 2001

By Steven Morris

The Guardian

By the time Tony Martin made his first court appearance charged with the murder of the teenage burglar Fred Barras his case had become a cause celebre.

Neighbours and strangers alike held a noisy demonstration outside King's Lynn magistrates court demanding his release, and some sections of the media were already lionizing him as the ordinary man who, plagued by burglars and let down by the police, had struck back but was now being persecuted.

Over the coming months, politicians, commentators and public opinion turned the Norfolk farmer into something approaching a folk hero.

After he was convicted of murdering Barras, 16, and wounding his accomplice, Brendon Fearon, William Hague's Conservatives party promised to change the law. The issue so troubled Tony Blair that he wondered in a memo, which was leaked, whether Labour was losing touch with public opinion.

Police chiefs vowed to do more to combat rural crime and money from members of the public flooded into an appeal fund. The burglars were vilified.

But Tony Martin was always an odd kind of hero. He thought of himself -- and few contradicted him -- as an "eccentric" who preferred the company of the three Rottweiler dogs he kept on his dilapidated farm, Bleak House. Wearing his work clothes and boots, he slept on his bed rather than in it and had a collection of teddy bears whom he thought of as "very nice people."

And his case, rehearsed during a tense and often dramatic trial at Norwich last year, was of course never as simple as his champions would have had it.

From the outset Martin claimed that he opened fire on Barras and Fearon, who between them had a string of convictions, in self defence. He claimed his home in the remote fenland village of Emneth Hungate, near Wisbech, had been targeted by burglars for years and said that he had lost faith in the police.

The crucial issues were Martin's location when he opened fire on the burglars with a Winchester pump-action shotgun -- which he claimed he had found -- and his mental state at the time.

Burglars

Martin's story is that he was in his bedroom when he was woken by the sound of the raiders breaking in. He said he fired from the rickety stairs into his breakfast room after a torch was shone at him.

The prosecution accused Martin of lying. It said he was waiting for the burglars in the dark on the ground floor of his home and had in effect "executed" Barras.

Forensic tests concluded that at least two of the shots must have been fired by Martin while he was downstairs. But Martin's position when he fired the first shot -- the one that killed Barras -- is vital.

Martin's defence took the "tactical" decision of going along with the theory that all the shots had been fired while downstairs. Its alternative was to have to explain why Martin had fired once from the stairs then pursued the raiders downstairs. Such a scenario did not fit with the idea of a terrified man only trying to defend himself.

As to his mental state, the prosecution depicted Martin as an angry man. It pointed out he had violent views about burglars and especially about travellers -- Barras was from a travellers' community. Martin once talked of "putting Gypsies in one of his fields surrounded by barbed wire and machine-gunning them." His defence maintained that he was terrified.

The jury clearly believed Martin had fired in anger and convicted him. Newspapers such as the Daily Mail and the Sun had a field day, especially when spurious claims that the jury had been nobbled emerged.

The chocolate tycoon Peter Cadbury was one of the first to donate money to an appeal fund. "The verdict gives criminals the licence to rape, murder and mug householders in their own homes," he said. In one television poll soon after the verdict, 85% said they believed the jury had got it wrong.

William Hague clearly took note. In April last year he won banner headlines when he promised to overhaul the law on self defence to protect the likes of Martin.

Coupled with controversial views on asylum, Mr. Hague's stance on the Martin case is credited with giving the Tories a fillip in the local elections when the party clawed back many of the seats it had lost in the early 90s.

Tony Blair was clearly rattled. The leaked memo to the prime minister's closest advisers cited reaction to the Martin case as evidence that the government was "somehow out of touch with gut British instincts." And with regard to the case, he suggested "asking a senior judge to look at changing the sentencing law, i.e., to allow lesser sentences than life."

At the time the leaked memo was front page news; no lesser figure than Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice -- and, coincidentally, the presiding judge in Martin's appeal -- claimed judges were being forced to pass wrong sentences because parliament had taken away their discretion in some cases by making them impose mandatory sentences. It is not an uncommon view. Many judges feel uneasy about the mandatory life sentence.

Meanwhile, the right-wing press had not forgotten Martin, expressing anger when Fearon was released from prison 18 months into three-year sentence for the break-in, and seething when it was revealed that he had been given the right to be consulted over the conditions surrounding Martin's eventual release under the government's victims' charter.

Only last month the writer Frederick Forsyth was questioning in the Daily Mail why an aide of Osama Bin Laden's was receiving British taxpayers' money to fight extradition -- suspects often receive legal aid to fight such proceedings -- while Martin had not (at that time) had public funds for his appeal. The Sun columnist Richard Littlejohn has even written a novel with elements based on the case.

For Martin, life in prison has been reasonably quiet, though his fame has led some inmates to try to provoke him. His cell in Gartree prison, Leicestershire, is decorated with pictures of the trees that surround Bleak House. He does not mix much with others and continues to sleep fully dressed and on top of his bed.

He is not impressed by the political talk, accusing both Labour and the Tories of delivering "rhetoric" instead of policies. In an interview broadcast on Radio 4 in May, he said: "You can have as many policemen as you like but if you don't give them proper powers it is like sending a stooge down to see you." The shooting itself he says remains "a haze ... surreal."

Martin has said that on release he first wants to visit his two dogs (one has died) and then set off on a tour of Britain to thank everyone who has supported him, sleeping in his vehicle if necessary.

Eventually, "depending on the season" and "when the mood is right," he will return to Bleak House and try to take up his old life there.

He will still be frightened of burglars -- the world even outside Gartree is "like a prison" he says -- and so he will keep the metal shutters which have been fitted. He does not plan to farm.

Martin told a psychiatrist he would not own another gun and would not take the law into his own hands again if faced with burglars.

Yesterday, however, he seemed to contradict this stance when minutes after the appeal court's decision, he told his solicitor that "99% of people" would have reacted as he did.

Martin's long-term future remains unclear. He has been told that psychiatric treatment will do him no good. Police have intelligence that there is a £60,000 bounty on his life and there have been threats to burn his house down.

When he is released, probably this time next year, he will doubtless receive police protection and there will be a hunger for him to tell his story. Perhaps eventually he will be able to resume what for him is ordinary life in the wreckage of Bleak House.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4288566-103850,00.html.