"In Youth’s Death, Some See a Montana Law Gone Wrong."
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In Youth’s Death, Some See a Montana Law Gone Wrong
By JACK HEALY
MAY 7, 2014
Diren Dede, 17, in a video image just before he was shot by a Montana homeowner. Credit Courtesy of Paul Ryan
MISSOULA, Mont. — Teenagers call it garage hopping. The goal was to sneak into an open garage, steal some beer or other items and slip away into the night. It was dumb and clearly illegal. It was not supposed to be deadly.
Around midnight on April 27, a 17-year-old exchange student from Germany named Diren Dede left the host home where he played Xbox and drained cans of Sprite to set off with a friend through his dark hillside neighborhood. They passed a home whose garage door hung partially open. Using a cellphone for light, Mr. Dede headed in.
Inside the house, motion sensors alerted Markus Kaarma, 29, to an intruder’s presence. Two recent burglaries had put Mr. Kaarma and his young family on edge, his lawyer said, and he grabbed a shotgun from the dining room and rushed outside. He aimed into the garage and, according to court documents, fired four blasts into the dark. Mr. Dede’s body crumpled to the floor.
While Mr. Kaarma has been charged with deliberate homicide, Mr. Dede’s death has set off an outcry an ocean away in Germany, exposing the cultural gulf between a European nation that tightly restricts firearms and a gun-loving Western state. In his defense, Mr. Kaarma is expected to turn to laws enacted in Montana five years ago that allow residents more legal protections in using lethal force to defend their homes.
German consular officials have called for justice. In an interview with a German news agency, Mr. Dede’s father criticized what he called an American cowboy culture as contributing to his son’s death. In Mr. Dede’s hometown, Hamburg, hundreds of his stunned relatives, friends and soccer teammates attended memorials, holding photos of Mr. Dede and unfurling a banner that read, “Our brother is dying while America is looking on.”
In Montana, which has one of the country’s highest rates of gun ownership, the killing has renewed criticism of the state’s “castle doctrine” laws, which allow residents wider latitude to use force to defend their homes.
Nearly every state has a law on the books giving residents the legal right to defend their homes, but Montana is among several that have gone further. With backing from the National Rifle Association and the support of the state’s Democratic governor, Montana passed a stronger law in 2009 that placed the burden on prosecutors to rebut claims of self-defense.
Under the old laws, residents were justified in using force only if an assailant tried to enter their home in a “violent, riotous or tumultuous manner.” The new law eliminates that language and makes it clear that residents can use force if they reasonably believe it is necessary to prevent an assault on themselves or someone else in the home.
These laws are expected to play a crucial role in the criminal case that has been filed against Mr. Kaarma, who is out on bond and is to be arraigned Monday. His lawyer, Paul Ryan, says Mr. Kaarma feared for his family’s safety and panicked that night.
“He doesn’t know who’s there, what they’ve got, anything,” Mr. Ryan said. “He just didn’t know what was going on. Then he started to shoot.”
THE HOST FAMILY Kate Walker and Randy Smith, the host parents of Diren Dede, 17, at a vigil last week. “This is not us,” Mr. Smith said. “It’s not our neighborhood, it’s not our country. It’s not Montana.” Credit Lauren Grabelle for The New York Times
The shooting has also focused political attention on the castle laws. State Representative Ellie Boldman Hill, a Democrat from Missoula, has proposed repealing the recent changes, saying that the rules have fostered a shoot-first culture in Montana.
“I’m a liberal legislator from Montana, and I have a handgun in my closet,” she said. “We are proud of our gun-owning tradition, but enough is enough. It’s like a license to ? . People are walking around exercising vigilante justice.”
Steve Daines, a Republican congressman running for the United States Senate, recently told a veteran’s group he supported the laws as they stand, a view echoed by gun enthusiasts. His opponent, Senator John Walsh, a Democrat, supports them as well.
Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, said, “I think it’s working just fine.”
In times of emergency in Montana, Mr. Marbut said, the police are often an hour’s drive away. “Self-defense is a natural right. It is part of the nature of being a free person that your life has value and you can protect that life. It’s just not going to work to change Montana to a Chicago-style culture.”
But here in Missoula, a liberal college town ringed by snow-capped peaks, Mr. Dede’s classmates and neighbors as well as other residents have expressed sympathy for him and tried to distance their community from the ? events of that night. Scores of people attended a vigil for Mr. Dede, and ribbons bearing the red, gold and black of the German flag hang around nearly every mailbox post in his neighborhood, a winding subdivision where deer leap through backyards and children play driveway basketball at dusk.
