Beating Up Unconscious Sleepwalking Trespasser Is Still Illegal

What would you do if you came home one day and found your male neighbor sleeping in your house or apartment without your permission or knowledge?  To further complicate matters, let’s say your neighbor is not armed and is also a sleepwalker, however you’re unaware of the latter fact.  Would you:

1. Wake him up and tell him to get out
2. Call the police and have them remove him from your home or arrest him
3. Let him be because he’s tired and in the morning make him breakfast
4. Wake him up and beat the crap out of him with the help of two of your friends to the point that your neighbor needs hospitalization

If you picked D and you live in Iowa City, Iowa, then you and your friends would be arrested for willfully causing bodily injury to a person.  How do I know that?  Because that’s exactly what happened to three men who found themselves in that very same situation (see how clever I am?)  By the way, if you picked C please refer me to your shrink/religion/cult/voodoo-method-to-keep-you-calm because I have no idea how anyone would be able to stay cool if they found themselves in that situation.

According to the report, the three men, Jonathan Chun, Derryk Berger, and Kevin Lee, came back to Chun’s apartment after a night of drinking to find Chun’s neighbor sleeping in the apartment.  After they woke him, they proceeded to lay what I imagine to be an incredible beating on their neighbor since he had to be hospitalized afterward.  Chun then reported his neighbor for trespass to the police where he was promptly arrested for willful battery.

Now I’m not saying these three men were justified in their actions, but personally I’d be pretty terrified if I found a person in my house who I didn’t allow to be there, regardless of whether he was my neighbor or if I knew he was a sleepwalker.  However, I’d still fall in the A or B answer category since I’m not insane and also because I know the law.  It’s a wonderful field of study if you want to stay out of trouble.  Someone should’ve suggested taking it up to Chun and his friends because any lawyer or law student worth his salt knows that in a case like this, getting physical can only lead you to a felony.

From a legal perspective, self-defense is only allowed when you are under attack or imminent harm.  And in most jurisdictions, even if you are under attack, if you can escape the harm without resorting to violence, you have a duty to do so – unless the attack is happening in your home, then you don’t need to retreat (the so-call king-of-the-castle rule).

Even though Chun was in his home, his neighbor posed no threat to him since he was sleeping.  Though Chun could argue he felt threatened by his neighbor’s mere presence, most courts have held that trespass alone with the threat of imminent harm is not enough to justify self-defense.  Broad self-defense usage is a common misconception, as evidence not only by national criminal statistics on the matter, but also by the large number of self-defense claims received by LegalMatch every year.

So the moral of this story is: when in doubt, call the police, because they’ll have a much easier time justifying their beatings than you.