Is it legal to stop somebody taking your stuff if you&#39;ve left it somewhere? Suppose that you leave your phone on a bench and you leave for two minutes to stretch or do something. Somebody takes it. You catch them in the act and ask them to stop, but they start running. Are you legally allowed to stop them using physical force (let's say that the force used is not enough to seriously injure them)? What would happen in the case if you do seriously injure them? And more than that, what's exactly the difference between self-defense and vigilante justice? Is it vigilante justice to stop someone from stealing your stuff?
This is related to Can a store sell merchandise I&#39;ve left in the store? The phone in question has been mislaid and anyone who finds it has a duty to deliver it to the owner of the bench for safekeeping pending the true owner's return: if the owner does not return within a reasonable time the phone becomes the property of the bench owner (e.g. the city that owns the park). However, the specific question here is: Where the owner has returned within a reasonable time but the possessor of the phone is now clearly attempting to steal it. Most jurisdictions recognise that a person is entitled to use reasonable force to defend their life or property. For example, the law in Australia1, is generally case law for which the authority is the High Court's decision in Zecevic v DPP (1987) 162 CLR 645: The question to be asked in the end is quite simple. It is whether the accused believed upon reasonable grounds that it was necessary in self-defence to do what he did. If he had that belief and there were reasonable grounds for it, or if the jury is left in reasonable doubt about the matter, then he is entitled to an acquittal. Stated in this form, the question is one of general application and is not limited to cases of homicide. So, you are entitled to do "what you believe upon reasonable grounds that it was necessary to do" to defend your property. This would include using physical force to stop their flight and return your property to your possession: it would not include force that posed real and foreseeable risk of inflicting death or grievous bodily harm upon them. In addition, because you have reasonable grounds to believe that they have committed a crime, you are allowed to arrest them and deliver them to lawful custody (i.e. a police officer). Naturally, if you do not have reasonable grounds them you have just kidnapped them. The consequences if you do injure them is that you can be charged with a crime (battery, grievous bodily harm, manslaughter, murder etc.) and/or be sued for damages (medical bills, lost wages etc.) in both cases you could use self-defence as a defence. The difference between self-defence and vigilante justice is one is legal and the other isn't
Anyone can be arrested, as long as the police (and in some cases, anyone) have probable cause to do so. This generally includes two points: You are in the process of committing a criminal act The police have probable cause, generally through evidence, that you are in the process of, about to, or have committed a criminal act. This usually requires obtaining a warrant for the arrest. However, it's important not to conflate searches with arrest. Arrests are when you are being taken into custody for the reasons mentioned above. Searches are when your personal belongings (i.e. property), are searched to collect evidence. It is not up to police to convict someone. This is the job of the judicial system. There's a bit of terminology here: convictions basically mean being found guilty of an offence. Police don't have the ability to convict someone of an offence. They do have the ability to arrest, and charge with an offence. To charge someone with a crime basically means to accuse them of having done something. Now let's get to the actual crime. Since you haven't mentioned a specific jurisdiction, I'm going to use Canadian cases and law, but in general, it should apply worldwide. If the police have reason to believe that you are engaging in unlawful hacking-related behaviour, then they have the authority to arrest you. They simply need to have a reasonable belief that you are engaged in the crime. Something such as connecting you with an IP address and connecting that you were online at the time is enough. If the police need to find out more information (which they generally do, to investigate further into the matter) - they can obtain a search warrant afterwards. With this, they can legally search into your computer, and investigate. Any evidence that they collect can be used in court. I've recently done some research into cyber crimes. One rather infamous case involved the attack on multiple large scale websites, including Dell, Yahoo, and Amazon, in 2000. This sparked a large scale investigations, between the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and the FBI. The attacks were claimed by some to cause nearly 1.7 billion dollars of damage. The hacker was charged with 58 different offences. You can imply from the linked article that he was arrested before his computer was searched.
No, you could not have prevented them from collecting their belongings But you could have sued for trespass Unless those boxes were part of the contract for sale, they remain the vendor’s property and just like you can’t withhold your mate’s trombone that he accidentally left after that great party, you can’t withhold the vendor’s boxes - that’s called “stealing”. What you could (should?) have done is refuse to settle until the boxes were removed. As the vendor was in breach, if you suffered any unmitigated loss as a result of the delay, you would be entitled to recover it. This is one of the reasons why you should inspect on the day of settlement. Given that you accepted the breach, even though the vendor’s boxes were technically trespassing, they could reasonably raise the defense that they had implicit permission- at least for a reasonable time. “A few days” is a reasonable time.