THE HOMEOWNER Recent burglaries put Markus Kaarma and his family on edge, his lawyer said. Credit Bill Gorman/Associated Press
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“This is not us,” said Randy Smith, one of Mr. Dede’s host parents. “It’s not our neighborhood, it’s not our country. It’s not Montana.”
It was Mr. Dede’s first trip to the United States, and his teachers and friends, host family and soccer coach said he had seemed to thrive here. He played on two soccer teams and was so devoted to the sport that he insisted on attending a grueling team run up a mountainside on his first night in Missoula.
The son of Turkish immigrants, he often talked about straddling two cultures, and listened to German hip-hop and Turkish pop music on his phone. He took trips to Hawaii and Yellowstone and talked about wanting to return here to crisscross the country in a motor home.
But just up the road, two recent burglaries had made Mr. Kaarma and his partner, Janelle Pflager, feel like targets inside their home, Mr. Kaarma’s lawyer said. Someone had entered their open garage — the couple kept it open so they could duck out to smoke cigarettes — and stolen a wallet and credit cards, Mr. Ryan, the lawyer said. The break-ins rattled the couple, who are first-time parents with a 10-month-old.
“They’re feeling invaded,” Mr. Ryan said. “They thought they were being watched in their own neighborhood.”
Ms. Pflager bought motion sensors and a video camera to track the intruders should they return, and put a purse with some marked belongings inside, so that they could be traced to anyone who stole them. Mr. Ryan said the purse was sitting in the back of the garage and had not been placed there to lure anyone in.
THE STUDENT Teammates, friends and relatives mourning Mr. Dede in Hamburg, Germany. Credit Oliver Hardt/Getty Images
A hairstylist named Felene Sherbondy told the police that Mr. Kaarma had come into the Great Clips salon three days before the shooting and talked about how he had been waiting up with his shotgun for three nights “to shoot some kid.” Ms. Sherbondy told the police that Mr. Kaarma was being “extremely ? and belligerent,” according to court documents.
Mr. Kaarma told the police that in the moments before Mr. Dede’s death, he heard the sound of metal touching metal as he stared into the pitch-black garage, and swept the gun across the width of the garage as he fired. Ms. Pflager told the police she heard a few yells of “Hey!” or “Wait!” from inside the garage, and then gunshots. It all happened in less than 10 seconds, the couple told the police.
They did not see who was in the garage until it was all over, Mr. Ryan said. The friend accompanying Mr. Dede that night, an exchange student from Ecuador, stayed outside the home.
The police are investigating whether Mr. Kaarma was under the influence of marijuana or other substances at the time of the shooting. Investigators found a glass jar of marijuana in his kitchen pantry, according to a search-warrant application filed in the case. A neighbor also told the police that Mr. Kaarma smoked marijuana in the garage, and that marijuana and marijuana pipes had been stolen in one of the earlier burglaries.
Investigators have tested Mr. Kaarma’s blood for drugs, but the results have not been released. Mr. Ryan said that Mr. Kaarma had also been tested for alcohol use after the shooting, and that those results were negative.
Mr. Dede’s host parents, Mr. Smith and Kate Walker, who say they have never locked their doors and have never been burglarized, have spent the last week grieving for a 17-year-old who had begun to feel like a family member.
“Whatever happened to turning the lights on and yelling, ‘Hey kids, go home’?” Mr. Smith said.
Ms. Walker added, “Or closing the garage door?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/us/missoula-montana-homeowner-shoots-teenager-in-garage.html?src=me&ref=general
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Montana Lawmaker Vows To Repeal Self-Defense Law After German Teen's Death
Reuters
Posted: 05/02/2014 12:26 pm EDT Updated: 05/02/2014 12:59 pm EDT
Team-mates, friends and relatives gather to remember Diren Dede at his football club on April 30, 2014 in Hamburg, Germany. (Photo by Oliver Hardt/Getty Images) | Oliver Hardt via Getty Images
(Reuters) - A Montana legislator said on Thursday she would seek to repeal the state's so-called "castle doctrine" after attorneys for a man accused of killing an unarmed German teenager said they would use the stand-your-ground style law in his defense.
The father of the slain exchange student suggested in an interview with a German news agency that the gun culture of the United States was at least partly to blame for his son's death.
Markus Kaarma opened fire with a shotgun into his darkened garage in Missoula, Montana, early on Sunday, killing 17-year-old Diren Dede of Hamburg, Germany, police said.
Kaarma, a 29-year-old U.S. Forest Service firefighter, told police that while watching on a video monitor he had seen a male in his garage. He was charged on Monday with homicide.
