Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Markus Kaarma of Missoula is charged with deliberate homicide for allegedly killing a German exchange student he found in his garage. According to the charging documents, Kaarma and his common law wife, weary of having their home burgled several times, set a trap. When alarms indicated someone was in his garage, Kaarma grabbed his shotgun and started shooting.
Kaarma plans to plead self-defense under Montana’s castle doctrine law. If his case goes to court, he might end up like Byron Smith of Little Falls, MN, who yesterday was found guilty of murder for killing two intruders who were caught in a trap he set:
The jury deliberated only three hours before convicting Smith of two counts each of first-degree murder and second-degree murder for the shooting deaths of Haile Kifer, 18, and Nick Brady, 17. The teens were shot during a daylight burglary of Smith’s Little Falls, Minn., house on Thanksgiving Day 2012.
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Smith was a trained security engineer for U.S. embassies until his 2006 retirement. Fed up over a series of burglaries on his property, he had set up a surveillance system that picked up images of Kifer and Brady outside his home. Inside the house, police found hours of audiotapes on a digital recorder, with sounds of shots fired, bodies dragged on tarps and Smith taunting the dying teens.
The teens were shot repeatedly about 10 minutes apart, with Brady killed first.
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The two jurors, speaking just hours after their verdicts were delivered, said the picture of Smith that emerged from days of often chilling testimony was of a man who methodically planned for a violent confrontation rather than a homeowner surprised by intruders.
Several other jurors declined to comment in detail, saying only that it was a tough case to hear but not a tough one to decide.
Smith’s planning before the shootings — from moving his truck off his property to a neighbor’s home, to surveillance devices set up inside and outside of the home, to laying a tarp at the foot of his stairs — pointed toward him preparing for what happened, Strandberg said.
“It seemed like he had done many things to either lure them into the house or into the basement itself,” Strandberg said. “Moving the truck was the very first big sign that he had planned something. And then moving the bodies and having the tarp handy had a lot to do with it.”
Beyond that, Strandberg said, “it seemed like he sat there and waited for it.”
“It appeared to be that it was, for lack of a better term, his kill zone, where he wanted them to come in and enter, so he could have ample opportunity to kill them,” Strandberg added.
Some of the jurors believed that Smith waited a full day before reporting the shootings because he wanted to see whether other burglars would show up — even unscrewing bulbs from fixtures as night fell so that any new intruders wouldn’t be able to see in his basement.
The castle doctrine provides a defense for people who genuinely fear injury or death. But it’s not a defense for setting a trap for burglars, then shooting them. I think Kaarma is in a heap of trouble, and could well end up doing a long stretch of hard time in Deer Lodge.
Missoula legislator Rep. Ellie Hill plans to introduce legislation to modify the castle doctrine. That’s good. But unless Democrats win control of Montana’s House of Representatives in November, the law won’t be changed. Her bill might get a hearing, but it will die in committee.