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The Jeweler Case: Defense or Punishment?

The Jeweler Case: Defense or Punishment?

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In New York or Canada the outcome barely changes.

On April 28, 2021, three armed robbers raided a jewelry store in Grinzane Cavour and fled with their loot. The owner went out with a revolver and shot them in the back as they got into their car; he then kicked one of the wounded men on the ground. One died.

In Italy came a conviction for voluntary homicide: seventeen years at first instance, fourteen on appeal. For the judges the danger was already over: not defense, but punishment.

The principle is shared by almost every legal system: self-defense requires a present threat. In the United States, though, it depends on the state. In Texas, which allows deadly force to stop flight after a robbery, the defense would have had more to work with.

Not in New York. Here a duty to retreat applies, and the jeweler did the opposite: he went out to chase. Canada is strict too: the reaction must be "reasonable," and property alone never justifies deadly force. In both, conviction is almost certain.

On social media the verdict sparked outrage: "the state protects criminals, not victims." But it is an objection that does not hold. It confuses human sympathy for a robbery victim with the legal judgment on what he did afterward, once the danger was over. And as that very comparison shows, this is no Italian anomaly: you do not shoot fleeing men in the back - not in Cuneo, not in New York, not in Ottawa.

So falls the cliché that "abroad he would have gotten away with it." Everywhere, the same two facts sink the defense: the shots into the backs of fleeing men, and the kicks to a robber already harmless.

Sources

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