Defense lawyers say they will invoke the state's castle doctrine, which allows use of force to defend against unlawful entry of a home provided the person reasonably believes it necessary to stop an assault or prevent a forcible felony.
So-called "stand-your-ground" self-defense laws have come under intense scrutiny after Florida's was invoked by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman after he shot to death unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012.
Montana Representative Ellie Boldman Hill, a Democrat from Missoula, said Dede's death has prompted her to draft legislation that would strip the law of stand-your-ground provisions.
"Whether it's Trayvon Martin or the tragic killing of this student, it's not the American system of justice for a single individual to act as judge, jury and executioner," Hill said.
The slain teenager's father, Celal Dede, expressed similar sentiments to the German news agency DPA.
"I've not once thought that everyone here (in the United States) can shoot someone only because a person was in their yard," Dede told DPA in an interview cited by Der Spiegel magazine.
"America can't continue to play the cowboy here," Dede said, according to Der Spiegel.
Gary Marbut, president of Montana Shooting Sports Association, said he would oppose any such measure.
"I see no evidence to suggest this law is not doing what it's designed to do," Marbut said.
Julia Reinhardt, spokeswoman for the German Consulate in San Francisco, said a parallel investigation into the death is being conducted in Hamburg.
"We expected justice will be done to make it clear that an unarmed 17-year-old German citizen cannot be killed for simply entering a garage," she said.
(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman in Salmon, Idaho; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Mohammad Zargham)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/02/castle-doctrine-repeal_n_5254347.html -
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Because calling the cops would of been effective, kid would if been long gone or probly in a couple garage doors down the street, by the time they decided to respond. Who knows what he could of ran off with.
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I wonder if the groups/individuals who came to Zimmerman's defense and donated to his legal fund will do the same for Markus Kaarma?
After all Kaarma was protecting himself and there was a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood. -
pretty ridiculous, although i think we just saw how this kind of thing played out in MN...
there's still a world of difference between this case and Zimmerman, WHATEVER you think of Zimmerman.I wonder if the groups/individuals who came to Zimmerman's defense and donated to his legal fund will do the same for Markus Kaarma?
After all Kaarma was protecting himself and there was a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood.
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Coors
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Judge denies motion to change venue in Kaarma case
MISSOULA COUNTY
A Missoula County District Court judge has denied a request to change the venue for the trial of a man charged with deliberate homicide.
In a ruling filed last week, Judge Ed McLean wrote, "Regardless there has been no public outcry, campaigns to remove judges, angry mobs marching on the courthouse, biased statements by county attorneys and other individuals" involved in the Markus Kaarma case.
Kaarma is charged with deliberate homicide for the April shooting death of German exchange student Diren Dede. He claims he was scared for his life when Dede entered his garage.
Prosecutors say Kaarma baited the teen to his garage after previous break-ins.
Kaarma's defense team asked for a change of venue in the case. Attorney Katie Lacny filed 208 pages explaining why.
"Both the community outcry and media coverage surrounding this matter have created a bias against Markus Kaarma that cannot be overcome in Missoula County," she wrote.
Missoula Chief Criminal Deputy County Attorney Jennifer Clark asked McLean to deny the motion.
The defense also filed an unopposed motion asking that court documents be sealed from the public and the media. McLean has not ruled on that request.
A trial is set for December.
Click here to read the judge's order.
http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/judge-denies-motion-to-change-venue-in-kaarma-case/27735436Law enforcement, relatives excluded from jury panel in Kaarma case
MISSOULA COUNTY
By Emily Adamson, KECI Reporter, eadamson@keci.com
POSTED: 9:11 AM Sep 25 2014 UPDATED: 2:19 PM Sep 25 2014
A Missoula County District Court Judge has ordered that law enforcement and relatives of law enforcement be excluded from the panel of prospective jurors in the garage shooting case.
In an order filed Wednesday, Judge Ed McLean wrote that "any prospective juror who is in law enforcement or related to anyone in law enforcement in the following manner: spouse, child or parent, will automatically be excused from the jury panel."
McLean's order goes on to explain some of the logistics of the trial for Markus Kaarma, a Missoula man charged with deliberate homicide for the shooting death of 17-year-old Diren Dede. Kaarma shot Dede in his garage early one morning in April. Kaarma claims it was self-defense and that he was scared for his life and the safety of his family when the teen entered his garage.
Prosecutors paint a different picture, claiming Kaarma was out to get whomever had been burglarizing his garage on at least one other incident.
In addition to the exclusion of law enforcement from the jury, the court will choose a potential jury panel based on questionnaires potential jurors return to the court.
McLean says each side will have five days to present its case once the jury has been selected.
