Mantrap

0:00Support for Criminal comes from Squarespace. If you're a business owner, you know that it matters how you present your business online. Squarespace has the tools you need to customize your website and advertise all the kinds of services you provide. Plus, you can choose the colors and fonts you like. Go to squarespace.com slash criminal for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code criminal to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain. Bloomington, Indiana has always been a town of lifelong learners. Lectures that run long. Dinner table debates that run longer.

0:35We're always studying something. But this year, the syllabus changed. We learned about blitzes and blocks, pick sixes and play action. And what the inside of that outside stadium looks like on a sunny Saturday afternoon. We may not always understand the whole thing, but man, if it isn't fun to learn. Visit Bloomington. Learn something new.

1:01Well, everyone knew everyone in this very small town called Eddyville, and everyone apparently knew the Brineys. In 1957, a couple named Ed and Bertha Briney inherited an old farmhouse from Bertha's parents in a rural part of Iowa. And they left it unoccupied for 10 years, and it was an uninhabited old farmhouse and out in the middle of nowhere, basically. but they kept items of value apparently in there. Bertha Briney's grandparents and parents had lived in the house. After her parents died, Bertha Briney had wanted to keep things as they were, down to the plates and silverware on the kitchen table.

1:49We're hearing about the Brineys and their farmhouse from retired law professor Andrew McClurg. People had repeatedly broken into this house. According to the Brineys, in the decades since they inherited the house, it had been broken into 50 times. Ed Briney later said he'd nailed doors and windows shut, posted seven no trespassing signs around the property, and complained to sheriffs in two different counties over and over. But nothing seemed to work. So they basically boarded up the windows and put tin over the windows to try to keep people from breaking in, but that was unsuccessful. And that's when Ed Briney got out his shotgun.

2:37Because they were fed up, as I think with Mr. Briney, I think those were his words. They were just fed up with people breaking in. Ed and Bertha attached the shotgun to an iron bed frame and ran a wire from the gun's trigger to the bedroom doorknob so that if someone opened the bedroom door, the trigger would be pulled and the gun would go off. Originally, the barrel was aimed to hit the intruder in the stomach. Ed Briney, the husband, wired it, and his wife, Mrs. Briney, that paragon of reasonableness that she was, suggested he lower it to just shoot the intruder in the leg. Was there any sign posted outside of the house saying no trespassing or gun on premises, you will be shot if you enter?

3:30There were no trespassing signs that they had on the land for several years. Just regular no trespass signs. There were no warnings that there was a deadly trap inside. A booby trap. A booby trap. The population of Eddyville was around 1 ,000 people. Its main street was two blocks long. And just off of it was a gas station owned by the Katko family. 28-year-old Marvin Katko worked there with his father. And he had an interest in collecting, apparently, jars and bottles that he considered to be valuable antiques. And one day, he broke into an abandoned, not abandoned, actually, an uninhabited farmhouse out in the country about seven miles away.

4:26Edinburgh Briney's farmhouse. Marvin had noticed the house over the years when he went hunting in the area It was surrounded by tall weeds and some of the smaller buildings around the property were falling apart According to court documents Marvin had broken in once before with a friend to collect bottles and they had decided to come back to see if there was anything they missed The window they'd used to get in the first time had been completely boarded up So they walked around the house until they found another window that was easier to get into, even though it was boarded up too. So he removed a board or a piece of tin and entered the house.

5:12Marvin's friend started looking around the kitchen, and Marvin headed for the bedroom. And when he pulled on the bedroom door, the shotgun trap went off and blew away a substantial portion of his leg. What happened next led to a case that's still taught to first-year law students, more than 50 years later. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

5:43After Marvin Katko was shot in the leg, the friend he'd broken into the farmhouse with helped him to the hospital. He spent 40 days there. He had to wear a cast for about a year. a brace for another year, and he lost two and a half inches of his leg. His doctor said he had seriously considered amputation. When Marvin Katko recovered while he was in the hospital, he was admitting that he had broken into another person's premises. What did he do? Well, first, absolutely he knew, and he admitted he knew it was wrong and criminal, and he was originally charged with a felony, but ended up pleading guilty to a misdemeanor.

6:29Marvin pled guilty to larceny in the nighttime of property valued at less than$20. He was fined$50 and given a 60-day suspended sentence. And then, he filed a lawsuit against the owners of the house he'd broken into, Edinburgh Briney. Marvin Katko's lawsuit alleged that Edinburgh Briney had shown, quote, malice and intent to harm by rigging the shotgun, that they meant for someone to get seriously hurt. Marvin Katko's lawyer told newspapers that he based his case on the theory that there was a big difference between protecting your life and home, where you live, and protecting property, and that you cannot use excessive force to protect property.

