Brief Fact Summary. Appellant was found guilty of murder for killing a victim by a mechanical gun trap set for potential burglars. Appellant argued that it was a justifiable use of self defense.
Synopsis of Rule of Law. A person is not justified in taking the life of another indirectly with a mechanical device unless he would have been justified had he been personally present.
Issue. Whether Appellant used a justifiable means of self defense.
Held. Affirmed.
A person is not justified in taking a life indirectly with a mechanical device unless he would have been justified had he been personally present and taken the life with his own hand.
Allowing persons at their own risk, to employ deadly mechanical devices imperils the lives of children, firemen and policemen.
Where one inflicts an unlawful injury, such injury is to be accounted as the efficient, proximate cause of the death, whenever it shall be made to appear, either that (1) the injury itself constituted the sole proximate cause of the death; or that (2) the injury directly and materially contributed to the happening of a subsequent accruing immediate cause of the death; or that (3) the injury materially accelerated the death, although proximately occasioned by a pre-existing cause.
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