The trial is set to begin in December.
http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/law-enforcement-relatives-excluded-from-jury-panel-in-kaarma-case/28242010 -
Montana man gets 70 years in German exchange student's death
February 12, 2015 4:44 pm • By LISA BAUMANN
Markus Kaarma stands in Missoula County District Court while Judge Ed McLean sentences him to 70 years in prison for the shooting death of German exchange student Diren Dede on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015 in Missoula, Mont. Kaarma shot 17-year-old Dede, who was unarmed, last year after he was alerted by motion sensors in his garage. Witnesses said Kaarma fired at the teen four times. (AP Photo/The Missoulian, Kurt Wilson)
Celal Dede, right, father of slain German student Diren Dede speaks while his attorney Bernard Docke listens in Missoula, Mont. on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015. Markus Kaarma was sentenced to 70 years in prison, with no parole for at least 20 years, in the shotgun killing of 17-year-old Diren Dede, a German exchange student who was trespassing in his garage. (AP Photo/Lisa Baumann)
File - In this Dec. 17, 2014 file photo, Markus Kaarma listens as a jury pronounces him guilty of deliberate homicide in Missoula County District Court in Missoula, Mont. A judge is expected to sentence Kaarma, a Montana homeowner, on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015 in the shotgun killing of Diren Dede, a German exchange student who had been trespassing in the defendant’s garage. (AP Photo/The Missoulian, Kurt Wilson, file)
MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) — A Montana man wasn't defending his family but rather hunting someone when he shot and killed a German high school student who was trespassing in his garage, a judge said Thursday as he sentenced the man to 70 years in prison with no parole possible for at least 20 years.
"Here you have a 12-guage shotgun, not to protect your family but to go after someone. And go after someone you did," District Judge Ed McLean said sternly in sentencing Markus Kaarma for deliberate homicide in the April 27 killing of 17-year-old Diren Dede of Hamburg, Germany.
"You pose too great a risk to society to be anywhere else but the Montana State Prison," McLean said. "Good luck to you, son."
Kaarma's case was closely followed in Germany and brought scrutiny in the U.S. to Montana's "stand your ground" law that allows the use of force to protect life and property. At least 30 U.S. states have such laws.
In sentencing Kaarma, the judge made clear there are strict limits to residents' rights to use force while claiming self-defense.
At trial, prosecutors argued Kaarma was intent on luring an intruder into his garage after it was burglarized at least once before the shooting. Three witnesses testified they heard Kaarma say he'd been waiting up nights to shoot an intruder.
The night of the shooting, Kaarma left his garage door partially open and placed a purse inside. Alerted by a motion detector, he entered the darkened garage and fired four shotgun blasts, pausing between the third and fourth shots, witnesses testified.
Lead detective Guy Baker testified that the first three shots were low and seemed to follow Dede as he moved across Kaarma's garage. The fourth shot was aimed higher and struck Dede in the head, Baker said.
Dede, an exchange student at Missoula's Big Sky High School, was unarmed.
Kaarma's lawyers argued he feared for his life, didn't know if the intruder was armed, and was on edge because of the earlier burglary. Kaarma was convicted in December, and he had faced a maximum prison term of 100 years.
"It is justice," Dede's father, Celal Dede, said after the sentence. But he added: "I am not happy. My son is dead."
Kaarma sat staring down during much of the proceeding, occasionally glancing around the crowded courtroom. He sported buzz-cut, dark hair and an orange jail suit.
"I'm sorry my actions caused the death of Mr. Dede," he told the judge.
Kaarma's mother, his girlfriend, a police detective, Diren Dede's host parents and others gave statements to the judge Thursday.
Chong Kaarma, Markus Kaarma's mother, pleaded for leniency and apologized to Celal Dede from the stand.
"Why did you wait? Too late," Dede replied from his front-row seat.
Kaarma's attorneys plan to appeal.
At trial, they invoked Montana law allowing people to use deadly force to defend their property. That law was expanded in 2009 to allow the use of force even in cases that don't involve violent entry.
But Kaarma had to demonstrate he was reasonably fearful for his safety. The jury concluded he was not.
In a similar case, a Minnesota man was convicted in May of lying in wait in his basement for two teenagers and killing them during a break-in.
Florida's "stand your ground" law allows the use of deadly force in more circumstances outside the home. It, too, was widely scrutinized in the 2012 shooting of an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who was following the 17-year-old. Zimmerman was acquitted after arguing self-defense.