7:22Andrew McClurg says the case might have been very different if Ed and Bertha Briney lived in the farmhouse and were there that night but the house was vacant It's very important, a principle, I think because this is where people get it wrong so the fact is, is that if this had been an occupied house if somebody breaks into my house I don't own a gun, but if I did and somebody broke into my house there's a very good likelihood that, especially at night, I could legally shoot them because then we would be switching from the defense of property to self-defense, or if I had a family living there, other people living there, defense of others.

8:04So you can use deadly force often to protect yourself or other people, just not property. Edinburgh Briney's lawyer argued that the law allows for property to be defended with, quote, all the force necessary. And then he asked, who decides what is necessary? Ed Briney said he felt like he was being, quote, tormented by being robbed over and over again. During the trial, his lawyer attempted to demonstrate how bad it feels to have your things taken by reaching into the jury box and grabbing the purse of one of the women on the jury. But in the end, Marvin Katko won. And not only does he win, he wins not just compensatory damages to compensate him for his injuries and medical expenses, but punitive damages, which are an add-on type of damage that is quite rare, actually, and designed to punish particularly egregious conduct.

9:09But they did not, they were not charged with any criminal crimes. No, no. Today it would be a crime in most states. Back then it probably was not technically a crime. So what were the damages? Will you tell me that he was rewarded? They were$20 ,000 in actual compensatory damages and$10 ,000 in punitive damages. but it would actually be substantially more in today's dollars. And as a result, the Brineys, and this was partly what really stirs up students, the Brineys had to sell 80 acres of their farm to pay the judgment to the criminal who broke into their house.

9:58How do your students, you've been teaching this case for a long time, How do your students react to this case? So what usually happens is people will usually speak up in favor of the court's decision, that is, in favor of Marvin Katko winning, that you shouldn't be able to use deadly booby traps. So I have to kind of play along with it and get, you know, draw out the people who don't want to come across as cold-hearted or cold-blooded to start defending the Brinies. But once they get going, they really get going on it. And then I find somebody who's vociferously sticking up for the brownies. And then I say, how many people in here, because law school classes, first-year classes are pretty large.

10:43It might be 70, 80 people there. I said, how many people in here ever entered illegally any kind of structure on somebody else's property when they were a kid? Whether it's a shed or a barn or an abandoned house. And almost every single person raises their hand. The Brineys appealed the decision, and the case went to the Iowa Supreme Court. But the court agreed with the original ruling, finding the Brineys responsible. But a lot of people in the town sided with the Brineys. One paper reported that about 3 ,000 people had written to offer support to the Brineys. Mrs. Briney was quoted as saying, it's sort of a puzzling world, in that I didn't feel as if I was in the wrong.

11:35I was the one being harassed. What else was I going to do besides get a 24-hour guard? Marvin Katko was quoted saying that some Eddyville residents no longer associated with him. But he said that the average person can see both sides of it.

12:05We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

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14:18Courts have been hearing cases about people setting off what's called a spring gun trap, a booby trap, or sometimes a man trap, for a long time. So one of the most notable and earliest cases was a case from England in 1825, so almost 200 years ago, called Byrd v. Holbrook. and the defendant, Holbrook, maintained what were apparently very valuable tulips that he grew about a mile from his house. He set up a booby trap with tripwires running across a few of the paths in the garden. One day, a neighbor's peacock flew over the garden wall and a 19-year-old climbed over it to help find the bird. He set off the tripwires and was shot in the knee.

15:05Then he sued the tulip gardener and won. So one of the problems with booby traps is they're indiscriminate. They can't discern between a dangerous criminal and a 10-year-old kid who's just out, you know, doing mischief. A 1986 case involved an electrified booby trap. A store owner, whose store had been robbed multiple times, installed an electrified metal grate above his front door When a man broke in through the ceiling, the rubber soles of his sneakers protected him, but he touched the metal grate as he tried to climb out and was killed. The store owner was arrested and charged with manslaughter.

15:49He said, I didn't mean for anyone to be killed. I just wanted to shock him and warn him. His store had been robbed six times in the past month alone, and he said that the police hadn't done much about it. He said, the police come by and fill out a report and put down that fingerprint dust, and you'll be cleaning it up for two days after that, but they'll never even call you. A grand jury voted to release him. You know, and these are all cases involving people who are fed up with people breaking into their property. So it's not like that was their first idea to set a deadly booby trap. In 1974, a man named A.C.

16:33Wade owned a liquor store in Cordial, Georgia. He also owned a cigarette vending machine just outside of the store. And apparently he had had trouble with people coming and rattling his machine, and it would sling out either cigarette packages or money or change out of the cup. that held the money. And so it was an early type machine, so it was not very sophisticated. So he began to make it sophisticated by he put a third a stick of dynamite connected to a micro switch so that if it was disturbed in any significant manner, it would ignite the dynamite stick. So it's quite a crude thought. I mean...

