Man: The following segment is sponsored by Harding Mazzotti.
Interviewer: A man was found shot to death in a mobile home park community in the town of Malta. New details from state police say that the man had forced his way into the home, attacked a person inside resulting in that resident arming himself with a shotgun and firing at the man. Now that resident is not facing charges. So what are your rights if someone forcibly enters your home? Here to help explain this from a legal perspective is managing partner Paul Harding from the law firm Harding Mazzotti. Good morning Paul, how are you doing?
Paul: Doing well. Doing well.
Interviewer: All right. Now under New York, what circumstances can someone use lethal force if a person does enter their home?
Paul: So New York has a rule called the duty to retreat, and the duty to retreat is often misunderstood. But if you are in your street or even in your yard and you can safely retreat from deadly force, you have a duty to do so. But we also have a castle doctrine. The castle doctrine is what applies here. That’s your home, your home is your castle. Someone comes in, lower standard, presents some fear of grave danger, you then can use lethal force in your home, no duty to retreat.
Interviewer: All right. Now how are New York’s laws different than stand-your-ground laws than other states?
Paul: Yeah. We hear a lot about the stand-your-ground. You know, Florida, for example, has that rule. And that rule is that you could be in the street and someone says, “Hey, you know, I’m coming at you. If you don’t get out of my way I’m going to,” and if you believe they’re actually going to hurt you, you can stand your ground. You can use deadly force. And it’s the rule in Florida. Again as we talked about, if you could retreat here in New York that’s our rule as it applies to outside your home.
Interviewer: All right. Now how is justification determined for use of lethal force?
Paul: Yeah. Really, you know, you have to have just a genuine belief. You don’t have to go through and make sure the gun is real, make sure…genuine belief that you are in grave danger. And it could apply to specific facts. You know, if you are, you know, an elderly person who is very weak and someone’s coming at you just with their hands or if you’re in a situation where you just believe and earnestly believe and not with the look back because the look back could be, well, it was a fake gun, it doesn’t matter, if you earnestly believe that, you have the ability to use deadly force.
Interviewer: And with this case, do you anticipate any charges being filed?
Paul: I do not. I don’t think there’ll be any charges. I think again we got the castle doctrine. Someone comes in the house, they fear for their life, they’ve got the shotgun. They don’t have to say, “I’ve got a shotgun. I’m about to shoot.” They can just go ahead and do that if they fear for their life. If new facts emerge that they had a relationship but right now none of that exists I don’t think charges will be filed.
Interviewer: All right. Well, that’s all we have for now. Paul, thank you so much.
Paul: Absolutely.
Interviewer: For more info covered in our weekly “What Are Your Rights?” segment, or to send us a story idea, just head to our website, cbs6albany.com.