Germany does not have a similar law, which was part of the reason Kaarma's case attracted so much attention there.
http://thesouthern.com/news/national/montana-man-gets-years-in-german-exchange-student-s-death/article_fb503b86-abfe-5d7f-8e67-c97cd24c7344.html -
pretty ridiculous, although i think we just saw how this kind of thing played out in MN...
there's still a world of difference between this case and Zimmerman, WHATEVER you think of Zimmerman.I wonder if the groups/individuals who came to Zimmerman's defense and donated to his legal fund will do the same for Markus Kaarma?
After all Kaarma was protecting himself and there was a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood.
So Zimmerman confronts and kills Black teen committing no crime and walks but this guy Kills German/White Teen robbing his garage and gets 70 years??? Sure makes perfect sense to me... -
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He could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he just turned on the lights to make sure it wasn't a white kid before he blasted.
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Zimmerman at least could have been in a scenario where he shot during a physical confrontation - there's a limit to what we know, but a situation where both his poor decision to follow Martin and Martin's suspicion of who was following him led to things going very wrong is plausible.Soloman_The_Wise wrote: »So Zimmerman confronts and kills Black teen committing no crime and walks but this guy Kills German/White Teen robbing his garage and gets 70 years??? Sure makes perfect sense to me...
this dude baited the kid and can't be said to have been defending himself in ANY scenario. i don't have 100% sympathy for anyone who went to steal his stuff, but it's not like he held the kid at gunpoint and called 911.
the MN case i reference, is, well, also pretty egregious -
Black_Samson wrote: »Soloman_The_Wise wrote: »pretty ridiculous, although i think we just saw how this kind of thing played out in MN...
there's still a world of difference between this case and Zimmerman, WHATEVER you think of Zimmerman.I wonder if the groups/individuals who came to Zimmerman's defense and donated to his legal fund will do the same for Markus Kaarma?
After all Kaarma was protecting himself and there was a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood.
So Zimmerman confronts and kills Black teen committing no crime and walks but this guy Kills German/White Teen robbing his garage and gets 70 years??? Sure makes perfect sense to me...
He baited the kid.
Zimmerman at least could have been in a scenario where he shot during a physical confrontation - there's a limit to what we know, but a situation where both his poor decision to follow Martin and Martin's suspicion of who was following him led to things going very wrong is plausible.Soloman_The_Wise wrote: »So Zimmerman confronts and kills Black teen committing no crime and walks but this guy Kills German/White Teen robbing his garage and gets 70 years??? Sure makes perfect sense to me...
this dude baited the kid and can't be said to have been defending himself in ANY scenario. i don't have 100% sympathy for anyone who went to steal his stuff, but it's not like he held the kid at gunpoint and called 911.
the MN case i reference, is, well, also pretty egregious
So if I am reading this all correctly Dude was robbed before and so were the neighbors so he set a trap to catch who was doing it and then killed the thief??? It all feels backwards you should have the right to defend your property from theft, and you should also have the right to freely walk around on public property without being threatened and harassed. Things are so ? up where the sense of entitlement to take other peoples ? trumps the persons right to defend against...
And in the same ideology Zimmerman hunted Trayvon on neither of their property there had been no string of break in preceding his stalking of Trayvon that led to the confrontation. While not holding the kid till cops got there is one thing you catch someone in the act someone who has jacked you before I am not sure I can fault homeboy. I am not sure how kats are not seeing the sharp contrast in application of damn near the same law in each of these cases...
Add on just read up on the minesota case that ? was over the top execution on cctv dude was justified to start then just snapped ? up world we live in that his has to be even a debate because the cause and effect of this is they robbed him and victimized him till he felt like doing the same back and now has to pay the consequences of going to far. Damn... -
well, if nothing else, he'd be a LOT more sympathetic if he'd have incidentally shot a thief instead of setting a trap. you could be startled and fear for your life... but setting a trap is a little different.Soloman_The_Wise wrote: »So if I am reading this all correctly Dude was robbed before and so were the neighbors so he set a trap to catch who was doing it and then killed the thief??? It all feels backwards you should have the right to defend your property from theft
although i DO wonder why Germans are ? about American culture when the German WAS committing a property crime...
well, the hard fact is that there's still a degree of debate in what happened in the Zimmerman situation whereas the Montana situation is, you know, on tape.Soloman_The_Wise wrote: »And in the same ideology Zimmerman hunted Trayvon on neither of their property there had been no string of break in preceding his stalking of Trayvon that led to the confrontation. While not holding the kid till cops got there is one thing you catch someone in the act someone who has jacked you before I am not sure I can fault homeboy. I am not sure how kats are not seeing the sharp contrast in application of damn near the same law in each of these cases...
also, saying there's a difference between Zimmerman and this Montana dude doesn't mean the former isn't a ? -up situation.
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