17:35But if you were to shake the machine so much, it would, whatever, the charge would be set off. That's correct. Attorney David Rainwater. And this machine was sitting out front of the liquor store, so it was exposed to 24-hour use. A.C. Wade, the liquor store owner, said his machine had been broken into five times and that he'd put in the dynamite to try to scare off potential thieves. He said, the solution was to sacrifice the machine. It was the only thing I could come up with. He had not attempted to see what the amount of force would be. Would it be a killing force or would it just be a scaring tactic?

18:27But I think a 30-stick of dynamite is a significant force, and of course it turned out to be a deadly force. Just after midnight on August 23, 1974, a 16-year-old boy named Robert Joel McKenzie and his 15-year-old friend and reportedly tried to pry open the machine with the tire tool. The dynamite went off, and the machine exploded. Both of the boys were hurt. Papers reported that the 15-year-old left the scene to seek medical help, leaving his friend behind. He was eventually questioned by police and brought the deputies back to the liquor store. Robert Joel McKenzie was still at the scene, very badly injured.

19:16His leg had been hit by a piece of metal from the machine during the explosion, and an artery in his thigh was severed. He died shortly after he was taken to the hospital. A.C. Wade said that he felt terrible and cooperated with police from the start. He admitted everything. He admitted that it was rigged as a man trap. He didn't boast about it, but he actually felt that he had done nothing wrong. He told papers, I gave it lots of consideration. I never activated it until after hours. There was no way an innocent person could get hurt. He had to be breaking in. I figured it would knock them down on the pavement.

20:05He said, You just never think of everything. and that some people had been sympathetic to his position. But he said, in lots of people's minds, I'm a villain. The county sheriff said he wasn't planning to file charges because he said he, quote, knows of nothing illegal A.C. Wade had done. The sheriff said the death was accidental. He said the dynamite itself wasn't powerful enough to kill someone and that Robert Joel McKenzie had died because a piece of the machine had come off and cut his leg, and he bled to death. Nobody was willing to prosecute this man for doing this, and so we then filed the civil suit.

20:56David Rainwater represented Robert Joel McKenzie's mother. One of her relatives insisted that she talk to a lawyer, because it wasn't right for her son to be killed over stealing quarters, which is basically what it was. You might remember back then the machines were not sophisticated enough to take dollar bills. So it was just quarters. A.C. Wade estimated there had been, quote, four or five dollars in the machine. David Rainwater thought Robert Joel McKenzie's mother had a good case. The wrongful death statute, number one, did not limit it to non-criminals. It applied to everybody. It didn't matter what your conduct was.

21:52Even if you were a trespasser, even if you were a criminal, you still could use the wrongful death statute to collect damages from somebody that had a willful and wanton intent. He knew he expected the trespasser to come back. He laid a trap for him. And, you know, at least in Georgia, you don't owe a trespasser any duty except not to leave a man trap for him. That's the way our law is written. The defense kept saying, well, you know, we had no intent to kill him. We were just trying to protect our property, trying to scare him and whatever. but that wasn't good enough because the law held that any time that your conduct is willful or wanton, intent is inferred.

23:01A.C. Wade was found liable. The judge wrote, He had an abandoned and malignant heart. He set a death trap with dynamite, never testing it to determine how many innocent persons might be killed if within 100 to 200 yards of it, and thus sought to protect his several dollars in the vending machine. He had a conscious indifference to consequences. A.C. Wade was ordered to pay a small settlement to Robert Joel McKenzie's mother. How did people react in town to the events and the decision? Very negatively. They couldn't believe. somebody could collect that was in the process of stealing from you. So they weren't showing outward sympathy for what had happened to this 16-year-old?

23:51No, not at all. David says that people in town thought of Robert Joel McKenzie as a thief. He was a criminal. What happened to him was irrelevant. He was in the process of committing a crime. And there are people out there that still believe that property and the right to enjoy it is the highest right you have, but that's not exactly true. And this case really illustrated that even a criminal in the state of Georgia can recover for damages if he was injured or killed as a result of a man trap.

24:43We'll be right back.

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26:43Oh, my back was against the wall. This is Phil Conahan. In the late 80s, he was living in Denver, Colorado. He had a construction firm and did building repairs for a living. And he stored all of his equipment and tools in a warehouse in a non-residential part of town. Well, I had my snowplow in there and my service truck that had all my carpenter tools in it and it had all my concrete tools in it and my roofing equipment in it and all my hand tools, my mechanic tools that I repaired, all my equipment. I've done mechanical work most of my life. So everything you needed to do your job was in that warehouse?

27:34Absolutely. One day, Phil decided to take a road trip into the mountains. I had a little MG car. Weather was perfect and top-down. It's incredible driving through the mountains in a convertible, a little convertible. And I stopped by the warehouse just to have a look. It was a Sunday. and I saw that my back door had been broken in two. And that's when it started.

28:07When you walked in, what did you see? I saw that I was doing a welding job, and I had it all laid out, had all my equipment there, and every piece of my welding equipment was gone. That job just came to a halt.