Rudeness is not a crime Thankfully, or I’d be writing this from jail. The threat or actually of intentional and unwanted physical contact is a crime. Historically these were seperate common law crimes (and torts) of assault and battery respectively. However, in most jurisdictions these have been codified and merged and redefined so there is common assault (which merges historic assault and battery and is what you are asking about), indecent assault, sexual assault etc. In general, there must be an intentionality to the contact - accidentally colliding with someone is not assault (although it can be the tort of negligence). Similarly the contact must be unwanted - participating in a game of rugby means you want to be tackled (in a legal sense, in a sports sense you don’t want to be tackled, you want to score). And finally it must intend harm - holding your hands up to prevent a collision does not intend harm even if harm may result, punching someone does. In the cases you describe, the aggressor is the “elderly person” and they have committed a crime. I am interested in the suggestion that public opinion in first-world countries like Canada is that being old and annoyed justifies you beating someone. That is not my understanding of public opinion in Australia- old people have to follow the rule of law here just like everybody else.
If the police are able to attain a warrant that for some reason identifies your room and your things in particular, then they can search your room and seize your things. Ideally the police would have to give the judge or magistrate reasonable suspicion that their target has put some evidence in your room, or that some of your things are evidence relating to the purported crime. In practice, warrants err on the side of generality, so the police can easily get a warrant to search "the whole residence" without contemplating the nuance of which tenants use which rooms. Likewise, when determining what to seize, the police can certainly choose to err on the broad side and seize anything that meets the criteria of the warrant without stopping to determine who owns what. "Respect" of any sort is not a legal factor in the execution of an approved warrant.
colorado In the U.S., this is largely a question of state law and while similar from state to state, it is not identical. In Colorado, which basically follows the majority rule, there are a couple of justifications that could be available: (1) the use of force justified for defense of property, and (2) the use of force justified for a citizen's arrest. In the case of defense of property, the rule is as follows: Use of physical force in defense of property A person is justified in using reasonable and appropriate physical force upon another person when and to the extent that he reasonably believes it necessary to prevent what he reasonably believes to be an attempt by the other person to commit theft, criminal mischief, or criminal tampering involving property, but he may use deadly physical force under these circumstances only in defense of himself or another as described in section 18-1-704. Colo. Rev. Statutes § 18-1-706. In the case of a citizen's arrest, the rule is: A private person acting on his own account is justified in using reasonable and appropriate physical force upon another person when and to the extent that he reasonably believes it necessary to effect an arrest, or to prevent the escape from custody of an arrested person who has committed an offense in his presence; but he is justified in using deadly physical force for the purpose only when he reasonably believes it necessary to defend himself or a third person from what he reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-1-707(7). Can the victim shoot the pickpocket and claim heat of passion as a defense? No. Deadly force is not authorized against a pickpocket, and shooting someone almost always counts (often by definition) as a use of deadly force. The &quot;heat of passion&quot; defense only downgrades a murder charge to manslaughter and probably wouldn't apply in any case in these circumstances. Can the victim grab, tackle, or punch the pickpocket? Can the victim say, &quot;Give back my wallet or I will punch you&quot;? Does the answer vary depending on which of the two people would be at an advantage in a physical confrontation, based on size, age or gender? The law doesn't answer these question at this level of specificity. Whether the force used was &quot;reasonable and appropriate&quot; and was &quot;reasonably believed to be necessary&quot; are determined after the fact on a case by case basis by the finder of fact (i.e. the judge in a bench trial, or the jury in a jury trial).
Purchasing a lot that contained the keys does not provide any rights to access the locks that those keys would open. What someone who did this would be charged with would vary by both location and also by prosecutorial discretion. The only exception in this scenario would be if the storage locker contained the deed to the property in question.
In California (where lost+found laws have been discussed quite a lot), this would be either "lost property" or "abandoned property". With abandoned property, you can do what you want. With lost property, it is legal to ignore it. If you take it, you have the obligation to try to return it to the owner. If you don't do that, it's theft. If you don't take it, you have no obligation whatsoever. Put it somewhere where the loser (the person who lost it) is more likely to find it, for example on the street. Don't take anything. Clarification for comments: There is a box. And the owner of the box is nowhere to be seen. That box is by definition lost or abandoned - it is abandoned if the owner got rid of it intentionally, it is lost if the owner is looking for it. We don't know. We can make guesses depending on the situation. No matter whether lost or abandoned, you are legally absolutely fine if you just ignore it. You have no reason to try to return it to its owner. If you don't make it your business, it's not your business. But if you decide you want the box, or bits of it, and it isn't abandoned (which is hard to know for sure), then you have to try to find the owner first, and if you don't find them, then you can keep it.