Antiwar damage to property necessary and reasonable

Sunday March 30, 2003 18:25

by Eoin Dubsky

Who wept in 1989 for the Berlin Wall when the people of East Germany reduced it to piles of rubble using their household hammers and garden tools? Was this flagrant display of property damage supported in Ireland because it was popular or because it was right?

Some people have jumped from the term "property damage" to "criminal damage" without bothering to look up what the second term really means. Even the Irish statute books acknowledge that there are times when breaking stuff is okay (i.e. property damage != criminal damage), and I will be making this case again for my appeal in Ennis Circuit Court in May.

To have a "lawful excuse" you need to (i) Believe that there were circumstances threatening yourself or others (including property); and (ii) that under the circumstances as you believed them to be, your actions to protect yourself or others were reasonable. Your beliefs could be entirely groundless and it would still be okay (see section 6 of the Criminal Damage Act, 1991: http://193.120.124.98/ZZA31Y1991S6.html), but the actions had to be "reasonable". So for example, you might be right that a riot can be a life threatening situation, but breaking the window of a TV shop probably wouldn't be accepted as a reasonable action to protect yourself/others under the circumstances.

The onus of proof is on the prosecution to prove (beyond reasonable doubt) that the property damage was done without lawful excuse. If there is even reasonable doubt that there could have been a lawful excuse the judge must find the defendant "not guilty".