Philadelphia District Attorney's Association: PDAA opposes House Bill
641 and urges public hearings.



The article text follows:



Philadelphia District Attorney's Association: PDAA opposes House Bill

641 and urges public hearings.



Text of Dec. 7 press release.



The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association urges the House Judiciary Committee to hold public hearings before voting on House Bill 641 in a hastily scheduled meeting on Monday, December 10. This bill would increase handgun violence in Pennsylvania by encouraging people with firearms to shoot their victims more quickly by removing the duty to retreat from our self-defense statute. A recent case in Pasadena, Texas is testing the limits of a similar law that Texas just enacted, where a neighbor who was in no danger shot and killed two alleged burglars in his neighbor's yard as police were arriving. We don't need any more incentives to shoot people in our state.



House Bill 641, misnamed "the castle doctrine" legislation, has been introduced to legalize alleged self-defense killing even when the killer knows that the killing is unnecessary to save a life. This bill eliminates Pennsylvania's centuries-old "duty to retreat" that states that if someone whose life is threatened can safely do so, they must retreat and avoid the unnecessary taking of human life. The PDAA urges the General Assembly to vigorously oppose this legislation.



The true "castle doctrine," (not HB 641) which relieves residents of the duty to retreat before using deadly force to protect their homes from intruders, is current law. See 18 Pa.C.S. 506(b)(2)(ii)(A)("the actor is not obliged to retreat from his dwelling or place of work, unless he was the original aggressor ... "). Advocates for House Bill 641 cannot

point to a single case where current law failed to adequately protect a Pennsylvania resident's right to defend his or her home. Our current statute safeguarding that right is strong, and this bill does nothing to further strengthen it; instead, the bill produces several disastrous consequences making the streets and highways of our state more dangerous than ever.



It has been one of the highest principles of civilized society that the use of deadly force on our streets should be the choice of last resort; killing another human being should never be the first option when it is entirely possible to avoid the situation in complete safety. It is not unreasonable to require a person to try and avoid the taking of a life before we as a society will condone and excuse a killing as an act of self-defense. The days of the "Wild West" where two armed gunman could face off on the street at high noon and the winner would walk away under a claim of self-defense should remain a distant memory of a more

barbaric time in this country's history.



This bill will protect gang killers from prosecution. The largest impact of House Bill 641 will be to provide most gang killers in this Commonwealth with a ready-made defense that will be very difficult for the Commonwealth to defeat. Many homicides occur when one gang encounters a rival gang on the street - or even when one drug gang member encounters a member of another gang. When fatal shootings occur, our prospects of successfully prosecuting the gang killers are reasonable because current law's duty to retreat negates the killers'

inevitable self-defense claims. Without the duty to retreat, gang killers will have a potent, often-winning courtroom argument that they had to shoot the rival gang members in order to defend themselves, even though the shooting could have been avoided altogether.



Please remember that these gang killers are often not good shots. House Bill 641's Dodge City protections for gang killers apply with equal force whether the ultimate victim is a rival gang member or an innocent 10-year-old school child a block away. The killers of the young boy, Faheem Thomas-Childs, asserted self-defense to justify their shooting at rival gang members. The veteran homicide prosecutor who tried Faheem's killers, Mark Gilson, has indicated that, had House Bill 641 been in place at the time that young schoolboy was killed, Faheem's killers may well have been acquitted and back on the streets today. To quote Mr.

Gilson, if the duty to retreat "is removed, then many violent ruthless

killers will be permitted to get away with murder."



Protecting road rage killers from prosecution. The disconcerting increase in road rage killings potentially affects every community in our Commonwealth. Many road rage killings occur when tempers flare and irate, hot-tempered motorists threaten and menace each other. If one driver is larger than the other, or has a tire iron in his hand for example, the other feels he's facing a potentially life-threatening situation. However, an unnecessary killing in such situations often can be avoided by the threatened driver simply putting his foot on the gas pedal and driving away.



But House Bill 641 provides the driver - who could have safely driven away from the scene - another, entirely legal alternative: grab the handgun and shoot the other driver in the head. With the duty to retreat taken away, our ability to prosecute these entirely unnecessary killings will be substantially hindered. This is not the time to be throwing fuel on the fire of deadly road rage. The responsibility of government is to make our highways safer, not to provide new legal protections to road rage killers.



The bottom line is this: House Bill 641 will give potent new legal weapons for gang killers and road rage killers to avoid responsibility for the taking of human life. Again, I urge you to oppose this legislation, which will without a doubt make Pennsylvania a more dangerous place for all our citizens, or at the very least, convene public hearings to enlighten and inform the legislators and the public about this critical public safety risk.



Contact: Christopher Mallios, PDAA Legislative Liaison, 215-686-5873